Prioritizing World Problems

Ranking the Rank: F- it, let's solve them all

Actually, as Bjorn Lomborg said, it may be more productive to rank solutions than problems, according to a bang for the buck type of calculus. I think we should seek perfection. Why not. We can solve all the problems, on multiple fronts, simultaneously, in my opinion. Everything's interrelated, anyway. We should start by solving the problems that will help us solve other problems, to create a snowball effect. We need to get serious, and mobilize. We shouldn't depend on governments for the answer, although they can certainly be a (big) part. There's really only one solution:

Simplicity, as Hannibal said. Or, to quote Jennifer Hathaway on ted.com,
"I worked in high-end interior construction as a crew chief for a decade, and while some discussion went into every project, too much discussion and waffling would only bog projects down. The key to making progress is to put our heads together with the homeowner, discuss the desired result, present our best two or three solutions, accept the final decision, and then follow through with the work- at which point the homeowner more or less got out of the way until we were "finished" enough to get feedback on any changes/further issues they might want. [all of our business came from word-of-mouth references by satisfied clients, btw]. If any of my workers were too prone to talking and not doing, [s]he would not long have a job.What I see happening far too much in the world of "helping" is the tendency to overthink. I think it's silly to waste too much time on that. Elegant simplicity is not only key in engineering but in problem solving in general. I believe another name for that is "common sense".

So just do it.
God, the slave driver. Get to work!
Be a man. Be a man for others.

All about slow sand filters:
http://www.nesc.wvu.edu/ndwc/pdf/OT/TB/TB14_slowsand.pdf

That doesn't mean there isn't a place for thoughtful reflection on how to best deal with the issues facing us; i.e. how to best structure a response. World government? No governments? Less governments (larger blocks)? More governments? I choose all of the above. To explain:

Law
Governments create and enforce law. I have said earlier I think everyone should live under a system of laws they approve of, making their own laws, of which the jurisdictions could be a single household to the entire world, with the laws posted outside their homes, at borders, or on computer, appearing by gps. Rules and morals should be thought about, agreed upon, and self-made, not imposed by any authority, unless you accept that authority (such as Shariah law, for example). So this could range from utterly zillions of little rules upon pain of death, to do what thou wilt/aka anarky, with no punishments allowed. I imagine some rules could be universally agreed upon. Maybe not, though. Anarchy, upon pain of death? lol.

"There are sufficient resources existing to alleviate core global problems, they just need to be made available. We could mobilise them without having to reduce the living standards in the economically rich parts of the world." -Carlston Voelz

What are the core global problems, and how much will solving them cost?

Some think it's too late to try and solve all the world's problems, so we should all just give up. Jose Tavares says it's a question of (limited) money, (limited) resources, (limited) will and (limited) sustainability, and (limited) time (In fact, 'we're' way too late! he says), and that living standards would in fact worsen in the developed world as money was invested elsewhere.

Rubbish. Just like the myth of sisyphus, there's merit in the trying, even if the boulder just rolls down the hill again. I don't think it will, though. Or it won't roll all the way down. The planet can be that city upon a hill. So if we all acted and got our ostrich heads out of the sand, tv, computer, whatever, we might even bequeath a better future to our children than we got from our parents, rather than worse. I'm a stubbornly dogged idealist on human potential.

What are the core problems? Population and migration, conflict and war and terrorism, global warming aka climate change, malnutrition and hunger and starvation and famine, clean water and sanitation, economic instability, Communicable diseases (eg. HIV/AIDS, Malaria, TB), education, governance and corruption, subsidies and trade barriers. I would also say tobacco and obesity and unhealthy lifestyles. That's 11. There's plenty more.

a list of communicable diseases:
http://www.health.state.ny.us/diseases/communicable/

Bjorn's book, Solutions for the world's biggest problems, lists and ranks, by cost-effective solubility, 23 problems. They are (unranked):

