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<h3>As anyone who is in the position of giving money away knows.. it can be very difficult to do it successfully! Sometimes just throwing money at a problem just doesn't work, and ends up causing even more problems! Would it be any different if we gave half our the military budgets away? Let's see what the ecoTrain have to say on the matter! This week we have a round up of our ecoTrain passengers posts on this intriguing question! Thanks to everyone who wrote on the QOTW this week!</h3>
<p>If you have an opinion, please feel free to post on this subject and use the #ecotrain tag. We love to hear as many opinions as possible, so what are you waiting for, have a read and then start writing yourself!</p>
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  <h2>Ecotrain QOTW: If 50% of the defence budgets of the 10 biggest nations was given to philanthropic causes, would we see more or less war and violence in the world?</h2>
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    <h1>@mountainjewel</h1>
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    <p>Personally I am incredibly angry, saddened and disgusted, though not surprised, that the US leads this list. I think whatever money taken from war and given to &quot;the desire to promote the welfare of others, expressed especially by the generous donation of money to good causes,&quot; which is the definition of philanthropy, it is a good thing. Take all of the money for war and give it to causes to help people. Truly there is too much energy going to war and &quot;defense&quot; all around the country. I know it's not that simple, but I wish it were! Would we see less war and violence in the world if we did this? Honestly, I'm not really sure. Violence and war is a much bigger issue than military spending. It's a mindset and a cultural paradigm. People will kill each other with anything they have if the root of the issues aren't being touched on.</p>
    <p><a href="https://steemit.com/ecotrain/@mountainjewel/ecotrain-qotw-if-50-of-the-defense-budgets-of-the-10-biggest-nations-was-given-to-philanthropic-causes-would-we-see-more-or-less"><img src="https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https://steemitimages.com/DQmPTpt95pHmKRha95KMGEkAUSFYcNuX5q1VUXqyNbG5oRt/read-more.gif"></a></p>
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    <h1>@solarsupermama</h1>
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    <p>If 50% of the defense budgets of the 10 biggest nations was given to philanthropic causes, would we see more or less war and violence in the world? This is the ecoTrain question of the week.</p>
    <p>So, what kind of money are we talking about here?</p>
    <p>I find that with numbers this big, it&rsquo;s a little hard to wrap your brain around it at all. I decided to go with the ten largest defense budgets rather than the ten largest nations. According to the Stockholm International Peace Institute, the ten largest defense budgets hail from the US, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, France, UK, Japan, Germany, and South Korea. Of course, as we all know, the US dwarfs the rest of them by a lot. Ringing in at 611 billion for 2016, China doesn&rsquo;t even come close at a paltry 215 billion. Between the two of them, they constitute almost half of the military spending in the world. All told, the top ten add up to more than 1.2 trillion. That&rsquo;s a whole lot of money. Every. Single. Year.</p>
    <p><a href="https://steemit.com/ecotrain/@solarsupermama/what-if-we-cut-defense-budgets-in-half"><img src="https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https://steemitimages.com/DQmPTpt95pHmKRha95KMGEkAUSFYcNuX5q1VUXqyNbG5oRt/read-more.gif"></a></p>
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  <h1>@hopehuggs</h1>
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  <p>In my idealistic world I would love to say yes, of course it would, the money saved could be used to end world poverty and balance out the resources from the first world to the third world.</p>
  <p>And World Peace of course.</p>
  <p>But, even I know that wouldn&rsquo;t happen…</p>
  <p>My personality differs from your personality, there will always something to argue/debate about. Something I think is worth getting my opinion across about, despite what you think.</p>
  <p>Although personally I am easy going and I will listen to understand someone's opinion and even attempt to understand why they think the way they do. There are few things that rile me (unless you happen to be one of my children).</p>
  <p>It is just unfortunate that world leaders seem to turn these &lsquo;debates&rsquo; into wars and oneupmanship. A fight that doesn't care about the innocent causalties.</p>
  <p><a href="https://steemit.com/ecotrain/@hopehuggs/ecotrain-qotw-if-50-of-the-defence-budgets-of-the-10-biggest-nations-was-given-to-philanthropic-causes-would-we-see-more-or-less"><img src="https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https://steemitimages.com/DQmPTpt95pHmKRha95KMGEkAUSFYcNuX5q1VUXqyNbG5oRt/read-more.gif"></a></p>
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  <h1>@trucklife-family</h1>
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  <h3>I had to let that question sink in for a bit before tackling it. For one I am well aware that a ridiculous amount of money is spend on weapons globally every year, but the actually amount does not disappoint, it is sickeningly huge. But not surprising at all. I also had to let that sink in, because yes all that money, which by the way is a mere 611 billion by America last year, comes as no surprise.</h3>
