“Ending Starvation” has somegreat principles, but its approach is unrealistic. The article suggeststhat Americans could end world hunger by sacrificing the vices ofover-eating and smoking and donate the money they would have spent for apack of cigs or that extra candy bar to the world’s hungry. Theproblem with this is in the numbers and the human mind.

Firstoff, the amount of money saved by the complete purification of 290million gluttonous Americans divided by the more than 850 million hungryin the world hardly makes a dent. But the more inconceivable idea isthat the 290 million would give up their habits. Humans are imperfect,and they will have their vices, know they have them, possibly even tryto fix them, but generally will fail. Every American who is overweightor smokes knows that they have an unhealthy problem, but they are stillchomping down Whoppers and sucking on Camels.

The fact is thatfood and smoking, while unhealthy, are enjoyable parts of manypeople’s lives, and even though they could save a life, the factthat the complete task of ending world hunger by direct hand feeding isimpossible and is too demoralizing to go along with. The developed worldshould not endlessly shoulder the burden of the much morepopulous undeveloped world’s needs.

It’slike one talented fisherman constantly having to feed ten families whohave untrained members, while getting nothing in return. He can besuccessful when caring for only his family, but would be overwhelmedwith the responsibility of feeding ten additional families. If we wereto tackle world hunger, it would only be feasible by teaching the otherten families how to fish, not feeding them ourselves. This may beachievable by investing in foreign commerce, which is actually becomingmore and more common, as you may have noticed if you look on the back ofyour remote control or when a telemarketer calls and you can’tunderstand them. As for the gluttony, I’m all for finding otherpleasures, but I like my double cheeseburger as much asanyone.