Here is a great link to the farm subsidies recieved in Manhattan, it's odd how one never notices the wealth of family farms surrounding central park. http://wildgreenyonder.wordpress.com/2007/10/
Most answers in the affirmative involve a lot of rationalization and dehumanization and in the modern world likely some kind of starvation default swap sold by a financial institution.
We're all individuals sharing this planet. We are not our government(s). (Unless you're a head of state, then maybe)
When making considerations of the well being of whole populations one has to consider the whole population not the individual.
A decision to withhold food aid now might kill 10%, but supplying that food and buoying up the population until the next big crisis is likely to kill far more people and could push us beyond sustainability - there is a point at which renewable resources become to depleted to recover. Sure, one can consider that the Jones family will lose their daughter and so we have to send food but this leads us on and on to overpopulation.
It actually doesn't lead us to overpopulation. Once wealth & education increases to a certain point cultures change and people have fewer children. Paul Ehrlich went over this in the 60s and then made the famous wager with Simon over resources. I think this Malthusian argument has been thoroughly debunked.
The best result for the well being of whole populations is generally achieved by each person in that population doing what is best for themselves.
That actually is a really bad idea from a public health perspective. Generally you need well in excess of 50% of the population to be vaccinated before it starts to provide protection to non-vaccinated individuals.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_modelling_of_infec...
Not to mention, why the fuck in this day and age is the west still responsible for African people eating? We have the technology, the entire country has been geographically analyzed for where maximum food can be produced, etc etc. It is not a geographical problem, it is a political and cultural problem.
It seems fairly obvious they can't sort out this problem, so whats the next move?
We can tell them where to grow food, and where not to. We have given them Billions of dollars in aid. What else can you do?
Of course, this is assuming foreign aid exists to achieve what it says it is trying to achieve....I can think of several groups of people that would like to keep Africa in the stone age for the time being.
However, this doesn't dismiss the responsibilities of the leaders and citizens of Africa. All the technology you need is available on eBay, how about some charismatic man rises up and convinces you to get your shit together?
The GNP and life expectancy of Africa is about as good as it was in the western world around 1930, that's not exactly stone-age, and the situation is steadily improving. They'll get there.
The entire country of Africa?
I am not picking on you here--I think this is a failing in the way we're wired that some part of us (including me) can consider tragedy at that scale as a possible solution.
I assumed that was one of the roles of religions, but they seem to have a difficult time getting the idea to stick in the majority of their believers.
I read something that made sense to me which was that OP was objecting to subsidies to African countries--not subsidies for Western farmers. My objection makes no sense in the context of what OP actually said.