Part I. Economy
2. Financial instability Peter Blair Henry3. Lack of intellectual property rights Keith E. Maskus4. Money laundering Donato Masciandaro5. Subsidies and trade barriers Kym Anderson

Part II. Environment
6. Air pollution Guy Hutton7. Climate change Gary Yohe8. Deforestation Henk Folmer and G. Cornelis van Kooten9. Land degradation Ian Coxhead and Ragnar Oygard10. Loss of biodiversity Dan Biller11. Vulnerability to natural disasters Roger A. Pielke

Part III. Governance
12. Arms proliferation Paul Dunne13. Conflicts Paul Collier14. Corruption Susan Rose-Ackerman15. Lack of education Peter Orazem16. Terrorism Daniel Linotte

Part IV. Health and Population
17. Drugs Jefrey A. Miron18. Diseases Dean Jamison19. Lack of people of working age Robert E. Wright and Katerina Lisenkova20. Living conditions of children Harry Anthony Patrinos21. Living conditions of women Brinda Viswanathan22. Malnutrition/hunger Jere R. Behrman, Harold Alderman and John Hoddinott23. Unsafe water and lack of sanitation Guy Hutton24. Population: migration Michael J. Greenwood

I haven't read the book. I'd like to. I'd like to tally the cost of all 23 problems, and basically get to work on what rednecks are said to say, namely..."git r' done." That's my philosophy. I wonder how wholistically the different problems are treated. It looks a bit compartmentalized.

Click here to buy Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems by Bjorn.

"over"population
I would like to say that it is a fallacy that increased living standards for the poor will necessarily lead to higher populations. A China-like family policy could be globally implemented. Also, it has been shown that wealthier families have less children, as in the developed world. Professional women have less children. Number of children correlates inversely with literacy, I believe. I think there's a middle ground, income-wise, in which statistically families grow, before they reduce. This can be regulated. It's probably cultural, and not just an absolute function of wealth. From an evolutionary standpoint, people want to maximize their genes in the next generation. They can do this through less children, paradoxically, if they invest more resources in each, to ensure their survival and success, of course. But religious statements like in the OT about Abraham having "a nation" greater than the number of stars or sand or whatever appeals to many men, when really we just want a happy life with whatever number of happy children. We're not baby machines, we want to enjoy life. And raising kids is largely seen as unpleasant, with the satisfaction coming later in life. People replace babies with cars/comforts. So cultural conditioning and evolutionary calculus and law all play a part.

How big a problem is overpopulation? What level becomes "over"? Malthusian economics says war, starvation, and disease will automatically winnow down populations that exceed carrying capacity. So we should pre-emptively avoid all that suffering by implementing policies that keep population pressures from boiling over into misery, or future misery, because of unsustainability. Some say we have billions of people too many already. We may be able to support a much bigger population than we think we can, though, and overpopulation might not be as big a problem as so many make it out to be. My professor (Tuma) at UC Davis thought as much. I trust his judgement. Estimates of the earth's human carrying-capacity range from 2B to 40B, which is quite a range.

Dr. McConeghy says that a single human being only needs, per year:
1)about 400 kilograms (liters) of water that is not very dirty or salty
2)about 300 kilograms of food, mostly grain such as rice, or bread
3)a shelter that maintains a temperature above freezing in winter

If every human being only consumed this, the earth could support 40B humans, he says. Although perhaps this means the earth would basically be transformed into a human "feedlot."
Of course, there are many many solutions to solving dietary requirements cheaply. Collect them all!

For Dr. McConeghy's overview of the topic of carrying capacity, go to:
http://mmcconeghy.com/students/supcarryingcapacity.html

Family Planning
There are an estimated 350 million women in the poorest countries of the world who either did not want their last child, do not want another child or want to space their pregnancies, but they lack access to information, affordable means and services to determine the size and spacing of their families. In the developing world, some 514,000 women die of complications from pregnancy and abortion on a yearly basis. One suggested solution is for population growth to be slowed quickly by investing heavily in female literacy and family planning services

Just get the money and make a difference. You'll feel good. I guarantee it.

