posted May 04, 2007 02:21 PM            

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You want poor households to cut their fertility and to have fewer children -- assure them that the fewer children that they have will survive, they won't be carried off by a mosquito bite.

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posted May 04, 2007 02:28 PM            

I'm guessing there is some meaning to your last post, but, perhaps its just my ignorance, I can't for the life of me figure out what point you're trying to make

posted May 04, 2007 02:37 PM            

> I'm guessing there is some meaning to your last post

Like Charles' posts, it's simply one of the (dare I say it?) wiser things I found in Mr. Sachs speech.

> The entire population of the world can fit in
> the smallest state in our union and have room
> enough to grow what they'd need to live on.

"There you go again."

Rhode Island is 1,214 square miles. There are 6 billion people in the world. That comes out to 0.0000002 square miles per person, or less than six square feet. I don't know about you, but a 2x3-foot space is not enough for me to live in, much less grow all of my own food.

Care to throw out another "fact" to support your position?

-- Eric

posted May 04, 2007 02:50 PM            

I really find this beneath you. You are an intelligent man so I'm sure you recognize the use of example in common use.

The point of the matter, is that there is no "population problem". The worlds population could quadruple and there would still be plenty of livable land for every man, woman, and child.

But the truth that pegge and others refuse to accept is that there are evil people in this world who are not at all interested in "playing nice-nice". The UN for example, has sent more than enough food to feed the whole of Africa, but people starve to death there because men do not allow the people access to the provisions. You will never gets these evil people to sit around a campfire and "talk out" their problems. They didn't have bad childhoods that scream therapy will fix. They are intent on one thing and one thing only. Power. If it means they kill hundreds of thousands in the process, it doesn't bother them.

Until people are willing to accept that there are others in this world that do not want "peace" the way you and I do, there never will be peace. Nothing changes these people's desires so the only alternative is to live with them or destroy them. You have to make a choice before they do because I guarantee you won't get a second chance if they choose first.

posted May 04, 2007 02:57 PM            

Sorry, I don't understand what that means.

Whatever it means, you made a statement that can easily demonstrated to be wrong, so I did just that. If you were speaking in hyperbole, you didn't make it clear.

posted May 04, 2007 02:59 PM            

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If you were speaking in hyperbole, you didn't make it clear

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posted May 04, 2007 03:05 PM            

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What's the evidence on how well the two approaches work? Sachs pays surprisingly little attention to the history of aid approaches and results. He seems unaware that his Big Plan is strikingly similar to the early ideas that inspired foreign aid in the 1950s and '60s. Just like Sachs, development planners then identified countries caught in a "poverty trap," did an assessment of how much they would need to make a "big push" out of poverty and into growth, and called upon foreign aid to fill the "financing gap" between countries' own resources and needs. This legacy has influenced the bureaucratic approach to economic development that's been followed ever since -- albeit with some lip service to free markets -- by the World Bank, regional development banks, national aid agencies like USAID and the U.N. development agencies. Spending $2.3 trillion (measured in today's dollars) in aid over the past five decades has left the most aid-intensive regions, like Africa, wallowing in continued stagnation; it's fair to say this approach has not been a great success. (By the way, utopian social engineering does not just fail for the left; in Iraq, it's not working too well now for the right either.)

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posted May 04, 2007 03:22 PM            

Your response to Sach's statement...

Most importantly for us on this crowded planet, facing the challenges of living side by side as never before"

...was...

> The entire population of the world can fit in the smallest
> state in our union and have room enough to grow what they'd
> need to live on. Hence, he isn't very wise about the world's
> population, a fact easily obtainable.

That was your entire rebuttal. I'm not worrying about "exactness" when I say that it's wrong, I mean that it is an absurdly inaccurate claim, and as such it has no relevance to the original statement. If it was meant to be hyperbole -- a gross exaggeration -- I have no idea what point you were trying to make, or how you got to "Hence".

It's funny how off-the-cuff "statistics" like this grow with time. IIRC not long ago somebody in the Cafe claimed that everybody in the world could fit in Texas, and have room for a 1200-square-foot condo for each person. There was no mention of growing food (plus water, power, etc.), and now the claim has grown into living+food in the space of Rhode Island. (Rhode Island is 1/2 of 1% the size of Texas.)

-- Eric

posted May 04, 2007 03:36 PM            

I think an exciting approach to lift people out of poverty might be in "microloans", tiny loans with low interest rates, to people who would not normally qualify for a loan. This gives the people the opportunity to decide how to spend the money, rather than a centralized government who might misuse the money.

You can read more about it here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061013-nobel-peace.html

Personally, I think it sounds like a promising approach (they even won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for their work). I think microloans and good education will go a long way to helping people out of poverty, and might be a new approach to a problem that has plagued us for quite some time.

Anyway, I think it's an idea worth exploring.

