111–120 of 317 posts
Unemployment, large disparity in wealth, massive problems with debt (student debt), and highly dysfunctional political system. Americans see things as getting worse, here at home. We don't really focus on the rest of the world.
His third point, "Saving lives leads to overpopulation," is a weird straw man. I've never heard of anyone ever suggesting letting suffering children die as some way to keep the population low. He brings up Malthus as another straw man. I'm not sure the point he's trying to make. To stop people from stopping people from saving people's lives? I think he's trying to suggest that the planet has too many people on it but…
Rather strange and confused comment. Many people have expressed concern "Saving lives leads to overpopulation". It is a common concern of donors[1] and this view seems to be particularly common among those primarily concerned about sustainably and climate change[2][3]. You are simply unaware of the complaints that health campaigners in the developing world, like Bill Gates, actually face. You appear to be simply gras…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Access to contraceptives allows people who do not intend to have children, but engage in sex, to remain childless. No access to contraceptives means that people who do not intend to have children, but engage in sex, will have children. These children will be unintended or unwanted and may not be cared for either through disinterest or lack of ability to provide for them. A child who grows up in that sort of circumsta…
"A child who grows up in that sort of circumstance is not kept safe, may succumb to disease, may spread disease, will not be educated, and will have difficulty providing for themselves." A person's life is far more than just how they start out. Many people have started in situations like this and have gone on to have wonderful lives. Many have even changed the world. This alone isn't enough to convince me that we sho…
Is it not destroying the life of the parent(s) by giving them a child they do not want and cannot reasonably care for?
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"Contraception doesn't stop people being able to have kids, it allows them to have sex without having kids if they want to." I can't agree. I'm not saying it physically and literally stops them. But it does create an artificial separation that makes it more alluring to choose sex sans children.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but are you somehow saying that procreation should be more or less random? That it's better if people don't get to decide when they will have children? What's your opinion of people who choose to remain celibate?
My point is more about the collective mental separation between sex and having children. When children grow up in a society where you can have sex without having children, the default is to just have sex with no regard to this consequence. The thought of having children occurs less and less often. In fact, it often encourages a fear of having children, which suddenly taunts in the form of a life-ruining "accident".
This is the kind of mental "artificial" limiting that I'm concerned about. It's not about the choice itself, it's about making one choice the default.
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Japan has been a relatively developed, industrialized country for a very long time, judging by the fact that they spent the 1930's and 1940's trying to conquer east Asia and were doing a decent job of it.
Postwar Japan was a different beast for quite a while. Weird Al Yankovic's line "don't you know that other kids are starving in Japan" was what parents used to guilt their kids into eating until Biafra happened. A "Made in Japan" joke was funny in the '50s and '60s because it was true, for the most part. "Toyota" was a word that to most people meant "poor bugger couldn't even afford a Beetle". My '71 Datsun (Nissan)…
Back in the dark ages, when computers filled rooms and devoured power, IBM decided to take a risk and try outsourcing some electronics manufacturing to Japan to see how it would go. They put out bids with full specs and also specified a 3% defect rate, which was considered aggressively low at the time.
They found a willing Japanese supplier and manufacturing began. Some months later, the parts arrived in big crates. The IBM people cracked open the first one to find their parts inside, but some of them were off to the side in a separate compartment. A note was attached. "Dear sirs: our cultural differences make it so that we have difficulty understanding some of your requests, but we have done our best to do what you have asked. Here are the 3% defective parts as you requested, packaged separately for your convenience."
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"A child who grows up in that sort of circumstance is not kept safe, may succumb to disease, may spread disease, will not be educated, and will have difficulty providing for themselves." A person's life is far more than just how they start out. Many people have started in situations like this and have gone on to have wonderful lives. Many have even changed the world. This alone isn't enough to convince me that we sho…
>> This alone isn't enough to convince me that we should give in to short-sightedness by allowing people to prevent or destroy future human lives. Is it not destroying the life of the parent(s) by giving them a child they do not want and cannot reasonably care for?
I've been to Mexico City fairly recently, and I guarantee that in the right places -- possibly the same place the 1986 picture was taken -- you could take something very much like that 1986 picture today (which is perhaps even more tragic today, since its not just after the major earthquake). And I've seen Mexico City pictures just like that 2011 one, barring changes in fashion, from the 1980s. And even the 1960s. On…
Things have changed drastically in the last seventeen years. Statistics show that they changed even faster between 1985 and 1997, but I didn't see that.
The middle class has been growing at an astonishing pace. Vast swathes of Azcapotzalco, Xochimilco, and even Iztapalapa that were poor and backwards are now prosperous, clean, and exciting. The fashionable neighborhoods in Coyoacán, Polanco, and the Roma have become outright opulent. The Historic Center is neat, safe, popular, and crowded at all hours with local and international botiques and restaurants.
You can clearly see the mountains Chiquihuite from downtown and El Águila from Coyoacán nearly every day now. In 1997, the mountains around the city were more like rumors behind the pollution. Last month, I actually saw Iztaccihuatl and Popocatépetl from the center of the valley. Out by the canals of Cuemanco, local wildlife biologists tell me that the water is cleaner, the population of birds is increasing again, and recovery programs for the aquatic axolotl are working.
High school graduation and college completion rates have been skyrocketing. New universities are spreading and growing across the valley. Education is especially important because Mexico City college graduates live nearly as well as American college graduates. The income gap is in the working classes without credentials.
GDP per capita is misleading, so let's consider personal income. Housing and transportation and meals cost about a quarter as much as in the USA for the middle class. That's about 80% of a typical budget. Cops and public administrators with good educations are now making US$10k to start and programmers and engineers around US$20k. The median household income in Benito Juarez county, with about 600k people and no fashionable rich areas, is approaching US$30k. The neighboring parts of Coyoacán, Miguel Hidalgo, Álvaro Obregón, and Cuauhtémoc counties are richer.
So I really endorse the Gates's impression of development success in Mexico City.
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My position on birth control comes from seeing human life as something worth bringing into the world. There are so many wild cards, so many variables, that all these "but what if" arguments aren't convincing to me. In terms of resource depletion, I'm confident that the human race is capable enough to solve its major sustainability problems without stifling this major source of creative and resourceful potential.
My position on birth control comes from seeing human life as something worth bringing into the world. I agree with the view that human life is something worth bringing into the world; but don't you think there's value in letting people choose when they bring human life into the world? Most people I know want to have kids -- just not yet.
I'm not arguing against the personal choice aspect of this. Just that it changes a culture's attitude toward having children, creating an unfair bias against it in future members of society.
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It is sort of strange. The letter also talks about looking around and seeing a bunch of middle class people and assuming that no one is poor anymore. If I can't see it, it doesn't exist. . .
Where did he say that there was no poverty? "Look at the progress we've made" is a far cry from "Ok folks, we're done here".