"Marginal"
How much should we spend per problem? We should employ professional economists to figure out marginal costs and marginal effectiveness. Everyone in AIDS prevention knows that the first billion you invest in AIDS prevention is about a hundred times more effective than the 50th billion. As some point the same "purchases" not only cease to produce the same benefits, but they can actually do harm. So, I would say we should spend up to that point, if we can intelligently determine it (i.e. if it isn't just some theoretical construct).

MS: Misery and Suffering
We should rank problems by human suffering. Attack the problems of most misery first. This needs to include a long-term perspective. We can't put the world on crack, for example. Neuralgia is a debilitating disease of continual suffering. Some schizophrenics suffer tortuous mental anguish. People in physical and psychological pain should have access to the treatment they deserve. No one deserves to suffer, even torturers. It's got to stop.

War
The threat of war should never loom over people. Safety is a basic human right. All militaries should be disbanded. War is totally yesterday. All nukes worldwide should be dismantled. Nuclear components and technology should still be monitored, of course. The unthinkable should truly be unthinkable; i.e. impossible. The UN should be fully funded, so Peace Keeping forces can be fully deployed rapidly wherever they may be needed. All assault weapons or automatic weaponry across the world should be destroyed. As I have said, although scary, I think the world would be safer if everyone were armed with handguns. Basically, this is because I read a convincing study. But you could live in a gun-free space, if you chose. I'm sure that would be a popular law.

China has an ancient culture, and we should adopt the many martial artist's view of combat as between individuals, who learn philosophies of peace, and respect each other's lethality from having been trained and mentally disciplined in martial arts (the motions can be elegant and beatiful). In other words, if fight we must, then personal, not military, the conflict should be. This would be like between two boxers, who agree in advance to the risk, and often respect each other more afterward.

Global Warming
Obviously, as you may have guessed, I don't believe we should spend all our money and consume all our resources for ourselves, without thinking of our children, and future generations. So if we agree that the future world will be hellishly hot, then remedying global warming/ghg/carbon emissions becomes a priority. If, on the other hand, it's an average increase of just a few degrees, with people merely picking up their things and moving from flooded cities, that's not as much misery, I would think. Rising seas will happen gradually, and people can move their things, perhaps even buildings. Relocation is a matter of logistics, not misery. Building new infrastructure might even be a good thing. These are just thoughts. I'm no expert. Someone said that the Polar Bear population is actually increasing. So maybe even Gore isn't reliable. We need serious people, who know what they're talking about, know the facts (i.e. check the facts), and are committed to the truth, so trust will be more prevalent and maximally informed decision-makers can make the right choices. Of course, people only truly know what they perceive, if that. Just as oil is moved today, perhaps we could move fresh water in the future, from Antarctica or Lake Baikal or what have you. We could probably collect freshwater in the form of rainfall, with every household having storage receptacles on their rooves, when the rain does come (if less frequently). But we would have to prevent acid rain and the like. We have to clean up our pollution, so neurotoxins and carcinogens don't kill us, from above or below, rain or groundwater. I think I read somewhere that drinking water may be responsible for the phenomenal rise in autism. CSR (corporate social responsibility) must happen, upon pain of... Well, I don't know. Whatever works. Clean water transportation is a matter of logistics that a richer world could probably afford (?), especially if we continue developing and deploying clean, renewable energy sources. We wouldn't lose all that money to unsavory oil producers, and..There's a market for green energy. Green makes green. Would the value of an expanded clean-energy sector offset the cost of the increased need to transport clean water? The size of the world's pie is projected to increase greatly (per capita, as well) in the future. No one should be left behind. No child left behind, no adult left behind, no one. The rising tide shouldn't drown anyone, but rather lift all boats.

global warming is said to threaten future conflict
If we want to bequeath a peaceful and safe society to the future humanity/world, we need to create a functioning system in which the root causes of war are addressed.

