Eco Train Question of the Week-If 50% of the defence budgets of the 10 biggest nations was given to philanthropic causes, would we see more or less war and violence in the world?
If 50% of the defense budgets of the 10 biggest nations was given to Philanthropic causes, would we see more or less war and violence in the world?
I had to let that question sink in for a bit before tackling it. For one I am well aware that a ridiculous amount of money is spend on weapons globally every year, but the actually amount does not disappoint, it is sickeningly huge. But not surprising at all. I also had to let that sink in, because yes all that money, which by the way is a mere 611 billion by America last year, comes as no surprise.
War is something that we all hear of daily, it has become a normal part of our history. The surprise would be if there was no war! The reality is that people get more upset watching movies than they do about the daily casualties of war. (That figure, I imagine would be massive also )We have become desensitized.
What we are exposed too, as in what we are allowed to see and hear by the media is always very biased, so the reality of what is really happening in any war is always hard to know, unless we know someone who is in that country or we really trust who is actually giving us the information in the first place. I sometimes feel that we are drip feed information as a decoy so that we have no real idea about what all those people in power are up too.
What I do know is that it is very rare that a person in power is harmed during war, it is the civilians that suffer, whose lives are torn apart. To the powers that be, we are the ones that are dispensable.
Wars are started and have always been started over resources, who has them and who wants them. Be it access to water, to fertile land, to metal, precious stones to oil and gas. Armies are strategically placed in countries close to the resource in question or in the country where that resource is. We the public have been told many different reasons or excuses for invading such countries, but the real reason is so the powerful countries can have access to that resource.
War is about holding onto power, it is a show of strength, it is all about remaining dominant over others, being in control, having the must resources.
So would pumping shit loads of money into philanthropic causes result in less war and Violence
That is a very easy No from me. I would love to imagine that it would, but I don't even have a lot of faith in these causes, I'm sure some are genuine and started out with good intentions, but then the money starts rolling in and the suddenly the CEO's are earning big bucks and here we go, money, greed power. How much money put into these causes actually gets used by those in need? Is most of it spend within the cause to pay employees or for promotional reasons, who knows? Look at this newspaper article from Ireland, mind you it is not all bad, as some charities give their bosses no salary.
A NUMBER OF Irish charity bosses are still earning well in excess of €100,000 a year, despite a series of controversies over executive pay in recent years, TheJournal.ie can reveal.
Our survey of some of Ireland’s leading charities shows a significant variety in the levels of CEO pay, with some bosses taking no salary or benefits whatsoever and others earning almost €150,000 a year.
https://www.thejournal.ie/irish-charity-ceo-salaries-spending-best-practice-2659408-Mar2016/
But aside from all that, if the governments from each of the 10 nations did put that money into philanthropic causes, it may convince some people that they actually give a damn about the public, o k again maybe some do,(personally I'm not so sure about that) but this sort of action would be a great publicity stunt, how popular would those politic parties become, they would easily get there money back through the boost they receive from this act of giving.
We will not change anything within the system that now stands, it is old and well oiled. What we need to do is start anew. We the people need to have our power back. Everything from our governments, education systems, health systems, welfare systems need to be taken down and another way needs to be found. This dominance through violence and threats of violence needs to stop, and it is not going to stop by indirectly pumping money back into the system.
Please do check out some of the other answers to this Question by the EcoTrain passengers and visitors to our discord channel, you will find them here #ecotrain
Big Big Thank You To @byn for designing my logo.
Wow! you have given me a lot to think about here! xx
thank you @beautifulbullies
A lot of great questions and thoughts. It is very important for us to build a new system that works peacefully.
Yes it is Niina, that is the only way forward, and we are doing that already just being on here and being part of steemit and this move away from banks is all in the right direction xx
Thats right lovely!! We are the movement!
You explained that well.
thank you @metaradiant
The problem is they don't want to make people's lives better, they want to keep people repressed enough to depend on them. So even if they did stop investing into the military complex I am sure the last thing on their minds would be to help others with that money. I don't trust them to offer up any win/win situations...at least in my lifetime.
I feel the same at @sunlit7 they don't pump so much money into education and the health system for our well being but as you said to keep us dependent.
Wow! What a great, fresh perspective on this question. I am just so amazed by the potential and thought process of the @ecotrain members. I like the concept of a new system being created because yeah, that would be effective in getting rid of the problems we currently face.
thank you Sharoon, really lovely to have you back, I missed your lovely self xx