  <p><strong>War is something that we all hear of daily, it has become a normal part of our history. The surprise would be if there was no war! The reality is that people get more upset watching movies than they do about the daily casualties of war. (That figure, I imagine would be massive also )We have become desensitized.</strong></p>
  <p><a href="https://steemit.com/ecotrain/@trucklife-family/eco-train-question-of-the-week-if-50-of-the-defence-budgets-of-the-10-biggest-nations-was-given-to-philanthropic-causes-would-we"><img src="https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https://steemitimages.com/DQmPTpt95pHmKRha95KMGEkAUSFYcNuX5q1VUXqyNbG5oRt/read-more.gif"></a></p>
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  <h1>@likedeeler</h1>
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  <p>Well, who knows?<br>
    Humans are not exactly famous for being able to deal appropriately with complex scenarios and therefore they tend to oversimplify things.<br>
    History has shown that just throwing money at problems is usually not enough to solve them.</p>
  <p>One of my favorite examples is when the British decided to do something about the cobra problem in British-India by paying rewards for each dead cobra the Indians brought, with the result that they had more cobras than ever, because them Indians began breeding them cobras to collect more of them rewards. 😁</p>
  <p>So we like to think that it´s a no brainer, spend less on weapons and more on development, make love not war, and all will be rainbows and unicorns.</p>
  <p><a href="https://steemit.com/ecotrain/@likedeeler/if-50-of-the-defence-budgets-of-the-10-biggest-nations-was-given-to-philanthropic-causes-would-we-see-more-or-less-war-and"><img src="https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https://steemitimages.com/DQmPTpt95pHmKRha95KMGEkAUSFYcNuX5q1VUXqyNbG5oRt/read-more.gif"></a></p>
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  <h1>@nainaztengra</h1>
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  <p>This is the Question of the Week put up by <a href="https://steemit.com/@eco-alex">@eco-alex</a> under his <a href="https://steemit.com/@ecotrain">@ecoTrain</a>initiative. It's a very thought provoking question. We are so engrossed in our comforts, these questions hardly come to our mind...</p>
  <p>Statistics show that the largest allocation in budgets go to the Defense sector, I always wonder if we could spend so much on War why not on Peace?<br>
    US being the top followed by China, India, South Korea, Germany, Russia and so many more.<br>
    What is it that we get out of it? Bitter territories and broken hearts 😔😔 and year on year the trend shows these budgets keep on increasing for more wars and violence.</p>
  <p><a href="https://steemit.com/ecotrain/@nainaztengra/if-50-of-the-defense-budgets-of-the-10-biggest-nations-was-given-to-philanthropic-causes-would-we-see-more-or-less-war-and"><img src="https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https://steemitimages.com/DQmPTpt95pHmKRha95KMGEkAUSFYcNuX5q1VUXqyNbG5oRt/read-more.gif"></a></p>
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  <h1>@eco-alex</h1>
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  <h3>I was watching the UK Parliament debate the renewal of the trident nuclear submarine program in 2016. This program naturally received overwhelming support and was renewed for decades to come. Whilst this nuclear program is stated to cost around $40 billion, when you actually add up the long term costs and storage of nuclear waste, the real figure over the next 40 years will be around $400 billion. </h3>
  <p><strong>$400 Billion dollars would be enough to end world poverty for around 2-3 years according to Jeffrey Sachs in his book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143036580/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=visofear03-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399381&creativeASIN=0143036580" rel="noopener" title="This link will take you away from steemit.com">The End of Poverty</a>. Sachs calculated that the total cost per year would be about $175 billion.</strong></p>
  <p><a href="https://steemit.com/ecotrain/@eco-alex/if-50-of-the-defence-budgets-of-the-10-biggest-nations-was-given-to-philanthropic-causes-would-we-see-more-or-less-war-and"><img src="https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https://steemitimages.com/DQmPTpt95pHmKRha95KMGEkAUSFYcNuX5q1VUXqyNbG5oRt/read-more.gif"></a></p>
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  <h1>@thegreens</h1>
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  <h1>How will the purpose of Philanthropy increase or reduce wars?</h1>
  <p>The Preamble to the Constitution of UNESCO declares that <strong><em>&ldquo;since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.&rdquo;</em></strong><br>
    In 1945, UNESCO was created in order to respond to the firm belief of nations, forged by two world wars in less than a generation that political and economic agreements are not enough to build a lasting peace. Peace must be established on the basis of humanity&rsquo;s moral and intellectual solidarity. This strong message from UNESCO says it all.</p>
  <p><a href="https://steemit.com/ecotrain/@thegreens/philanthropy-can-t-stop-wars"><img src="https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https://steemitimages.com/DQmPTpt95pHmKRha95KMGEkAUSFYcNuX5q1VUXqyNbG5oRt/read-more.gif"></a></p><img src="https://s20.postimg.org/bsut9f64d/divider.png"></center><center><h1> <br> @ecoTrain</h1> <h2><em>Supporting People Who Help <br>
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  <h2><em>Discover previous ecoTrain magazines at @ecoTrain</em></h2>
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