Not to disrespect the passing of a spoiled upper class American pop-metal singer responsible for robbing the fucking pants off every kid who’s never heard Paul Gilbert, but I figured if Dio deserves a thread for dying, I may as well pay tribute to some of the people who lived and died in humble obscurity as a result of his belief that hoarding millions of dollars to fuel his half-assed musical endeavors and materialistic lifestyle is more important than paying attention to the rest of the world’s suffering.
So, here’s to the most not-disturbing-to-look-at starving kid in rags I could find a picture of on google, who, in feeding the nearby wildlife with his almost-meatless corpse, contributed more to the world than Dio could in a hundred lifetimes.
R.I.P. kid who was stalked by vultures for days before being devoured. We hardly knew you.
Hades, living in an industrialised society you are far richer than the majority of the world’s population. At least 80% lives on less than $10 a day, $300 a month, so you have hardly a leg to stand on. I’m sure you’re spending your spare time volunteering in soup kitchens and only post nonsensical music jabs through an open wi-fi to send the $20/month an internet connection would cost to Unicef. Love.
Because that kid was malnourished, won’t his corpse actually feed less of the local wildlife than Dio’s will? Sure, Dio’s will be underground, but his feeding the beetles and the worms and the microbes will do quite a bit at the base of the food chain. Also, I am sure Dio was meatier and will therefore provide even more food than that kid will.
Hey, everyone, look! Hades took some time out of his busy schedule of getting wasted on wine, writing abstract underground subversive electronic music with his guitar and a laptop, googling anarchy and overall living with roommates with an annual income of <$20,000 to give us another one of his grand morality lessons.
Famine in Africa is pretty much just a direct result of over-production and over-subsidizing of farmers in the developed world. Farmers in the West sell their crops out into the world market at a huge loss, but the gov’t steps in and foots the bill and then some, allowing farmers to profit hugely from producing way more than is necessary. We all know that when you produce too much of something, supply runs rampant which drops prices. Farmers in poor countries producing the same goods thus get less money for the crops they sell (it’s a world market, so overproduction in the US will drop prices in Africa), and because their gov’ts are poor they can not afford to subsidize their farmers like we do. Thus, when prices drop too far, agricultural production collapses because farmers are forced to operate at a loss, thus leading to pictures like the one you see here.
Why is this important? Well, if you really were an “anarchist”, you wouldn’t be misdirecting your rage toward some pop culture icon who got rich by producing shitty music. There is nothing “anti-anarchist” about getting rich, esp. when it was through hard work and decades of dedication that it took a guy like Dio. Anarchy isn’t about turning everyone into Jehova’s Witness clones that never dance or sing or leave their house. You should be directing your rage towards actual anarchist (or libertarian or whatever they’re all basically the same thing) goals like destroying government sponsored systems of patronage like agricultural subsidies that take billions and billions of people’s tax dollars every year and give them to rich corporatist farmers that distort world markets and cost millions of lives each year. Just a thought.
If Africa were part of the Western market, Africans could buy Western crops at our unnaturally low, subsidized prices. If Africa were not part of the Western market, African farmers could sell food at prices unaffected by Western supply. You can’t have it both ways, where Western crops undercut African prices, but Africans can’t buy the Western crops at cheap prices. In other words, if Africa struggles to export food to countries with subsidies, that just means Africa can import food more cheaply.
Western policies don’t cause African starvation. The incompetence and corruption of African governments cause African starvation.
Hey, everyone, look! Hades took some time out of his busy schedule of getting wasted on wine, writing abstract underground subversive electronic music with his guitar and a laptop, googling anarchy and overall living with roommates with an annual income of <$20,000 to give us another one of his grand morality lessons.
Thank you.
Gila’s butthurt cause I’m right about Dio, but I’ll forgive him, because at least he’s honest enough to express his butthurtedness instead of pretending my words might not have a shred of truth to them by simply ignoring me.
Why is this important? Well, if you really were an “anarchist”, you wouldn’t be misdirecting your rage toward some pop culture icon who got rich by producing shitty music. There is nothing “anti-anarchist” about getting rich, esp. when it was through hard work and decades of dedication that it took a guy like Dio. Anarchy isn’t about turning everyone into Jehova’s Witness clones that never dance or sing or leave their house. You should be directing your rage towards actual anarchist (or libertarian or whatever they’re all basically the same thing) goals like destroying government sponsored systems of patronage like agricultural subsidies that take billions and billions of people’s tax dollars every year and give them to rich corporatist farmers that distort world markets and cost millions of lives each year. Just a thought.
Regardless of the process, his wealth was squandered on trivial things when it could’ve been put to better use. I’m not a big fan of accepting apathy or ignorance as excuses. Your explanation is oversimplified anyway, you can’t explain world famine with a two-dimensional view of supply and demand economics.
Besides, just because I’m an anarchist sympathizer doesn’t mean every one of my posts is about anarchy. This is more just about the fact that if I’m gonna weep for the loss of someone as unremarkable as Dio, I’m obligated to mourn for everyone else who dies every day as well, and if I did that I’d be incurably miserable till the end of my days. We’ve already had a few RIP threads this year and I haven’t complained about any of those (I think), but can we at least be a little bit selective about who we’re gonna pretend to be sad for? I mean goddamn, if I ever came here with a real problem for some insane reason, and was offered solace about something, how could I take it seriously? You guys made a RIP Dio thread.
