World population

[Donk]

I read this Washington Post article:

Africa's Last and Least

a couple of weeks ago. It's still haunting me. On the one hand, how can we not help starving women and children. On the other hand... one husband, three wives, twenty-three children... if we help them to survive beyond the carrying capacity of the land, we're giving an even bigger moral dilemma to our children. Feed a starving African; will our children have to feed six? and our grandchildren 36?

 

Maybe we should be restricting aid to emergency situations only, such as the Burma floods - people who have been knocked back, but who will be able to support themselves without outside aid once they're back on their feet.

 

I don't know any more. :eek_big:

[modest]

I read this Washington Post article:

Africa's Last and Least

a couple of weeks ago. It's still haunting me. On the one hand, how can we not help starving women and children. On the other hand... one husband, three wives, twenty-three children... if we help them to survive beyond the carrying capacity of the land, we're giving an even bigger moral dilemma to our children. Feed a starving African; will our children have to feed six? and our grandchildren 36?

 

I don't think we're helping them survive past the carrying capacity of the land. Fertility rates in Africa are similar to the middle east. There is also a wealth of natural resources in both Africa and the Middle East. The problems in Africa are all too often war and the inability to process or profit from the riches at hand. An industrial and social revolution (much like china is going through) would help many African nations with both these problems. I think this can and will happen.

 

I also don't think population control and food aid should be considered linked - ever.

 

~modest

[Boerseun]

Unfortunately, a line must be drawn somewhere.

 

Europeans have come to Africa, and the direct result of their interference in the natural order of things have made the African population explode from 100 million to just short of a billion. This was done primarily through the introduction of medical technology which raised the life expectancy to previously unheard-of figures.

 

Culturally and historically, Africans have lots of wives and lots of children. They have lots of wives, because the men had a much shorter life expectancy than the women, due to the fact that they pursued dangerous hunting practices (no guns - all animals were chased down and killed either with spears on in traps - and a trapped animal is not the most friendly of beasts). Constant warring also reduced the male numbers. The "peaceful tribe" myth is just that, a myth. So, a village of a thousand inhabitants might have as little as 20-30% males, the rest females (of the adult population). So, men took more than one wife to balance the equation. And they had lots of children - with all their wives. And this was also a simple survival strategy, because of the very low life expectancy.

 

This whole strategy of plenty wives and lots of kids balanced out - the African population was relatively stable.

 

But now, with modern farming practices and medicines being available, it is not sustainable to have five wives and fifty children. There are no lack of adult males, and the children don't die anymore.

 

South Africa's president-in-waiting, Jacob Zuma, has four wives, he's engaged to three more (simultaneously) and has a grand total of 18 children that he knows of. I kid you not. There is no justification of this in light of current life expectancy in Africa. There is no way in which this can be justified in terms of "culture". Times change, cultures change. There's a global population crisis, and cultures must follow suit to adapt to the changing realities facing us. Like the US' big and thirsty muscle-car culture is changing towards a culture of driving more ecologically responsible vehicles, so too, must human culture follow suit. Americans aren't trending towards smaller cars because they like it; they're trending towards smaller cars because they simply don't have a choice. Once again, the same applies to human culture. We can't have 18 kids like this idiot, because the planet simply cannot tolerate it. You have to be ecologically responsible not only with the car you drive, the amount of electricity you use, and so on and so forth, but with your reproductive choices, too.

 

It's time Africa took responsibility for its actions. And the world should respond in kind as far as aid is concerned. The World Bank will lend money to a certain country if that particular country agrees to a roadmap of specific economic policy changes, milestones to be reached in terms of economic performance, interest rates, market reforms and such. Same with food aid. You can't keep on dumping resources towards a bunch of starving people if all they do with it is to feed themselves in order to breed more starving people. If I have a thousand dollars and ten kids, I've got a hundred dollars per kid. However, if I have only two kids, I'd have 500 dollars available, increasing the quality of education, the amount of food, clothing, anything, really, available to those two kids. They will obviously get much farther in life than the neighbour's kids who have to live on $100.

 

Africans should see this, and they should actively change their cultures accordingly.

 

Africa is the world's poorest continent. And not because there's an inherent failure in the genetic make-up of the people inhabiting it. Africa is a failure due to the best part of a billion people attempting to mate ancient culture with modern technology. And that does not work. Africa's failure is squarely and solidly a failure of culture. And of the bleeding heart West who pretends to respect that culture and wish to boost it and support it. African culture is very respectable, but only in an historical sense - it used to work swell. But the world has changed. And if they want to plug in to the rest of the world, they will have to actively and aggressively modify their culture.

 

My own forefathers had a culture of having as many children as possible. For instance, my ancestor, Johann Jacob Breytenbach, arrived in the Cape in 1738 from Wurzburg, Germany. He proceeded to have 14 children with Maria Catherina Bezuidenhout, a Dutch girl. Clearly, that culture is not sustainable today. And, it would seem, the trend to less children was followed as time went by: The very next generation, Johan Hendrik Breytenbach (after whom I was named) only had 10 children. Then, the next generation had 10 again, then 8, then 5, then 4 (my father's generation), then three. I'm now 31 and I still haven't had kids. Not that I haven't had the chance, mind you - I simply don't want to bring a kid into the world until I'm sure I can supply that kid with all its needs. It's a serious and considered cultural change from my ancestors, who believed in the Biblical order to procreate. Although I respect my ancestor's culture from an historical point of view, it's simply not sustainable in today's world. The African habit of having as many children as physically possible (because children is seen as wealth) should be cast out into the dark recesses of the history books. And only the Africans themselves can do this. And the only way of prodding them in that direction, is to withold food aid or economic aid from those countries who don't.

