28
May
2008
10 Comments
It's economically efficient to donate 500 million dollars to Lebanese Hizbollah
According to roozonline.com (Iranian, reformist e-journal), a pro-IRI analyst was recently quoted as saying:
with an oil price of about 120$ per barrel, Iran earns 340 million dollars a day, and 125 billion dollars annually… if we conduct any trouble in Lebanon and if this happens to increase oil prices by 3 dollars per barrel, a sum of about 3 billion dollars will be added to our annual income. Therefore it’s economically efficient to donate 500 million dollars to Lebanese Hizbollah.
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This is a cruel calculation, Mohammad, but it’s probably true.
Some people think that this whole terrorist thing is totally crazy. Actually, I beleive that there is method to this madness. The terrorists know full well what they want, and what they need to do to get there. And they are quite committed to their cause. We have to become at least as committed as they are, and at least as smart, to have a chance of defeating them
You point to a good example. For a relatively small investment of its resources, Iran can continue funding Hizbollah, and the negative reprucussions can send oil prices sky high, which translates into increased oil revenues for Iran.
Now it is possible that Iran has some sort of ideological purpose for what it’s doing, but the additional revenues are like the icing on the cake.
The trouble with this kind of thinking is that you are enhancing your position at the expense of inflicting pain all around the world. Sooner or later, with enough pain, the world will react. People can take just so much, and then they lash out. And believe me, as civilized as the West seems to be at this moment, with enough provocation, they will lash out like crazed animals.
Why not come up with a system where everyone wins? Instead of promoting terror, why not create good paying jobs? Instead of destroying the environment by burning fossil fuels, why not convert oil profits into green profits, by producing green technology products? Instead of trying to secure yourself with a nuclear arsenal, why not secure yourself by promoting the welfare of your people? Instead of talking hate, why not talk common sense?
It’s time to rethink the models we’ve created for oursleves. It’s time to build a better mousetrap instead of getting ourselves caught in one.
OK THIS MADE ME LAUGH.
Jina, you’re a wild and crazy guy.
I know why you’re laughing. You’re laughing because for you, the West is not as “civilized” as it would like to believe. But you ain’t seen nothin yet. Anything which stands in the way of the West making money will get knocked down. That’s the bottom line. The West has a simple organizing principle: “Show me the money.” Did you see that Tom Cruise movie? The West may pretend to be this or that, but deep down we’re all about making money, and we’re not about to let anything get in our way.
The trick in this game is to figure out how people can make a buck by being good. If you could make being good profitable, you’d be well on your way to ushering in an age of peace, prosperity, and freedom. I think it’s possible. What do you think?
Centuries of colonialism, genocides after genocides for profit… ya… rest of the world know… BUT vast majority in the West are now civilized unlike their barbaric predecessors, they won’t allow for such lunacy in the name of profit anymore. I have strong hope in them for bringing about some kind of peace to this world. Of courses there are still monkeys running around slowing their progress, but it will happen eventually as these monkeys are eradicated either by education or extinction.
Nissim:
this may be irrelevant to this post, but I think that part of the current tension in Middle East may be solved by direct dialogue between nations (not the states and statesmen). for example, if Iranians and Israelis speak to each other, if Iranian Muslims and Bahais speak to each other, if etc, a better part of the problem will be solved very soon. People, by their nature, are peace-loving, I hope!
Jina, I hope you’re right. But my guess is that it can go either way. It will be up to us to push it in the right way.
If you were God, and you wanted to bring the possibility of meaning into the world, you would have no choice but to create both good and evil, each defining itself in comparison to the other. You would have both of these forces clashing with one another, with no clear outcome in sight. If good comes out on top, then it will validate the efficacy of your creation, and the possiblity of meaning. If evil comes out on top, then it will render the possibility of meaning null and void.
That’s the struggle we’re in, Jina, and things seem to be coming to a head. History is coming to some sort of ultimate conclusion, either good or bad, and everything we know and love hangs in the balance. I am with you in wanting to believe that people have learned their lessons from history, and that they will opt for what is good. But we should never forget that the forces of good and evil are tightly matched against one another, and that things can easily go either way.
And Mohammad, you say that “People, by their nature, are peace-loving…” I hope you’re right as well, but once again, we may both be proven wrong.
If you were God, and you wanted to make things fair, you would bring good and evil to the world, but you would give people the common sense to sort out the good from the bad, and to opt for the good, for what made more sense.
The gift that God gave us, is the ability to think things out and to make choices that can better our lots in life. If people become peace-loving, as you suggest, it will be because they looked at all the options and chose peace as a better way to go. The theoretical correlation between peace, prosperity, freedom, the environment, and what makes more sense, is the reality that we can come to, if we dare to let go of some of our preconceived ideas and beliefs, and embrace the possibility of transforming this world into the paradise that it was meant to be; a paradise not after death, but right here and right now.
All this talk of the world as a united force seems sounds like the Euramerican myth of the “international community”. “The world”…”people”… suddenly transform into “the West”, which does not seem very civilized at the moment.
