I am humbled to say that I would have never connected those dots. Being one of the masses who is moved by the individual’s suffering who stands in front of me, as Christ taught, it would never have occurred to me that their plight may have been artificially produced for the end means.
How sad.
It is also the Ronald Reagan philosophy. If you want more of something, subsidize it. It sure ‘worked’ in the USA for unwed motherhood.
It is the same thing if you give a alcoholic/drug addict homeless person money. You are not alleviating their misery (unless you consider being sober a miserable condition) you are perpetuating it.
There are charities that will help these people, and there are organizations that feed the hungry. But giving money to a starving child on the street just feeds the child's “pimp” and makes sure that having miserable looking half starved children out begging on the street is a profitable enterprise.
Big, across the broad board lesson here for all to think about on so many levels.
Gulliver was so large in relation to the Lilliputians that any act he did to “help” usually did as much bad as good.
The American currency in a tourists pocket is like a Leviathan trodding the earth in that part of the world. A few tourists give a few coins every day to the miserable looking half starved child without a leg? Suddenly there is an entire profit making enterprise sprung up looking to amputate children's legs to make them better beggars.