Thanks,
Flick
www.globalheavyindustries.com

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posted May 04, 2007 03:41 PM            

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Relative Corruption. Editorial. The Wall Street Journal, 09 Dec 2005
Relative Corruption
Don't let the headline confuse you. We are not referring to the relationship between U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and his enterprising son, Kojo. Instead, we refer to the latest strategy from that famous economist and other-people's-money philanthropist, Jeffrey Sachs, to pry more dollars out of U.S. taxpayers for corrupt African governments.... Recall that the G-7 leaders who gathered in Scotland last July spent most of their time on African poverty. They decided to forgive $50 billion in bad debts to poor nations and to double global aid to the poorest states -- mostly African -- by $50 billion a year by 2010 (and to $150 billion a year by 2015). To allay fears that these billions would wind up enriching another generation of crooked politicians and bureaucrats, a string was attached: Governments specializing in graft would be barred from new disbursements.

The contradiction between a pledge to increase aid to poor countries and a promise to cut off corrupt governments was immediately obvious, even to Sachs. Most of Africa would be automatically disqualified under any system that screens for corruption, as both the World Bank's governance indicators and Transparency International's annual index demonstrate. So Sachs set out to solve the problem.

And as Carnegie Mellon economist Adam Lerrick notes in a paper to be released today by Congress's Joint Economic Committee, the Columbia University economist devised a new rating system to measure corruption in which "African nations are effectively compared mostly to each other." The core of the Sachs argument -- developed in his 2005 book The End of Poverty -- is that poor countries suffer corruption because they are poor. Corruption must be measured not against some absolute standard of honesty but relative to poverty. If a country is less corrupt than should be expected given its level of poverty, it deserves a favorable rating in Sachs's view.

Call this the Lake Wobegon effect for development: Most African countries core impressively under Mr. Sachs's standards. Of the 33 countries surveyed, 26 earn anti-corruption Sachs rankings of "good" or "average." Mr. Lerrick notes, however, that the equivalent rankings by the World Bank of the same 33 are "below average" (nine), "poor" (12) or "very poor" (12). Transparency International, which ranks most, gives them grades of "poor" or "very poor."

All this matters because Mr. Sachs is also the director of the UN Millennium Project, and his favorable ratings for Africa are the intellectual muscle behind a recent report for the UN secretary general on why Africa qualifies for new foreign aid. The UN wants rich countries to spend 0.7% of national income ($250 billion) on aid to the developing world annually. The report also gives the dangerous impression that corruption is under control -- as Irish rock star Bono also did recently on U.S. TV. "The bottom-line argument here in the U.S. is that people didn't believe [aid] was getting to the people that it was supposed to, because of corruption and stuff like that," he told Conan O'Brien this fall. "They didn't want their tax dollars redecorating presidential palaces. We've covered that now." Just like that. Lerrick puts it this way: "How to give wisely, cost-effectively and directly for the benefit of the poor remains the elusive goal." The novel but slippery standard of relative corruption won't help end African poverty.

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Ah, yes, another "do gooder" wanting to do good with other people's
money. He's quite good at keeping his own money for himself, of
course. They always are.

posted May 04, 2007 04:11 PM            

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Why does Africa lag? Here is where the scientific evidence on extreme poverty is vital. The overwhelming non-scientific assumption held in our societies is that Africa suffers mainly from the corruption and mismanagement of its leaders. With the viciousness and despotism of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, it's an understandable view. Yet this seemingly self-evident view is wrong as a generalization. Zimbabwe may get the headlines, but there are many countries in Africa, like Tanzania and Mozambique just nearby, that have talented and freely elected governments struggling against poverty. But they too face great obstacles, and their people too continue to suffer from extreme deprivation.

Consider the fact that nine developing countries - with two in Africa - were tied with exactly the same corruption score in this year's Transparency International index. Specifically, Ghana and Senegal were assessed to be at the same level of corruption as Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Mexico, Peru, and Saudi Arabia. Yet the two African countries have life expectancies of around 56 years, while all but one of the other countries have life expectancies of more than 70 years. On average, for countries with comparable corruption levels, Africa's life expectancy rates are nearly 20 years below the rest of the world's.

Africa's problems are not due mainly to corruption, but to its ecology, history, weak infrastructure, and burgeoning population growth. Moreover, once those underlying sources of extreme poverty and disease are scientifically identified, we can also identify the practical technologies and strategies needed to solve these problems, and thereby enable Africa like the rest of the world to break free of the poverty trap.

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2007/lecture4.shtml

posted May 04, 2007 09:18 PM            

================================================================
Waste not fresh tears over old griefs.
Euripides
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posted May 04, 2007 11:25 PM            

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I got no response.

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Why would you? No offense, but it is silly to suggest that someone commit suicide to solve overpopulation.

Economics 101 tells us that there is a limited supply and unlimited demand. The earth can only sustain so many humans, that is a fact of life. Whether or not we are at that point is certainly debatable, but the fact that we will one day hit that point is not.

Thanks,
Bryan Flick
www.globalheavyindustries.com

posted May 04, 2007 11:29 PM            

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I once listened to a speaker going on (and on and on) about the evil...

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To be fair, I can relate. I have heard my fair share of Americans who go on and on about how grand the Iraq war is. When I point out that the Army has loosened their rules and anyone up to 42 years old can join and serve (and fight and die), I hear nothing but excuses: I have children, I have flat feet, my back is messed up, etc. etc. I have heard my share of people that complain about a problem, and want SOMEONE ELSE to solve the problem, so long as they don't have to do it.

Bottom line: talk is cheap. I always tell those people go sign up or shut up.

Thanks,
Flick
www.globalheavyindustries.com