Feed the hungry or feed political ads?

[Angrboda]

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.

I think you need to consider the human element as well. People are more likely to engage in charitable action that is more accessible and for which they can generate a strong emotional reason for doing. Donating a bag of groceries hits both, whereas donating money toward the purchase of a refrigeration unit doesn't. One might decry the irrationality of preferring the first to the last, but that difference has an effect on behavior. So discouraging immediate, accessible giving in favor of more effective but less immediate solutions might in fact worsen the problem of food insecurity, rather than help it.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I wanted to grow my own food, but no one around here sells bacon seeds.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't even know where doritos live !

(in seriousness, this touches on another comment in thread - if we did everything right, we would all still need alot of help just to survive - that's what doing things right is, for us - that's the kind of animal we are. We'd be getting what we needed.)

---

I think you need to consider the human element as well.

Oh I do, I do.   It's a wildcard - and it keeps me on my toes all day every day in a professional capacity.

People are more likely to engage in charitable action that is more accessible and for which they can generate a strong emotional reason for doing.  Donating a bag of groceries hits both, whereas donating money toward the purchase of a refrigeration unit doesn't.  One might decry the irrationality of preferring the first to the last, but that difference has an effect on behavior.  So discouraging immediate, accessible giving in favor of more effective but less immediate solutions might in fact worsen the problem of food insecurity, rather than help it.

Right, and that's context and framing.

It hits those marks for reasons.  There's a circumstance or context involved that, if we could shift it to these more productive avenues, would hit those marks for the same reasons.  Outreach outreach outreach.  I think that's probably the argument for feeding political ads, too.

As to the other thing, discouraging immediate accessible giving is, in a very important sense, discouraging the problem, again.  We spend enough, we do enough, we have enough...for everyone to have enough.  We're doing the work, we're just not getting the reward.

[tackattack]

I think that was part and parcel of the point of the billionaire. To stop funding, to discourage, political advertising for a problem that is government size. The counterpoint that was brought up was that we should all do what we can an important part of what we can do is to spur the political process with money. But there are subtle tones Under the conversation That the billionaire believes we should stop supporting a broken system and start doing something short term. I just found it ironic that part of the 1%, which I considered part of the problem, would in affect Support defunding himself by the same logic.


Also side note, that is absolutely not what advertising was ever for or how it works @Angrboda

[The Grand Nudger]

I suppose that a person who is a symptom of the problem may feel and have reason to feel that the problem is something else, something unrelated to anything about them.

[Sal]

It’s about what we as a society want to value in our corporations, constructs and individuals.  We have a generation of greedy consumers. Did life imitate corporate structure or vice versa? Is altruism a better goal than empathy, and is it strong enough to overcome greed?

Dude, did ya even read TGN excellent post? Altruism, empathy, actually putting in the work no matter how you spin it, doesn't work in these parameters & conditions. We're seeing something analogous here, which is at least 30 years old, after a banking collapse in the 90'ies due to a housing speculation bubble, which I won't go into, since it's just local shit that went down on some flyshit of a nation in the middle of the North Atlantic.

---

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.

[tangent] I could say something akin in the mental health awareness department.

The way people talk about mental health, pretty much anywhere - although my focus is local - is bloody annoying, to put it mildly. It's so bloody easy to account for a broken leg, even something that isn't so easily visible in people's bodies, like early diabetes ... no one bats an eye to fixing a broken leg or just funding & production for insulin, but oh boy, do that same approach for mental health, doors are slammed in your face. So bloody annoying and, to be frank, frustrating to the point of anger. [/tangent]

[The Grand Nudger]

We want it to be greed because..we think..greed is more solvable. We may be right. We may solve human greed before we solve human hunger.

Producers have become frustrated in a similar way, in my experience. They're doing everything right, by and large. They don't make millions and they didn't get into it for millions, at least not individually. They find themselves in the strange position of needing to sell themselves rather than selling their product (and many of them were never great sales for their own product to begin with). The trick is direct consumer, cutting out the middle man at sysco or procurement @ wherever but those guys have kids to feed too.

[Sal]

I might give some pointers on greed, but you'd probably need to read up on it by a behavioral expert in ownership/accumulation incentives, both culturally and psychologically.

The short of the long story is - and this is only scratching the surface, which a behavioral expert will give good data & explanation for - that people being people think about themselves first, and everyone else second, naturally. Exactly where the human psychology begins and where the culture ends, is probably best explored by an expert, and I ain't one, I'm just a foot soldier, but I do know there's a bunch of overlap between culture and psychology, where the two join.

[BrokenQuill92]

As someone who’s had to use food banks on occasion, firstly how about not giving people rotten food?! That would be a good start, every single food bank I’ve ever been too the food was expired, or rotten. Sawdust mixed in with the rice. Reeking onions. Long lines. And if you don’t have a car there’s basically no way to get to them, so people who need it the disabled and elderly can’t reach it in the first place. And people will treat you like trash for having dignity, for not wanting what they’d throw away.

To everyone who said $1200 wasn’t enough shut up. Because you same people also said I should be quiet because I get social security. $803 monthly. And I should be grateful right? Well...now the rest of you see huh? Oh except you don’t. Probably still got unemployment or work from home. Along with your $1200? Still had a car to get to the store before the Karens hoarded all the toilet paper. Shut up. Seriously...

[The Grand Nudger]

-refrigeration

I've had food banks turn me down, I've thrown whole trucks of fresh food, picked that day, on the ground for cattle.

...and they're not even my cattle.