P.S. Your opinion doesn’t matter to me. I’m CLEARLY post-zeppelinist. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?
Actually this is more about the fact that instead of actually mourning some poor kid, you just used his death to prove a point about Dio. So, really, you’re as focussed on the rich white dude as everyone else.
Let’s have a moratorium on R.I.P. posts then until a musician of truly great stature like a guy from In Flames or Dream Theater dies instead of an unremarkable guy who fronted Rainbow and Sabbath. If Hades didn’t consider Dio beneath him, this thread wouldn’t probably even exist.
Xwing, did you happen to read during the past couple of years how raising crops for biofuel led to a rise of food prices and EU was pressed to abandon (many of) its biofuel goals?
Of course I’m focused on him. It’d be pretty hard to dis him if I didn’t mention him, wouldn’t it?
And BTW, I actually do, in fact, know better than you what my posts are about. Just sayin’, you’re pretty clueless and arrogant. But no, it’s cool, the stuff you read in psych textbooks is all legit, I’m sure.
Let’s have a moratorium on R.I.P. posts then until a musician of truly great stature like a guy from In Flames or Dream Theater dies instead of an unremarkable guy who fronted Rainbow and Sabbath. If Hades didn’t consider Dio beneath him, this thread wouldn’t probably even exist.
Pretty much. Why would it exist if Dio was good? You’re a pro at stating the obvious. Sometimes the obvious solution is the best one though, That moratorium would be fucking fantastic.
Being butthurt requires you caring about what happened or taking iit personally. I was merely poking fun at your typical response to the Dio thread. I didn’t lose any sleep over Dio dying, but I did listen to some of his music (which I would have done without him dying regardless).
And obviously world hunger is more important than being a rock star. Your thread is stating the obvious and is antagonizing something as mundane/harmless as simple issue of respect to a fallen music icon. Obviously the world isn’t a worse place now because he died, but your thread seems to indicate that the few of us who listen to heavy metal music on this forum do feel that way. I know there’s others out there, but I wouldn’t say the few of us here are that gullible.
You know what I’m really worried about? That small young sparrow I saw on the way to school today. It looked like a fledgling that fell out of its nest, but I shouldn’t worry because it’s probably learning how to fly. That’s the sort of stuff I really care about. Who cares about famous nobodies that passed away. They did their job at providing some good music (subjective WOOO subjective) and that’s about it.
Who will love a little Sparrow?
Who’s traveled far and cries for rest?
“Not I,” said the Oak Tree,
“I won’t share my branches with
no sparrow’s nest,
And my blanket of leaves won’t warm
her cold breast.”
Who will love a little Sparrow
And who will speak a kindly word?
“Not I,” said the Swan,
“The entire idea is utterly absurd,
I’d be laughed at and scorned if the
other Swans heard.”
Who will take pity in his heart,
And who will feed a starving sparrow?
“Not I,” said the Golden Wheat,
“I would if I could but I cannot I know,
I need all my grain to prosper and grow.”
Who will love a little Sparrow?
Will no one write her eulogy?
“I will,” said the Earth,
“For all I’ve created returns unto me,
From dust were ye made and dust ye shall be.”
And if 50% of a country’s people are dependent on agriculture for 100% of their income, where are they supposed to get the money to buy Western crops, even at cheap prices, if they cannot produce any income thanks to Western crop dumping?
I never meant to say it was an either / or situation. Obviously corruption is endemic in many of these countries as well, but hideously corrupt nations (China, Thailand, India…) have nevertheless managed to achieve more-or-less food self-sufficiency despite the corrupt nature of their countries. One main reason for this is that their agricultural systems were able to develop a few decades earlier, before subsidies became rampantly abused in the West. One of the important precursors for industrial development is that agriculture reaches a state of technology and development that frees up large pools of ex-agricultural labor to move to cities and look for work. Without this industrial base for labor, any economic policies that stress “industrial development” are doomed to failure, which explains part of the reason why African development policies have failed so greatly. Now, corruption is certainly responsible for a big part of the fact that upwards of 50% of African country populations remain stuck working in agriculture, but Western dumping of goods certainly aggravates the situation tremendously. If the poor farmers could at least sell their crops at a fair price (remember, the fact the price is so low is because of OVER production - this is not market forces at work, these are the forces of corrupt Western government literally paying farmers to produce more of a good than is necessary. If we were to actually espouse the “market forces” we supposedly believe in, our governments would step out and let the market determine the actual price of goods), they might be able to save a bit of money every year, send their next generations to school, and slowly the system would work itself out as more educated societies naturally start to clamor for greater rights, more openness, democracy, transparency, etc. etc.
Your argument reminds of what people keep saying about places like Wal-Mart. Sure, they pay their workers shit money, but they also provide goods at cheaper prices, allowing poorer people to live “better lives”. But does it really work that way? Sure, people might be able to buy jeans and cookies at 10% less the price, but what about the millions now stuck without healthcare, the municipalities robbed of their tax bases and forced to cut public services like education? Just because you can buy something cheaper is no justification for everyone to make less money. There are a number of benefits that come with high-salary, high-cost societies as well, such as a more robust public sector, universal healthcare, and so on.
Finally, of course, I just have to ask, if these crops are so cheap, which you say will help the poor Africans buy them, then why are there still 400 million malnourished Africans? Does corruption alone really explain that large of a number?
