Save the world

[Moontanman]

You hear people all the time complaining about the conditions of the third or fourth world countries and areas of the world. How can we save them all? Do we really want to save them? If we really do want to make a real difference then we should simply move all these people to places where existence isn't marginal to areas where scratching out an existence is much easier. Every western country should take their fair share. the US should take 100 million at least. Other countries could take their share based on how big their country is and how much land and food is not being used for human existence. (forget national parks and wild areas) as a mind exercise would this work?

[Overdog]

You hear people all the time complaining about the conditions of the third or fourth world countries and areas of the world. How can we save them all? Do we really want to save them? If we really do want to make a real difference then we should simply move all these people to places where existence isn't marginal to areas where scratching out an existence is much easier. Every western country should take their fair share. the US should take 100 million at least. Other countries could take their share based on how big their country is and how much land and food is not being used for human existence. (forget national parks and wild areas) as a mind exercise would this work?

 

I don't think it would be feasible, Moontanman. We can't even deal with 12 million illegal aliens. If just 10% of the world meets your criteria for relocation, that would be approximately 700,000,000 people. They would reproduce at a rate faster than you could move them....

 

No one really knows how many people are malnourished. The statistic most frequently cited is that of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, which measures 'undernutrition'. The most recent estimate (2006) of the FAO says that 854 million people worldwide are undernourished. This is 12.6 percent of the estimated world population of 6.6 billion. Most of the undernourished--820 million--are in developing countries. The FAO estimate is based on statistical aggregates. It looks at a country's income level and income distribution and uses this information to estimate how many people receive such a low level of income that they are malnourished.

World Hunger Notes--Global Issues: World Hunger Facts 2008 by World Hunger Education Service

 

Poverty is generally defined as people who cannot satisfy their basic needs because of economic strains. It inevitably occurs in the United States, as well as in all the countries in the world. Poverty is due to many factors that can include level of income, employment, distribution of resources in a country, amount of welfare, and living conditions. There is debate on whom to call "poor". However, most studies take the poverty line (the cutoff line to consider a person to be poor) as 50 percent of the median income of the nation of study.

 

In general, there are three degrees of poverty: absolute (extreme), moderate, and relative. Absolute poverty is known as "the poverty that kills," where these people get by with $1 a day, or less. There are approximately 1.1 billion people out of 6 billion in the world who live in absolute poverty according to the World Bank. In the United States, approximately 32 million people live in poverty, about 30% of the world number. Charts seem to show that the poverty rate in the country has decreased steadily from 1993 to 1999.

Number of People Living in Poverty

[Moontanman]

I don't think it would be feasible, Moontanman. We can't even deal with 12 million illegal aliens. If just 10% of the world meets your criteria for relocation, that would be approximately 700,000,000 people. They would reproduce at a rate faster than you could move them....

 

Exactly, even if you could wave a magic wand and transport everyone to a better environment people from other areas would immediately start to locate into the areas vacated until the population was back to being impoverished. What is really need is a phase change in the way people think of reproducing.

[raymond723]

Everybody should do something to save our motherland

[belovelife]

i read an article a few years ago, where a shaman from south america went to the united states to study

 

he ended up hooking up with google because his village was being raped and pillaged by a company that moved peoople in

 

alot of details in the article

 

but google gave him a gps and google maps and he was to put a pin on the camps of the evildoers

 

thats the last i heard of it though

 

never found out if action had been taken

[Eclogite]

What is really need is a phase change in the way people think of reproducing.

But that is exactly what is happening. The rate of increase has been decreasing for several decades. In some countries population levels are now falling: Italy because it is a mature society, Russia because of vodka production. Global population is expected to level out at around 10 billion then slowly fall.

 

So, the solution is in place and if you don't live to see it you will have contributed to the solution.

[Deepwater6]

What surprises me is the number of starving children in the poorest countries of Africa. Yes some of it can be attributed to lack of sex ed. and certian religions telling them they should no use birth control. Never the less as an adult in Africa I could never purposely bring a baby into such a poor area of the world because of the suffering it will face and the starvation it will endure.

 

I don't mean to sound/say some people can't have children, but I would like them to see them move to better conditions before they do. Much easier said than done I know.

[Buffy]

Children are indentured servants to parents. From prehistory to recent times, having more children was an insurance policy against poverty in old age. And in times and places where healthcare is poor or non-existent, more means at least some will be around to help with the crops and take care of you when you're old.

 

In the third world, it's not much different now than in prehistory....

 

I stopped at one, but really mainly because I've got great healthcare and enough social status to make sure that she's going to be successful and I'm set well enough not to need an army to take care of me when I'm a doddering old fool (like I'll be in a month or so at this rate!)....

 

There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience, :phones:

Buffy

[Eclogite]

As is implicit in Buffy's post the most effective contraceptive is wealth. In the west when a couple realise that having a child today will mean they cannot afford that skiing trip to Davos they will put off having the child. When they contemplate a second, the realisation that one of them may have to forego a new car will cause them to put that one off too. Plot wealth against birth rate almost anywhere and the relationship is clear. Rather than moving people around the planet as Moontanman hypothetically proposes we need to raise people's wellbeing where they are now.