War
Peace is more than not-war

On war and peace, peace is ideally not just the absence of war, but the presence of contentment or joy. War is hell, but not being in hell doesn't necessarily mean you're in heaven. You could be in limbo or purgatory. So peace should means contentment or happiness, and we say dead people are at peace, in line with the Buddhist understanding that only death brings the extinction of suffering. Or is it Nirvana? It's only a temporary state, I believe, for the living, I believe, for them. Then again, life is a temporary state. Perhaps the best life possible is perpetually nirvanic. In any case, although war can be enjoyable for some soldiers, it carries the risk of immense suffering, pain and trauma, and of course death, in addition to being so destructive to the lives of civilians, who basically want to be left alone. So we must prevent war. Willing combatants should go play paintball or something. There's an article in the Economist about healthy boxing in Iraq between Shias and Sunnis.

The causes of war are: (historically: taxation without representation (independence), economics, racism (slavery and the civil war), antisemitism and liebensraum (Germany's offense under Hitler), abcdefghijklmn.. Water rights could be a basis for future conflicts.

Food
Obviously, hunger and malnutrition is priority number one, or part of the bundle that should be immediately and permanently addressed. Malnourished children can't solve problems as well in the future, so there are ripple effects for a long time. Doesn't basic human decency dictate that we shouldn't let people starve or be hungry or not have nutritional diets? What kind of people are we? Famine usually has sociological origins, not "natural" ones. Although, you could say leaders are often "naturally" cruel or or uncaring or misinformed or uninformed or uncurious or even stupid.

"sociopathic corporations"
We're institutionally sociopathic, and structurally selfish, and thus cruel. But individually, I think, we're better than that. Many believe it's every man for himself, and live and let die, and nothing really matters, and life's a bitch/unfair, and he who dies with the most toys wins, and we're rebels and haters like Kurt Cobain on the Nevermind cover flipping off the world that torments us, and we're all slaves and unfree and prisoners, and no one gives a damn. Well, they're wrong. Virtually everyone wants a better world, and just feels frustrated at an inability to make change, personally or systemically. There are many kind institutions, not least of which are religions. Kindness is my religion, and should be yours, too. I'm guessing it already is. That's the last word. I command thee.

Witnessing Jehovah
JW's, for instance, in their frustration, put their hope in Jehovah God creating an Armageddon as a "war to end all wars" that will "bring to ruin those ruining the earth." This month's tract declares that "Realistically, we cannot divorce corruption and wickedness from the people practicing them. Thus, lasting peace and justice come at the price of removal of the wicked ones". It also states, "He, Jehovah, finds no delight in destroying the wicked; he only does so as a last resort" (Ez 18:32, Peter 3:9). Basically, you could say they want me or someone like me to start killing those I deem as sinners. That's how I interpret it, as I don't see people just disappearing like in that popular Christian book series. This prime mover would kill, and the ripple effect would spread outward as others start to enact their final solutions, if that is indeed how the spirit moves. They (the JW's, and well, so many others) hunger for righteousness. They need some vengeance. They need someone to step up and be lord (vengeance is mine, sayeth the lord). Well, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to be the Sauron Jesus of Revelation 19:19, even if Sauron, in this context, is good/god. I believe in the essential goodness of humanity, even the most "evil", and why would God disobey his own commandment of 'Thou Shalt not Kill'. So people won't fight back? So he can enact justice, as the arbiter of justice, without being judged himself in turn? I would guess Jesus let himself be killed under the weight of having killed, himself. The bible can be a scary book. The JW's can be scary people. They're the ultimate in "cruel to be kind." If you want to be good, as you would assume anyone reading the bible intends, you have to become God, as "only God is good". Basically, killing doesn't have to be cruel, they're saying. It can serve goodness, righteousness, God, humanity. From God's perspective, you can love someone by killing them, because they can't change their evil ways, despite having good intentions, or having goodness in them, or good ideals (but they're still essentially evil). In other words, if they knew what they were doing, they would want you to kill them. Jesus said "forgive them, for they know not what they do." We all want our sins to be forgiven, yet the bible says "the wages of sin is death." So, one could conclude that you'll be forgiven when you're dead. I'm not into that. Catholic priests forgive you now, and you can start fresh after the sacrament of reconciliation. As I don't really believe in God, I would say you should basically see where you might have gone wrong in your life, and maybe tell someone you love, 'fess up as it were, come clean, and move on, if you feel the need. You shouldn't carry a burden of guilt, of undisclosed and unforgiven "sin". Well, maybe there's a telepath out there who knows what you've done. Sin is breaking God's law, not the state's (although you might think they're the same, or, in any case, overlap). My law, if you're wondering, is be kind and rewind (make the world a better place), lol. Just as you may want your own sins to be forgiven, you should also want crimes to be pardoned, criminals to be acquitted, the guilty to be innocent, and the incarcerated to be free. Lawyers are gods, too. Judge not lest ye be judged. Otherwise, you're just basically declaring a death sentence on yourself, if you follow the bible.

