jerieljan

I keep seeing something along these lines in social media lately, and it irks me.

People were able to donate millions of dollars to restore what had burned down in Notre-Dame! Why can't you use THAT to feed the hungry, the sick and solve the world's problems!

As much as how I'd love the idea of that, it's just not going to happen.

Notre-Dame's case is a measurable and actionable effort—you know exactly what to expect (i.e., restore it to its original form), it's all in a single place, and donated money all goes to that particular effort.

Feeding the hungry? Can people even define a plan to solving this? No way we're just feeding people once and that's it. Solving world hunger requires either a constant flow of food to the right places (a recurring cost, and that's just food! How about other necessities?) or building the necessary support structure to feed entire populations across different continents (a massive undertaking, which likely involves bureaucratic difficulties here and there). There isn't even a leadership responsible to solving the task, so you have to deal with logistics and trust too, because there's always a possibility that the funds will be misused when given to the wrong hands.

Funnily enough, what I've described is called a working government if they actually worked wonderfully towards the welfare of their citizens. Alternately, charities and humanitarian organizations exist for this reason—to support people on particular areas or problems that need the most help.

Humanity IS doing something about these problems, but they're not just simply going to disappear with a ton of cash. It takes people and time too! Implying that humanity isn't doing anything just feels disingenuous in my opinion.

I'd definitely give food and money if I ever see a starving child and no one's doing something about it, but I know that's just temporary.

Solving the actual problems is significantly harder.