MFK RHaCoDaCTYLuS;2789914; said:you should be a writer. i NEVER read long post because i get annoyed but this was good really good, id read your books
You turn my frown upside down.
MFK RHaCoDaCTYLuS;2789914; said:you should be a writer. i NEVER read long post because i get annoyed but this was good really good, id read your books
That may be why you have such a gift.. your not distracted.Spankbelly;2789904; said:Sadly, I had nothing better to do with my hands on Valentine's Day.
some is very true..Spankbelly;2801142; said:Spankbelly excerpts from Wide World Debate Club on Multiply Network
(New members welcome)
Topic-Save Food to Feed Africa
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What is the debate?
Should we waste food?
Why not?
If I do not super size my fries...does a potato get given to a hungry man in Africa?
No.
If I do not drink the milk left in the bottom of my cereal bowl...does a kid in Columbia get saved from rickets?
No.
Oh, I should give my fries and milk to a Canadian family?
OK,
I'm willing. How does that work?
So...I just sit here and do nothing. I don't go to the store. I don't buy anything. I don't throw it in the garbage...and everyone eats for free?
Hmmm.
So all that food gets given away? Free? Collapsing our economy and civilization?
So we can sidestep evolution and save the weak?
OK. I'm in. I'm all for senseless destruction.
Anarchy! WHOOT!
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Also, I grew up poor poor poor. My brother and I would raid fast food restaurant garbage bins to get a meal.
If not for the wastage of North America, I would not have made it.
If people only bought what they actually would eat...nothing left for me.
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What?
I mean explain how my saving food will help them.
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If I do not consume, others who can not consume will consume?
False Logic.
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Uhh, listen. False Logic is an actual debate term. Super Duper Official.
I know because I remember it from a Star Trek episode. Or WKRP in Cincinnati or something. That Venis Flytrap also taught me everything I know about physics.
It works like this. I throw out a butt load of seemingly related facts. Even better if they are all true.
Then I say all these facts and charts and graphic pictures mean this...my premise.
Then you get busy digesting all these facts. If they seem believable you don't even question the premise.
Better with sad/graphic/emotional pictures so you are feeling sad and attach yourself emotionally to the premise to defend poor little kids.
"What? You don't buy the premise? You must want kids to die!"
But if you check the facts and they are true, then you really believe the premise.
But in all those facts and checking, you forget to ask "Do these facts relate to the premise?"
And in this case the answer is no.
The premise (or at least what it seems to be)...If the West did not waste so much food it could/would go to feed Africa.
False.
Because while food is wasted in the UK USA CAN and everywhere else, it would not go to Africa.
I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me, how does the extra banana in my fridge get on a plane or boat and feed some kid in Mud Hutsvile.
But first I want you to reread all the info and show me where it even makes that premise.
It just dumps out facts. You assumed the premise.
It says "This much food is wasted" "This many starve" yeah OK maybe. I didn't check.
Because it never says "This food could go to these people."
There is no premise for debate. There is only statement of fact. The only debate is to check the facts and see if it really is so many tonnes of this and that wasted.
But what fun would that be?
Especially because it never says these facts mean this. So who cares if the facts are true?
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Here is the kicker...
[Food that could have gone to millions
According to the US Department of Agriculture, up to one-fifth of America's food goes to waste each year, with an estimated 130 pounds of food per person ending up in landfills. The annual value of this lost food is estimated at around $31 billion But the real story is that roughly 49 million people could have been fed by those lost resources.]
OK. Maybe that's true. Maybe that food in landfills could have fed millions.
What millions? How?
The millions waiting at USA landfills?
I don't know. Does not say.
Just changes topic entirely and talks about famine in Africa.
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No.
There is no surplus.
Real world business only does what is profitable.
Govt donations of foreign aid are paid by taxes. That buy the food from business.
Business donations are paid by tax incentives/write offs. That means less taxes back to Govt and more tax to the citizen.
None of this is free or extra.
The food that goes into the landfills goes for a reason.
It goes because it can not be sold. Not because it is all spoiled. But because it can't be traded for money. Not at full value.
Giving away product devalues the product and hurts business and puts people out of work.
All the supermarkets here do not use open dumpsters. They are all closed hydraulic crushers.
Because if I can go take the garbage I will not pay for product from the store.
Companies will not and can not just give it all away. It is not garbage. It is money.
Why should they just give it away? Just because it might save lives? Are they a charity?
No. They are in the business of supply and demand.
If they gave away millions of dollars of product, how long before we complain that we are poor too, and we should get cheaper if not free food from our own country? We demand a price drop, they lose money.
Where is this "Free Food"?
You say we should just use less/buy less and there would be all this "surplus" sitting on the store self?
OK sure, for a few days. Then the store notices product is not moving so they import less and buy less from local producers. So they all cut back and lose jobs.
Do you really think they would all just keep pumping it out at a loss?
Do you think they would go bankrupt and decide to ship it all across the world for nothing?
Or would they cut supply cost, cut supply, cut workers, cut trucks, cut buildings, drive up scarcity, drive up profit?
Would they be a charity and go bankrupt? Or be a business and profit?
Think it through. We would not be donating our surplus garbage. We would be donating our jobs and profit.
We are rich countries because we hoard our riches.
Freely exporting our riches, is ultimately importing poverty.
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Want to solve the issue? It does not take direct donations to Africa. But it does take sacrifice.
Our Western smoke stacks pump out contaminants that move the jet stream and cause the rains that once fell on Africa, to instead fall in the ocean.
The endless drought is not natural. We made it. We make it every day. We know this. It is fact.
And we don't care.
Not enough to stop doing it. Because that would cost more than a bag of rice.
So we give them the rice and pat them on the head.
And never look them in the eye to say "I murdered your world. And your children. So that I and mine could grow fat."
Instead we tell them to be grateful for our charity.
We tell ourselves we are charitable.
We tell ourselves we are the solution. Because we can not stomach that we are the problem.
If we returned the rains to those farmers they would prosper once more.
Warlords would have no hold over a people desperate no longer.
But that would cost more than rice and arrogance.
It would cost smoke and profit.
Red Devil;2804521; said:some is very true..
View attachment 325484Spankbelly;2804639; said:Some?
What do you think is untrue?
Oh, you mean it's all true. And some is very true.
I gotcha.
We are two peas in a pod, you and me.