What's really bugging me about the millennium.

All the hype and hoopla over the Y2K computer problem, argues a missionary in the Philippines, has diverted attention from the real "millennium bug."

For years now the media has been warning the world about the millennium bug. Governments as well as large and small businesses in many countries have implemented programs to prepare their computers to deal with the Year 2000 problem.

But despite all the publicity and hype, I would submit that the Y2K problem is relatively unimportant. The millennium bug is really a bluff. It is a perfectly solvable problem that has diverted attention from the real problem of the millennium. In truth, the millennium bug, if it happens at all, will affect a very small minority of the inhabitants of this planet--a minority, of course, that believes itself to be the center of the universe.

The problems and disruptions caused by malfunctioning computers will not affect the lives of the majority of the people in this world. And even if they did, these people could not find themselves in a worse situation than they are already in.

You won't find Fred, for example, worrying about the Y2K compatibility of his business. I met Fred, who is about 14 years old and the major breadwinner in his family, during a recent visit to Payatas, the giant garbage dump of Manila. He is one of the many children among the estimated 75,000 people who live in and off the dump.

Payatas' children, armed with small hooks, spend their days rummaging through the trash for something to sell to eke out a living. For most of them this is the only life they know: a garbage dump.

Fred works at one of the shops where those who search among the garbage sell the little they find. He earns about $2.50 a day. He eats and sleeps right at the store. His bed is a couple of boards placed right on top of garbage.

I don't know whether Fred will ever be able to break out of the hellish cycle of misery he lives in. Most likely he will stay there his entire life.

So will Charlin and her daughter Katy, who also live and work in the garbage of Payatas. Katy is an adolescent girl greeting the world for the first time. But it has been her fate to do so in the middle of a garbage dump. Her innocence is colored with nostalgia for other worlds and other fortunes she might have glimpsed on a television screen. The mother, Charlin, has a look on her face that, without saying a word, conveys that she is resigned to her fate. Her sad eyes tell me that she, too, once had dreams of another life and another world, but no more.

There are also the children of Pangarap Shelter, a center for street children in Manila. Abandoned by their families, abused by life, the sexual toys of ruthless adults, their childhood kidnapped by globalization, these children know much more than I--so much older than they--about life.

The kinds of lives that Fred, Charlin, Katy, and the Pangarap children lead are not rare exceptions today. We are deluding ourselves if we look at our world as a reasonably comfortable place with some isolated pockets of poverty. Rather, it is a vast ocean of poverty where, relatively isolated, some islands of wealth have emerged.

In the global context the real "millennium bug"--the true problem that should be at the top of the world's agenda--is poverty.

The pervasive problem of poverty today is rooted in the reality of a world market that consistently ignores the needs of the impoverished majority of the world's population.

The capitalist market is anything but a democracy. In a true democracy, one person equals one vote. In capitalism, it is the almighty dollar that equals a vote. Those who have more dollars also have more power, and the interests of the wealthy far outweigh the interests of the poor.

This has now become a global reality. Despite the claims of economists that the exchange in a capitalist market benefits everyone, those who have more accumulate more and those who have little lose even the little they had.

Of course, this is not a new phenomenon. The market has always been cruel. But in the past, government policies could control the market. Laws and regulations imposed by democratically elected representatives set limits on the market. That restraint has become impossible in the global market. Today there is no real way to limit the scramble for the highest profit. Our global market is rapidly becoming a global jungle.

An example may serve to illustrate the point. North American consumers and those from other developed countries are concerned about the fact that some of the products coming into their markets are made in factories of poor countries where women and children labor for miserable wages. Various organizations have raised their protest.

As a result, some of the factories have closed or have had to look for other sources of labor. People feel good that they have solved a problem and protected children. But the truth is, when child labor is outlawed in the poorest countries, many families lose the only means of subsistence they have; they are condemned to starvation. An exclusive focus on child labor can serve to obscure the severity of the global economic challenge. The problem is not just child labor--it is much bigger than that.

The true problem of the millennium is the reality of an increasingly divided world where there is no solidarity. A chasm gapes between the rich and the impoverished.

One global solution that has been attempted is the search for security. Rather than solve the problems of the poor, wealthy nations defend themselves against their invasion. They establish immigration quotas and build walls that rival the infamous, now-collapsed Berlin Wall.

The United States has been reinforcing its border with Mexico, and the European Union with Africa, using high technologies such as video cameras and laser beams. Large investments are made to seal the borders for undocumented people.

There are many poor people in our world who have nothing to lose and all to gain. That is why they move north and put pressure on the borders. They are not afraid of barbed wire fences or of video cameras. They are undaunted by the possibility of deportation. What they leave behind is simply the probability of a slow death and no hope for a better future. Ahead of them is what they have seen on television and films: cars, huge houses, supermarkets overflowing with products.

Sooner or later we will have to face this problem. A system in which the few enjoy all the comforts while the many can hardly survive cannot be sustained over the long run. It needs radical change.

Just as developed countries have spent hundreds of millions of dollars preparing their computer systems for the Year 2000, they should start working to solve the real "millennium bug."

What was at stake in the Y2K scramble was the undisrupted financial flow of the market. What is at stake in the case of global poverty is the lives of millions of human beings and the survival of the cultural and. religious values of our civilization. It is up to the developed countries whether the inevitable change takes place through chaos and conflict or through dialogue and a voluntary giving up of some comforts.

I have to admit I am not very hopeful about finding real solutions to this millennium bug any time soon. International organizations will continue to publish increasingly alarming reports on the reality of poor countries and the widening gap between the rich and the poor. Conferences will be held and pronouncements made about the need to invest in development.

But the global economic system is very strong, and neither the decision makers nor the citizens in developed countries are willing to impose or bear a greater tax burden to create funds for development. This is the sad reality.

What is needed today is for the people of the United States and all developed countries to renounce their wealth and to tackle global poverty in a serious fashion. The economic pie of the wealthy cannot grow forever, and the poor will not continue to wait forever for the small crumbs of the pie that fall from the table of the rich.

By FATHER FERNANDO TORRES, C.M.F., a Spanish priest who works with Claretian Communications in Manila.