The Golden Simatar
27-12-2003, 16:52
SUPPORT this resolution. Each nation just needs to put in a little of money. Come on, I think WE ALL can afford to lose a million or two. Or is everyone so greedy about their money that they don't care about the little person? If I lose a million just so a kid in poverty can have the proper medical attention he/she needs then I'll do it.
Put yourself in the person below the poverty line's shoes. You need medicine but your gov't is to worried about losing money to do anything. What do you say?
SAY YES TO MEDICATION!
We are not opposed on principle to increasing spending on medicine. We clearly believe that the AIDS crisis has the potential to become a dangerous international epidemic and that it and other diseases cause great unneeded human suffering. However, we have some problems with the specifics of this resolution:
“If this resolution passes, access to medicine would be increased with the support of all nations in the United Nations. This help would go not just go to people within their respective home countries, but would extend to all countries within the United Nations.”
How are you collecting this money and how will you distribute it justly? How will you access what each state pays and what it should receive? Is it based on need, size of contribution, or some other measure?
“For businesses, this is a huge loss in consumers. For education, it is a huge loss in potential scholars. For security, many of these people can be used to serve in law enforcement and the military.”
While I may well support this resolution on humanitarian ground, this reasoning may be spacious. A high percentage of medicines are used to support the elderly sick who drain far more out of the economy in terms of publicly funded health care than they contribute as productive members of society. I suspect that the same is true of very advanced AIDS patients and those terminally ill from other such debilitating diseases. It is not necessarily a reason to vote against the bill, but it seems to counter the economic argument a bit.
“Nations may do this however they wish, from subsidizing their drug industries, to having their state provide more medicine and distributing it abroad.”
How will you guarantee that the money is appropriately spent? Might it not be better to directly pay for the medicine and its distribution, than leave it up to states? What would keep me from taking a million dollars from you and in turn shifting another million already in my budget for medicine to defense spending. (Even if you give the medicine, distribution is an issue. I might just use the medicine provided for the military, or provide it as a political payment to the wealth elite who can already afford at much as the Somali warlords did with food to maintain power.)
What about actual expenditure figures? What is “reasonable?”
What prevents me from doing nothing at all or making a very token contribution if I may do as I wish? The last line seems to make this resolution utterly meaningless in practice.
Again, I have not decided my position, but these questions need to be answered before I can vote for what may be a good resolution.
On behalf of the People of Burkonia,
HRH, Monarch of Burkonia