Justice and Charity: Three Related Pieces

I'm sure this would be a better blog post if I had insightful commentary, but my brain's a bit worn out from all the not sleeping I've been doing. So I will just present these three pieces, arranged on a spectrum.

From an e-newsletter from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a short article describing the author's daughter's decision to donate her beloved teddy bear Rosy to the survivors:

We can all help. Not with platitudes about programs or promises of political investigations. Instead, we can donate the cost of this week’s frivolous “business” lunch to the Red Cross. We can give the cash for our next movie to the Salvation Army. And we can send our clothes and toys.

In the next night or two, Rosy - not some ideological opinion or political pipedream - will bring a simple expression of love from one child to another who urgently needs it.

That may be the best public policy imaginable.

A speech by Bono:

6,500 Africans are still dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease, for lack of drugs we can buy at any drug store. This is not about charity, this is about Justice and Equality.

Because there's no way we can look at what’s happening in Africa and, if we're honest, conclude that deep down, we really accept that Africans are equal to us. Anywhere else in the world, we wouldn’t accept it. Look at what happened in South East Asia with the Tsunami. 150, 000 lives lost to that misnomer of all misnomers, “mother nature." In Africa, 150,000 lives are lost every month. A tsunami every month. And it’s a completely avoidable catastrophe. [...]

Preventing the poorest of the poor from selling their products while we sing the virtues of the free market: That’s a justice issue. Holding children to ransom for the debts of their grandparents: That’s a justice issue. Withholding life-saving medicines out of deference to the Office of Patents: That’s a justice issue.

An article at Slate describing an ad by the Red Cross meant to encourage blood donations:

You can do good both ways, the PSA suggests. But consider the difference: Giving blood is easy, it's over before you know it, and it's a tangible way to help people. On the other hand, social agitation (staging protests, organizing boycotts, writing letters to big corporations) can have complicated consequences, and the results can be difficult to quantify. [...]

Since when do charities bash the competition? Imagine a spot arguing that Ethiopian orphans are more worthy than Somali orphans. That tsunami victims are more worthy than Katrina victims. Wouldn't happen. Yet this ad argues that giving blood is a better choice than advocating on behalf of those child laborers. It presents do-gooding as a zero-sum game.

Individual acts of charity are not the same thing as fixing systems, especially those that create a need for charity by keeping people from succeeding.