BRFR Cake Stop 'breaking news' miscellany

[Psamathe]

With my philosophical hat on, I find it curious that human activity is so controlled/affected by an invention of humans (money & financial markets) to the extent that humans die or live in misery as a result of financial decisions. It feels like it's out of human control.

I suppose in a way, it only reflects all existence - tough choices about who lives and dies in times of shortages (of food, for instance) - but the 'shortage' is not of essentials to sustain life: mostly famine is a function of food not being in the right place for financial reasons, not because the planet isn't producing enough food for everyone to eat enough to stay alive.

Almost something I've been thinking recently, how many of our charities are actually addressing problems humans needlessly cause and that are quite avoidable. Charities are appealing for money to address dire situations of our own causing, situations we (as a species) have no need to have created.

 

[briantrumpet]

Money in its self is of little use, you cannot eat it, drink it, etc, but, it enables and/or gives choices. Famine may be terrible, but, it is simply a reflection that there is not enough incentive for this with the food, to transport it and sell it to those without, or with insufficient. If it was worth their while, someone would find a way to "fix" famine, and, most if not all afflictions of the human race.

Perhaps not a very flattering view of humanity, but, IMHO, a realistic one.

Indeed, it's a realistic one in some ways, but IIRC, even out in the wild, animals do (sometimes) demonstrate charity to help those in distress (maybe chimpanzees or gorillas?). But more to the point money and financial mechanisms are an entirely human-based system, but the way it operates appears to be out of our effective control to help humanity overall, despite the fact that humans operate it (e.g. bond markets).

 

[BoldonLad]

Indeed, it's a realistic one in some ways, but IIRC, even out in the wild, animals do (sometimes) demonstrate charity to help those in distress (maybe chimpanzees or gorillas?). But more to the point money and financial mechanisms are an entirely human-based system, but the way it operates appears to be out of our effective control to help humanity overall, despite the fact that humans operate it (e.g. bond markets).

Apparently so, but, I am not clear why the discussion now seems to turn on "charity", I thought we started with the discussion being money, the bond market, the financial system ?

Sadly, I think that warfare demonstrates that in the short term, just about any problem can be solved, if you throw enough resources at is (money is simply a convenient form of barter). The trick is in engineering a stable, sustainable and enduring solution.

Not saying I know how to achieve this state of utopia by the way.

 

[Stevo 666]

Didnt that happen with Greece, in the reasonably recent past?, provoked a Euro crisis as I recall. It has all gone very quiet now.

That one definitely didn't go well - although in the end Greece wasn't large enough to take the single currency down. I suggest we watch what happens in France...

 

[Stevo 666]

I suspect it was more of a floating number hovering around 10 years above his current age.
But we digress...

I did once ask him whether he would succumb to self-loathing once he was old.