[Buffy]

In the west when a couple realise that having a child today will mean they cannot afford that skiing trip to Davos they will put off having the child.

 

I dunno. I don't think that conclusion is obvious. My point was that with wealth there's no compelling *advantage* to having an incremental kid due to all the labor and wealth that they can produce while the parent is still alive. Now the first kid gets most of the start up costs out of the way, but the compelling desire to procreate even gets to those of us who are rich.

 

So no, I didn't really think about losing out on a ski trip to Davos. Heck we went to Tahoe to ski lots when she was little.

 

Now I don't have first hand experience with this, but my friends all tell me the incremental ones aren't so much an issue of cost--which according to them declines monotonically--as it is one of time. And not so much the daily time taken, but the years that you are tied down to the additional obligations of care. The friends I have who have lots of kids, all popped them out as quickly as possible, so as not to end up with teenagers still in the house when pushing 60. It's not only a lot of work, but that you're starting to give up the years where you'd like to go back to enjoying life while you can actually still move around pretty well.

 

I think your correlation might hold up E, but given that wealth makes the burden of the incremental cost *less* consequential, I'm not sure that cost is the real reason for it.

 

Heck, the Mittster is filthy rich and look at all the kids he and Ann had! ;)

 

 

The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy, :phones:

Buffy

[CraigD]

Global population is expected to level out at around 10 billion then slowly fall.

I've seen this and similar claims, but also contradicting ones. My impression is that the scientific consensus (some group within the UN appears to function as a clearing house for future population predictions) was and remains that the world population will reach 8,000,000,000 around 2025, and until recently, that it would reach and "level off" around 9,000,000,000 around 2050, but that now (as of 2011, according to this regrettably reference-less New Yorker article by journalist Elizabeth Kolbert), it's expected to reach 10,000,000,000 "and still climbing" around 2100.

 

It'd be good for us to pool our sources, and see if we can uncover a clear consensus, or at least some history on a shifting scientific consensus, on the "leveling out" hypothesis.

 

Obviously, unless we humans dramatically improve our food producing technology, a point will be reached where the population cannot further increase, because regardless of the fertility rate, there will not be enough food for more people. Several years ago, in this post, I came up with a quick estimate of 63,000,000,000 for the maximum for an entirely Earth-based population, using best present-day agriculture, and assuming the ability to avoid climate and ecosystem disasters.

 

Being a human space travel fan, I like to imagine that the human population will greatly exceed this, by most of it living other place than on Earth, but must admit that such imaginings are, at present, entirely science-fictional.

[Iam Joy]

The view about adjusting population sizes by dictating reproduction treads on very dodgy ground. But I know it's one view shared by far too many people though - always from those who 'have' rather than those who 'have not', because those who have are too selfish and scared to share any of it, plus they believe that those who 'have not' are not as worthy people as they are. None of them will admit this is the reason for their view though.

 

In the UK we have what's called the 'underclass' - these are unemployed people and everyone else living off State benefits for whatever reasons; they are not necessarily homeless or criminals. This year our government and media have been firing all their guns at the underclass during our weak economic climate; basically blaming the poor for all the nations financial issues. This has led to a surge in anti-underclass feeling in my society... it is reminiscent to me of the way the Jews were blamed for the economic slump during the birth of Nazi Germany. The underclass are the new Juden. It has led not just the public, but certain politicians to voice that it's not only morally wrong and shameful for the underclass to have more children, but that they shouldn't 'breed' at all.

 

It's all horrifying to me. The whole argument about who should or should not 'be allowed' to reproduce is always 100% biased against the poor and against any group that the 'haves' dislike, or feel threatened by. There's never any suggestion that it's the 'haves' who shouldn't breed, or the rich, or the powerful, or the politicians. I'll bet no-one in the affluent countries with that idea wonders if their country should breed less - no, because the only population they want to stop/reduce is that one somewhere else; usually in Africa, or India, or anywhere poorer, more needy or different than they are.

 

I'm not against birth control at all - birth control is a great thing - but arguments about which populations should 'breed' and which shouldn't, and which populations should be controlled and which shouldn't is an argument that so very easily slips into the realm of fascism and other madness.

[Chewbalka]

I think if we were to build a massive factory of some sort that builds things that has a high demand right in the heart of the troubled areas of Africa hire everyone who wishes to work pay them a good rate which wont destroy there costs and whatever money is in excess of profit due to pay rate and cost for the rest of us (we pay normal rate for this item even though it cost less to make there) is used to train new workers for other jobs as we have here like sanitation, safe construction, hydro, basically let them do the work in building themselves up. Basically let them keep there culture religion but at the same time get them to build there own version of the western civilization... It will be a slow process so there should be a minimum shock on there way of life. Too much too fast can screw it all up lol.