 

Harsh, for sure. But it simply cannot work in today's resource-strapped world.

 

Whatever the pinky lefties might have to say about the infringement on human rights the Chinese are practicing with their one-child policy, I'm of the opinion that whoever the Chinese official might be who came up with that spark of genius, should be handed the Nobel prize of his choice (peace, chemistry, physics, astronomy, medicine - hell - give them all to him/her). And we need a similar paradigm shift in Africa before we'll get anywhere.

 

It's a cultural thing.

[modest]

Boerseun, this is the last issue in the world I would ever want to disagree with you on. In fact, I'm sure any disagreement on my part would be in complete error. I do, however, slightly disagree :doh:

 

If a high fertility rate is the result of:

• archaic tradition
  
• necessary survival tactics
  

then surely starving the population would only work toward keeping these practices around. I believe fertility rates usually have fallen in the developed world with the advancements that make for a better life. I know I sound like a bleeding heart liberal advocating peace and prosperity, but in this case I really do think those are the mechanisms of change.

 

I have no idea how to bring those things about in this case, I'm just rather sure withholding food aid isn't the way.

 

It's a catch-22 and a chicken and egg situation, and... I do not envy those anywhere near having to deal with it. Please take my opinion as the uneducated passing thought that I know it is.

 

~modest

[Boerseun]

You're right with it being a bit of a catch-22.

 

In fact, it is so much of a catch-22 that alleviating poverty in Africa is simply impossible. And its impossible not because of resource limitations, but simply because capitalism is built on poverty.

 

Imagine for a second, if you will, that we hand out a million dollars to each and everyone. Would you still be able to buy a quarterpounder with cheese for what you paid for it yesterday? No ways! The guy who flipped burgers at McDonalds yesterday at minimum wage has now got his very own wad of $1,000,000, and does not need this stupid job. So Mickey D closes - they can't pay the burger-flipper an amount thats worth his while, seeing as he's a millionaire now. And they can't find a willing burger-flipper anywhere. Unless of course they up the wage bill to such ridiculous levels, that a millionaire would be willing to do it. The upping of which, of course, is reflected in the final counter sale price of that quarterpounder and cheese you wanted to buy. It will now cost thousands of dollars for a single quarter pounder and cheese, if everybody had to have a million bucks.

 

So - grand-scale poverty reduction in Africa will not achieve anything. Spiralling inflation in the wake of a monetary injection into the pockets of the poorest of the poor will reduce the value of the cash in their pockets back to the same levels of wealth they had before the injection: Nothing. A big, fat zero. And if we do this kind of poverty alleviation with the backing of a foreign currency like the US dollar (already a de facto currency in the biggest part of Africa) that inflation and subsequent devaluation will be felt all the way to the average American's pocket book.

 

On a global scale, if we're serious about poverty alleviation in Africa, capitalism itself should undergo a bit of a paradigm shift. Or maybe Africa's only path to salvation lies somewhere inbetween capitalism and communism, a sort of African version of the Chinese approach to the whole mess. But unadulterated capitalism in the form of what the US would like to see, will not work in Africa. You might give it a go, but the ultimate harm will be to the US - and Africa will be back exactly where she started from.

 

But even before we tackle things that take time, like overhauling the political or economic landscape of this continent, we should start, and aggressively so, on those things that we can change in the short term. Like making the population understand why it's important, critically so, for them to "zip it up", and stop breeding like rabbits.

 

Maybe Africa needs to look closer at China for political inspiration than to the West. The West's careful liberal democratic approach to sensitive issues like birth control and abortion is a cop-out: basically, what the West does, is to tell everybody what the consequences are, and then leave it to the population to figure it out. They put an amazing level of trust in their population to make the right choice regarding family planning. Whilst in China, the government simply tells you you're allowed one child, and one child only. Doesn't matter what your personal opinion regarding the matter is, you can only have one child, because that's all that your country can support. It takes the decision out of the hands of the population. And that, unfortunately, is the only thing that'll work in Africa. If you leave it to the people, you'll end up with 10-20 children per woman, because of the broken cultural system found on this continent. And to change the culture will take much longer than to simply dictate it from the top down.

 

From a resource perspective, I'd actually say go the whole hog and get all countries in the world to subscribe to the Chinese one-child policy. Can you imagine a hundred or two hundred years from now? The Earth will be a veritable paradise. Get all countries to do this, until world population is down to a billion. Then let all couples have two kids (one to replace the mother, one to replace the father) and maintain global population at 1 billion.

 

I can live with that. I honestly can.

[Donk]

If a high fertility rate is the result of:

• archaic tradition
  
• necessary survival tactics
  

then surely starving the population would only work toward keeping these practices around. I believe fertility rates usually have fallen in the developed world with the advancements that make for a better life. I know I sound like a bleeding heart liberal advocating peace and prosperity, but in this case I really do think those are the mechanisms of change.

 

I have no idea how to bring those things about in this case, I'm just rather sure withholding food aid isn't the way.

 

It's a catch-22 and a chicken and egg situation, and... I do not envy those anywhere near having to deal with it. Please take my opinion as the uneducated passing thought that I know it is.

 

~modest

That's exactly the point I'm having trouble with. If overbreeding is a reaction to food scarcity, then the kind of food aid we're giving won't help. We only ever give just enough, sometimes not even that. To break the chain would need a healthy surplus. It would be politically impossible for any nation to give that much, even if those in charge were willing and able.

[Overdog]

Perhaps the biggest problem is leadership. Philosopher Kings are pretty rare. Look at what happened in Zimbabwe when the leadership changed.