Although it is possible that the West, like Iran, “has some sort of ideological purpose for what it’s doing”, I agree that:
Then again, as with Iran:
Tasnim, you make some interesting points. First of all, you rightly question whether you can think of the West as one entity.
I would agree with you that the West contains many disparate parts. However, there is a consensus emerging which gives the West a certain measure of cohesion. This is a relatively recent development when compared to our history as a species. But I think that it is fair to say that since the Industrial Revolusion, some 200 years ago, the countries which comprise the “West” have been coming together technologically and economically, and that these forces contribute greatly to the ideological cohesiveness of the West.
In recent years, countries like China, India, and Russia, and a great many others, have bought into the notion that profits are everything, and are restructuring their various institutions to accomodate the needs of a global economy. You will also notice, perhaps, that the level of ideological rhetoric has gone down significantly as people started making money together. So, for example, China was an ideological nightmare for the West before, but now you don’t hear too much ideology. India was the leader of the third world before, but now they’re too busy making money to bother much with excessive ideology.
I agree with you that if global economic forces are left unchecked, then it will result in “enhancing your position at the expense of inflicting pain all around the world.” However, my guess is that for a global economy to really work, you’re going to have to figure out how to make it work for everyone on earth. You’re not going to be able to think just about yourself. You’re going to have to take the other guy into account; to give him a place at the table, a stake in his future.
Let’s take the environment, for example. Guess how many airports are being built in China as we speak? If my information is right, some 200 airports. And you can imagine how many cars are being put on the road, and how many industrial plants, etc. Well, if you want any kind of environmental protection, you’re going to have to come up with global technology that can work, and to mandate its use around the world. To do that, you will have to get people to cooperate, which means taking their needs into account.
Take extreme poverty and disease, for example. You could be making all sorts of money, but if you’re surrounded by the poor, how easy will it be for you to sleep at night knowing that billions of people are plotting your demise? No, that arrangement will not stand. Instead, it will become in your interest to invest in the poor, and to give them a fighting chance at improving their lot in life, so that you can really continue to live the comfortable life you set up for yourself. Plus, you will need the poor to buy your goods and services, so opening up new markets works well for both sides of the equation.
In short, what I am suggesting, is that a new organizing pricniple may be in the works, by which you still want to make money, but you realize that you have to invest in me to do it. Your self interest, and my self interest will fuse together and become our mutual self interest. We will help each other out not becuase of our innate sense of goodness, but because it will be our only way to make a buck, and to protect the planet we all share. This is the progression that could point to the perfection of man, if we don’t let false belief get in the way.
Nissim:
I think that linking ‘Ethics’ to ‘Being Profitable’ is a grave mistake which undermines Ethics as a set of objective, universal values, in which case one resorts to Ethics as long as it happens to be profitable and gives up on Ethics when it happens to be less profitable.
accordingly, throwing much of the wheat product into the sea in order to stabilize the market, while too many people all around the world are striving to death, is a clear sign of the defectiveness of the ethics
to which Capitalist West claims to subscribe.
Now, thanks to your vivid explanation, I much better understand what the term “Human Rights Industry” means.
Mohammad, I think it was the ancient Greeks who first introduced the concept of categorizing different disciplines of study. Biology would be studied differently from chemistry, and ethics should be a whole different specialization altogether.
But Mohammad, the world is becoming smaller, and all sorts of things that were previously considered unrelated, are now coming together. Who would have thought several decades ago that burning fossil feuls could cause the water table to rise 20 feet?
I don’t think that ethics and profits should be separated. In fact, I think they are inextricably linked. And in fact, as your wheat example suggests, when we divorce ethics from profitability, by throwing away the food that people desperately need, we compromise the integrity of both our ethics, and our ability, in the long run, to sustain our profitability. Hungry people are not good for business.
Whatever system of ethics you choose to endorse, should contain a built-in mechanism to keep it vital, and to keep it relevant. I humbly suggest for your consideration, Mohammad, that the motivation for profitability could be used as the ultimate power source for a system of ethics, because it is something that people want, and something that is not easy to forget in a global economy.
If the world, as evidence suggests, is coming together economically, and technologically, in an effort to sustain profits, then it may make a lot of sense to come together ideologically, and ethically, as well, so as to create a symbiotic relationship between the global economy, and an ideological approach to ethics. The two will support one another, and will give a measure of credibility to one another.
A global economy which invests in the poor is an ethical construct, and one which is likely to increase profits, at a time when there is strong worldwide competition for new markets. Such a system, once in place, will be strong with regard to both sustainable profitability, and an ethical approach to the poor. The two go together as two sides of the same coin.
I’m probably not stating it in the best way, but I see a convergence between sustainable profits and ethics as the best and most practical pathway to peace, prosperity, freedom, and environmental protection. Thes various concepts belong together and must somehow be merged together ideologically, for us to have a future that is worthy of the best we have to offer.