"What is needed is vast increases in taxes in the western world to stop the suffering in those far off places. We all neeed to be little poorer and a little well fed so that food and medical aid can be more evenly distributed."

The Battle of Mogadishu taught many that its not always that simple.

The great Famines of the last century were all the products of politics. And whether suppressing them involves going to war with warlords armed with AK 47s or warring with Nuclear Powers like North Korea, many who aren't remotely Pacifist can already see the problems inherent in attempting to occupy a continent and kill people in order to prevent the sort of endemic corruption that inhibits both economic growth and distribution of the resources.

Yet, short of being willing to occupy a continent and kill any number of child soldiers, just sending supplies to corrupt regions ensures that they'll fall into the hands of despots and end up being used to further the ability of such regimes to use starvation as a tool in civil war.

Ultimately its Laissez Faire economics which ends up being the best tool to effectively redistribute the wealth. Even the smallest entrepreneurs foster economies that serve local needs better. And in the long run microloans offer more bang for the buck in terms of lasting solutions.

Neither tolerating die-offs, nor enforced sterilization, nor care packages to warlords are needed. The other regions show that the techniques exist to feed even greater population densities and that most of the world doesn't have to be entirely food-self-sufficient to engage in patterns of free trade that make their poor healthier and better nourished than the rich of a millennia ago.

Perhaps the answer will lie in the globalization of Warlords' ambitions. Its hard to scheme on a planetary scale and not be linked-in. Its hard to be linked-in and prevent your people from being linked-in. And its tough with information flowing freely to prohibit the ability to join the global economy.

Increase taxes and be a little poorer in the short-run? Actually it already happens, like it or not, when there's enough Laissez Faire to allow for globalization.

In the short-run Americans will survive all those heavy industry jobs which fled to Japan and onward to Vietnam and India. In the long run raising those economies up creates a market for things Americans still do. And in the meanwhile, the slight decline of living standards in the West is counterbalanced by a massive increase in living standards in the East.

Such free-market "taxation" tends to follow the cheapest labor until it has raised standards sufficiently that the children of poverty are now improved enough to no longer be willing to work such menial jobs. It flies to the furthest ends of the globe to do so. And it is only the same local corruption that makes direct assistance feed the families of local strongmen that also inhibits the jobs from going to where they are needed the most.

Dante