I have been saying for years that with decent education, genuine health care and health advice, and perhaps a diet with less meat in it than most people in the USA seem to prefer, world hunger could be reduced and probably even eliminated. But there are countless other gains to be had from taking care of our fellow citizens, too.
The one part of my stance against which I always hear arguments is the cry over who would pay for the endless giveaways that some people think would result if we stopped fighting each other long enough to start caring for people who are suffering from hunger right now.
But here’s the simple truth: whatever we prioritize as a people, we find a way to address effectively.
Japan prioritized employment during a US-led currency war in the 1980s, and even though some companies suffered unbearable setbacks, one of those1 gave their employees a hard deadline of ten years to develop a new economic model with their suddenly-too-expensive technology. They tried a number of concepts until one succeeded, and no one at that company lost their job.
Canada and most of Europe prioritize health care as a human right, and those models, despite what US propaganda would have you believe, tend to result in a completely funded and completely shared structure that literally leaves no one behind. Plus, people don’t lose their homes or go into debt for years to pay for that care, because the system is built to work for everyone, not to isolate care to those with deep pockets, as we have in most of the USA. And that only considers actual health care; the US trails plenty of other “first-world” nations in many more aspects of a strong, healthy society.
Other systems work because people care about the results first, so human ingenuity and compassion combine to find a way. And this is the only way we will tackle national and global problems now. When we start with the results we want to achieve, everything else comes into focus rather quickly. These are heavy challenges to meet, and they demand a new mindset to resolve them, but sustainable, human solutions are all within our reach. We must begin to recognize this and act accordingly, if we are to have any measure of success.
Further reading:
- Journalist T. R. Reid wrote about NKK Steel’s ambitious and successful reinvention to keep everyone employed, in his 1999 book Confucius Lives Next Door (by Vintage Books, a division of Random House)