Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about South Africa?
South Africa doesn't receive that much aid in relative terms.
And is incidentally, pretty much the only African nation I would consider visiting...
Africa is giving nothing to anyone -- apart from AIDS (2008)
11–16 of 16 posts
Re: Africa is giving nothing to anyone -- apart from AIDS (2008)
#12Africans are people too.
Re: Africa is giving nothing to anyone -- apart from AIDS (2008)
#13So what can I, the average Joe Hacker, do to genuinely help Africa to start on the road to recovery?
Google for 'hackers for charity'.
Last time I checked Johnny was doing some good stuff.
Re: Africa is giving nothing to anyone -- apart from AIDS (2008)
#14So what can I, the average Joe Hacker, do to genuinely help Africa to start on the road to recovery?
The article argues that you should do nothing, and allow natural population control mechanisms take care of it.
Of course, "starvation as population control is cruel" is one of the more common defenses for deer hunting from where I grew up... but this line of reasoning is going down a path that should not be trod...
Re: Africa is giving nothing to anyone -- apart from AIDS (2008)
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
While that's an argument which sounds good, I find myself wondering why the population is increasing so much if the populace is half-starved. Having children when you are unable to feed yourself is extremely counterproductive.
Not if your aim is to continue your bloodline. Having a child or two to carry on your genes is a luxury for the rich, who can expect at least one child to live on through sexual maturity. It's not rational, it's biological.
For the rich? For the rich in Western countries where the costs are "prohibitive" and both parents usually "have to" work, or so do many people in reproductive age say. Immmigrants and many minorities however don't mind not having an HD TV or Playstation 3 and it's normal that one of the parents doesn't work, usually the mother. If you look closely at the birth rates in many European countries, they account for a high number of births. In Spain they account for more than half the number of births for this past decade. Which just goes to show that if people are not having children is not because they can't afford it, it's because they don't want.
Re: Africa is giving nothing to anyone -- apart from AIDS (2008)
#16This guy sounds like a total dick and isn't a stickler for details, but he does touch on an important conundrum stated more eloquently by other social scientists like Jared Diamond in his book "Collapse."
The conundrum being that feeding people and providing them with vaccines, new crops and other means for a better life without checks on population growth can lead to some serious problems - competition for a limited amount of environmental resources probably being the biggest one.
How do we ethically balance our concern for fellow human beings who are suffering in abject poverty on the one hand, and what kinds of problems overpopulation can lead to because of those same efforts in environmentally strained areas on the other hand is a tough question to answer.