Response to Tyler's Week 7 Comments

I particularly liked how you tempered your hopes on seeing international trade as the cure all of all HIV/AIDS related problems. In light of the vastness of the effects of HIV/AIDS, the "cure" if there is one, no doubt, will have to be a concerted effort involving a great many organizations looking at the problem from a number of different angles. Economics and trade is one of those angles, but, it cannot be the sole one.

Regardless, I wonder, are there ways in which the church can steer economics and trade in such a way that developing countries would have greater access to goods, services, and information especially those that may alleviate people from the oppresion of this disease?

We mention microfinance as one way to do this very thing. Perhaps on our wiki, we could organize the ways in which Jesus-followers could get involved by category or approach. Categories could include: Economics, direct financial aid, prevention, education, public perception, etc.. Just an idea.

Response to Hideyo's Week 7 Analysis

I am admittedly a capitalist. I am not, however, a strictly laissez-faire capitalist by any means. I appreciated this week's chapters in how they discussed how more open trade has led to some great benefits, but as your analysis has pointed out, new levels of stratification have emerged. It reminded me of Ronald J. Sider's Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, which criticized current stratification where developing countries are forced to produce and export raw commodities to developed nations at the expense of their own nation's stability. For example, nations will produce coffee for exportation rather than foodstuffs to feed their own citizens.

Even though there does seem to be an overall helpful development with more open trade, the stratification between developed and developing still exists. There are disparities of technologies and as you have pointed out, we have seen this specifically in ARTs. Developed nations' citizens have access to ARTs and their citizens are able to manage HIV, whereas in developing nations, HIV is virtually guaranteed to develop into AIDS, which is a death sentence.

Are there ways in which we can redeem trade? I was actually a lot more hopeful about the positive aspects of trade and finance after reading the chapters. Granted, there still is a lot that needs to be done in terms of interest and debt created from developing nations' borrowing, but the recent forgiveness of 28 nations' debts via the World Bank's Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative seems to be a step in the right direction. How can we get churches involved in initiatives like this one. I'd love to see more statistics on how debt relief helps fight AIDS.