AIDS

Today's top BBC story: millions of children dying from AIDS in Africa, and only five percent get any treatment. It is of course no coincidence that Africa is the (financially) poorest continent on earth. If we add up all the tragedies that are caused or made far worse by poverty, we arrive at one of three possible responses:

1. Denial. Just get on with your life, make some token payment to a charity, but "there's nothing you can do."
2. Focus on just one or two charitable needs and ignore the millions of others.
3. Attack all these problems at their root: economic justice.

It all comes down to poverty, and poverty starts at the most fundamental level: unjust access to raw materials. This unjust access leads to inefficiency, corruption, lack of opportunity, war, and all the other immediate causes of poverty. And these in turn lead to desperation, ignorance, an inability to plan ahead, an inability to cope with or recover from problems, and an endless catalog of misery and pain.
We should do what we can on individual issues like AIDS, environmental damage, terrorism, war, or emergency relief, but in the long term, land rent is the only real solution.