I came home to pictures and the latest report of the 7.0 earthquake in Haitan. And almost immediately, I felt a tiny surge of guilt for the swedish meatball pasta and durian I ate for dinner PLUS desert. The next thing I immediately thought of was welfare econs. yes... the distribution problem. I am definitely not a believer of allocating resources equally to everyone because there would be those who receive more than what they have worked for. I am more a believer of allocating resources according to a certain criteria eg. effort or results. While there might be people whose effort does not get rewarded accordingly because their effort just doesn't produce good enough a results that society expects, society should come in to help them up to the same starting point as others. Help them to remove what is hindering their effort from achieving the same results as people who are receiving what is appropriate to their results/outcomes. Yet i was wondering, does it mean that a cleaner in a developing country is working less hard than let's say a cleaner in Singapore? Why then is the pay of a cleaner in Singapore much higher than that of a cleaner in a developing country? I don't have the answer.. and i once thought that sociology would give me one, until i realized that modules in universities helps u to question questions, but never gives u answers. In fact they leave you with a journey of searching for even more answers than what you started off.
It is one of this moments where I decide to be anal and ask where is the fairness in this world? why is that I get to enjoy a plate of yummy (real yummy) pasta in a shopping centre where bags that can hardly fit in A4 easily is sold for a few hundred bucks, while people devastated by the earthquake are dying for what I so often take for granted - H2O. Water's nearly free in Singapore isn't it? Wouldn't it be better if I could transfer the pasta that I can't finish to the hungry people in Haitan? It would just go into the bin anyway. Isn't it ironic that something as taken for granted to us, such as water is worth people breaking out in scuffles over trickles of it dripping down from a helicopter? We don't even see people fighting over mineral water which is definately much more than trickles of it, in supermarkets in Singapore. I guess I'm really looking at the wonders of the demand and supply curves in 2 entirely different regions.
Distributions problems just stared me down in the face through the channelnewsasia website while I dump unfinished lunch, dinner and sometimes supper as a daily ritual. While I restrict and limit myself to half a lunch/dinner/supper in the name of a more healthy diet, these people cannot even find a whole meal to begin with. While I just spent a blue note on a top and a demin skirt that Ive been eyeing for a long while (ah em months ) these people may not even dare to think of the word Shopping. I shall not pledge to start finishing up all my food because I'll probably forget all about it in a few days when my weight crepts upwards on the weighing scale.
Sometimes it's better to deal with wars where you can hold someone responsible and there is some way of making him ( see: gender roles. i subconciously just use "he" as a way of expressing my attributing violence to men wahhaha) stop. but when it's nature's fault, there is none to blame, none to negotiate with and none to stop...
Anyway, while I have no idea of what I have been lamenting about the past 15 mins or so I hope that mother earth will be kind to us and stop quaking, erupting or flooding her inhabitants.
i love sushi!