You might think that the more sinful one is, the sooner his/her death will come. We should all know that isn't true. Nor should it be, in my opinion. We don't need religious nuts finding reasons to kill people.

Marxism and Humanism
Marx had a point when he believed the poor would rise up- but they can't swim across the oceans. Anger is a reasonable response. But the effective and humane response is to shun violence in favor of the more preferable creation of a massive public change toward decency and human respect and sympathy and kindness, by appealing to humankind's more noble nature, that through government (taxes) or charity or organizational work (like Peace Corps, Dr's without borders, x, y, or z) or individual relationships, makes a difference. This is generally done by preachers and priests and ministers in churches, but I think should be taught by parents, teachers, and anyone else, as a foundation of humanism, in which a pie in the sky God is replaced by a respect for basic human decency, kindness, and compassion. Perhaps spending Sundays during youth at church is a good way to instill this value system, if only to have the dogma shed later. It just seems a tad nuts. I think the Catechism of the Catholic Church, for example, is completely bonkers, to tell the truth. I could address every single point in it, but I think I have better things to do, and why make enemies.

Religious extremism
The tragedy on 9-11 is an expression of the frustration in the developing world. True, it was primarily religious, but I would say it was also economic. I would be mad too, if I lived in Afghanistan earning an average of x and Americans, earning an average of y, had a pair of buildings in (the richest city in the world?) that they had the gall to name the "World Trade Center," with trade barriers... Obviously, there is no actual center of world trade. The name is somewhat offensive. That's no reason to kill anyone, of course, but I can see why they chose it as a target. Plus, money is the epicenter of American life, as opposed to Allah in the Muslim world. We may be a Christian country, believing in a God who said "it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God than to go through the eye of a needle," but we (are the richest nation on earth?) who only gives x to aid the 3W and doesn't fully fund the UN, which provides peacekeeping forces to places like Darfur.

Disease
Malaria and AIDS and TB, for example, can all be significantly reduced, through education and nets and...whatever for whatever amount of money...tbc.

Keeping an open mind
Marxism, Islamic (for example) extremism, humanism, the JW's...they all have something important to say. I say don't exclude any perspectives from your world view, but integrate them all. To carry this line of thinking further, all religions have similar goals, if not principles. So INTEGRATE everything. Academically, different fields of study all interrelate, so integrate those too. Try not to compartmentalize and exclude. All isms and all fields and everything else are all bundled up in this thing we call "reality." Expand your mind, and exclude nothing and no one. Love believes everything, the bible says. When two statements "collide," ascertain the truth.