Feed the hungry or feed political ads?

[The Grand Nudger]

Grocery bag drives are part of the problem, not part of the solution. The explanation is long and convoluted and paints the endeavor in a harsher light than might be warranted.

That doesn't take away from the value of your participation - I only mention it to suggest how ubiquitously our better nature is subverted or stymied on this issue.

[arewethereyet]

Grocery bag drives are part of the problem, not part of the solution.  The explanation is long and convoluted and paints the endeavor in a harsher light than might be warranted.  

That doesn't take away from the value of your participation - I only mention it to suggest how ubiquitously our better nature is subverted or stymied on this issue.

There was a time when the charity of others is what enabled my oldest and me to survive.  I just try to return the generosity we benefitted from.  To me, it's personal.

[The Grand Nudger]

 An informed electorate is important, if for no other reason than that the hungry are less likely to be fed by leaders who are responding to less rational impulses of the electorate.

I'd check that assumption.  It might be an irrational act to tackle this problem to our moral or practical satisfaction.  I'll note that the people chiefly involved at present are more true believer than rational observer.  

Let's take it ground level again - why do the producers starve and impoverish themselves and their neighbors?  Briefly, because it's the rational decision.  They don't have a good option, they have nothing but bad options...rationally speaking.

(as far as the above, I get it - The Wife and I do all the same stuff for equally personal reasons, even stuff we know doesn't work or exacerbates the larger issue even as it provides temporary relief. It's like handing out aspirin when teeth need to be pulled - but if we aren't going to pull the teeth we could at least keep handing out the aspirin. A bunch of impoverished people distributing their limited supply of aspirin -is- what we're doing, and why that doesn't work and can't work should out to jump out at us, but it generally doesn't. I'm using "us" in the widest possible sense - not personal.)

[Foxaèr]

There was a time when the charity of others is what enabled my oldest and me to survive.  I just try to return the generosity we benefitted from.  To me, it's personal.

If things were done right in the world, no one would need help merely to survive.

[arewethereyet]

There was a time when the charity of others is what enabled my oldest and me to survive.  I just try to return the generosity we benefitted from.  To me, it's personal.

If things were done right in the world, no one would need help merely to survive.

I agree.  But I know there are people out there who need things right now and if I have the ability to give toward that, I will.

[The Grand Nudger]

If people want some ideas as to the best place to spend our money or effort to solve hunger - then that would be dollars spent toward sustainable agriculture on a wide scale..or pitching in to build refrigeration at a food bank, on a local scale.

Don't buy them grocery bags, buy them a coolbot. They already turn away or throw away the kinds of things we actually want to distribute - things that aren't designed to move product a store is contractually or institutionally obligated to buy and which would otherwise not move. Things which have caused an epidemic of malnourishment in this country - which is starvation by another name under even more perverse circumstances.

[arewethereyet]

If people want some ideas as to the best place to spend our money or effort to solve hunger - then that would be dollars spent toward sustainable agriculture on a wide scale..or pitching in to build refrigeration at a food bank, on a local scale.

Don buy them grocery bags, buy them a coolbot.

That would be great if I had the money to do it.  But I don't.  However I can provide a jar of peanut butter, some pasta, a couple cans of tuna...etc. for immediate need.  I have been in the position of needing that.  I have also been in the position of having to get out of a situation with the clothes on my back.  I am not solving hunger...I don't have the delusion that I am.  But I know how it feels to know that there is food to last a few days for my child and myself.  Sometimes people need an immediate hand to move on from a bad situation.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think that this realistic understanding of what we are and aren't doing is required to solve that larger problem of persistent hunger. Obviously handing someone a jar of peanut butter solves an immediate and immediately temporal need. That's the good of it.

I'd even say that an immediate hand is what's needed to lift people out of hunger, the situations are comparable in that regard, even though the required articles aren't.

As far as affording it - here again we should work together. Food banks are usually familiar with their regular donors. You could all pool together, in coordination with your food bank (if it has space and maybe even matching funds, obvs they know what they could and couldn't do, what they're willing to take on and what they aren't or can't). It's a very, very, very helpful way to spend whatever dollars - and the beauty of it is that since it's worth more dollars than a similar value of donated items - it's the best use of dollars particularly if you have few of them.

[arewethereyet]

I understand what you are saying and perhaps my approach is more emotional because I have been there.

As it stands, I will not fault anyone for how they choose to help. The need is there and while the bigger issues are tackled I choose to help in the right now. Right, wrong, or indifferent...that's how I try to do my part.

[The Grand Nudger]

Totally not where I'm at. I'm suggesting a way to make the most out of our dollars toward a particular goal. It's universally true that food banks capacity to hold and deliver is limited by just that one thing all over the world. Lack of adequate refrigeration. This means that they already have more product, but they can't distribute it. It means that they can only distribute a specific range -of- products. It's a thing to consider if you spend any money and know other people who do or can find a food bank that would be interested. That's all.

I think that a deeply emotional attachment to the issue, produced from experience like yours, might be a requirement to solving the larger issue of hunger. There's going to come some point or moment where any dollar spent towards preventing people from starving one way ends up starving someone else another. This isn't some hypothetical system where a rational consistency towards a singular end can be maintained or discovered. It;s the real world where we can be constrained to exclusively bad options and inherently contradictory policies. Spending the dollars will not make sense, at some point, and that point will come before we eradicate hunger. We'll just be shuffling around those final margins.

People who have ever felt hunger or who can feel for people who feel hunger are needed to get the thing rolling, and at some point, they'll be needed again to push it over the line.