What's striking to me as an old-timer, though, is how little emphasis the great and the good give to Third World population control these days, as compared to the 1960s and 1970s, when it was a Center-Left obsession.
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, people on the left talked about the need for population control in the Third World all the time. Now, that suggestion seems to be largely off the table, apparently because it’s considered racist.
Yet, it's not like the problems of population growth in Ethiopia have vanished of their own accord.
According to the CIA World Factbook, Ethiopia’s population is over 85 million, up from 32 million in 1975, despite the famous killer famine of the 1980s. Its current total fertility rate is 6.12 babies per woman per lifetime. The annual population growth rate is 3.2%. At that rate of growth, Ethiopia’s population will be over 140 million in just 16 years.
A Voice of America article in 2006:
At an estimated population of 77 million people, Ethiopia is second only to Nigeria – currently sub-Saharan Africa’s most populous nation. And Ethiopia’s population is growing at a rapid pace, adding some two million people every year. Experts are warning the Horn of Africa nation may not be prepared to handle the consequences of such a population boom.
Ethiopian scholar and population expert Sahlu Haile says the situation in his country is grim.
“Drought and famine continue to plaque the country,” he said. “And although the government is investing a considerable amount of resources for social services, including health and education, this is being neutralized by the number of people needing these services. Deforestation, soil erosion and the resulting shortage of rain and water is creating conflict among people who have been living together peacefully for years.”
By the year 2050, the Washington-based Population Reference Bureau says Ethiopia’s population will grow by an astounding 120 percent.
That means in 44 years, the population of Ethiopia is expected to be around 169 million people.
It is this projection that has Sahlu, a senior program advisor at the Packard Foundation, worried – worried about the strain such huge population growth will put on society.
“The environment continues to deteriorate,” he said. “Not only in the vulnerable areas of the highlands of northern Ethiopia but even in the south and southwest of the country, which are considered the breadbasket of the country. A senior government official said because of population pressure, they are obliged to apportion land, not in hectares, but in square meters. He said, and I quote, the situation is ‘dramatic,’ end quote.” ...
But, Sahlu points out the Ethiopian government is beginning to take the issue of overpopulation seriously. He says it has come up with policies to help reduce the birth rate, currently averaging six children per woman in Ethiopia.
One part involves a major public health initiative. Over the next three years, the government has set a goal of bringing family planning services to Ethiopia’s rural areas by providing basic health training to more than 25,000 young women and deploying them to each village in the country.
And the population may indeed be receptive to such a program. Sahlu says nearly 78 percent of married women in Ethiopia either want to space their births or end them altogether.
But, Sahlu says the lack of money for contraceptives presents a serious problem.
“The 2005 contraceptive deficit is estimated at $12 million,” he said. “And if these young girls go out and promote family planning in the countryside, that is only going to aggravate the situation.”
He adds the Ethiopian government has committed itself to cover 50 percent of the cost of contraceptives, a goal, he says, that may not be realistic.
All experts agree that much work remains to be done to address Ethiopia’s high fertility rate. But those efforts are in competition with a number of other important development issues in Ethiopia: food security, basic infrastructure, healthcare and education.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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113 comments:
More liberal cognitive dissonance:
"The eco-pawprint of a pet dog is twice that of a 4.6-litre Land Cruiser driven 10,000 kilometres a year, researchers have found."
According to the CIA World Factbook, Ethiopia’s population is over 85 million, up from 32 million in 1975.
Their population must have been around 40 million during the famous "Do they know it's Christmas" and "We are the World" fund raisers in 1984. Yet contrary to what one would think, their population has doubled despite the famine.
How is this possible?
It is possible because declining populations are a mark of wealth. Specifically, women who live and work on their own, for most of their lives, and have contraception easily available, which they use, to enable career and pursuit of Mr. Big.
The best way to control population is to make it wealthy. Most wealthy yuppie women have one designer eugenic child, increasingly as single mothers. You can construct a regression line between fertility on the one hand and wealth/status of women on the other ("Spengler" at Asian Times had such a graph IIRC). The gap between coastal, wealthy, urban China and the interior as far as fertility goes also comes to mind.
Throwing money at Third World nations for contraception is like bailing the Titanic. What is needed is wealth, which particularly among women makes for sharp and permanent drops in fertility (see also Japan, Italy, Spain, Ireland, the White population of the UK, Germany, and so on).
There has been a massive drop in fertility in the last 40 years. The drop in the third world has been particularly striking.
According to figures released earlier this year [2005] by the UN, global birth rates fell to the lowest level in recorded history with the average woman in the developing world having 2.9 children, down from an average of nearly 6 babies in the 1970s.
http://news.mongabay.com/2005/0502-rhett_butler.html
AIDS is having a major impact in Southern Africa, but not elsewhere.
In Southern Africa, the region with the highest prevalence of the disease, life expectancy has fallen from 62 years in 1990-1995 to 48 years in 2000-2005, and is projected to decrease further to 43 years over the next decade before a slow recovery starts. As a consequence, population growth in the region is expected to stall between 2005 and 2020. In Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland, the population is projected to decrease as deaths outnumber births.
There are problems with burgeoning populations in a few places, as your post shows. But it's just not the global crisis that it used to be.
Food aid to poor countries creates surplus population. The only reasonable solution now is to breed a ferocious predator with a taste for human flesh that inhales CO2 and exhales oxygen, like a killer tomato.
Just imagine old Al might get another Peace Prize. Imagine the degree of peace possible when there are fewer people in the Horn of Africa.
That would be worth some of my tax dollars. I dream of a country with a stable population in the 200 million range. I wouldn't mind paying some of our more persistent illegals money to go away and never comeback and as a bonus permanent sterilization!
I recall attending ZPG meetings as a Iowan pubescent. They were held in places like the Presbyterian Church. Apocalyptic scenarios. We must all sacrifice our fertility for the good of the planet.
And sacrifice our fertility we midwestern boomers -- particularly the more intelligent ones -- did!
Paul Ehrlich be praised!
Now that the boomer fertility has been collapsed into a demographic vacuum to excuse the importation of replacement races from around the world, ZPG is no longer needed.
Hence, the change of its name to PC for, ahem, "Population Connection".
That's got to be a "camp" joke.
Keypusher says:
"There has been a massive drop in fertility in the last 40 years. The drop in the third world has been particularly striking."
In other words, population control has been shown to work, so we're not doing it anymore.
That sounds about right...
At the level of the individual, one can see 6.12 babies/woman making sense in a desperately poor country: children working the fields or hustling the streets, hoped-for security in old age in the absence of pensions, etc. The availability of contraceptives changes the spacing of kids, but I don't believe it has been shown to have a great impact on total fertility. I.e. at least one of the parents wants to have these kids.
These societies full of desperately poor people experience astonishing growth rates. As if the effects of yesterday's and today's poverty -- calorie deprivation, poor diet, dirty water, crowded slums, little medical care, violence -- have only a small effect on tomorrow's numbers.
Ethiopia's poverty isn't severe enough to impose physical limits on population growth. How desperate does desperate have to get before the horrible reality of "carrying capacity" forces an exponential curve to become a horizontal line, or worse?
The last time I recall a major leftist figure addressing overpopulation was when Gro Harlem (Norwegian prime minister and later Director General of the WHO) began some UN conference on the Third World by calling for worldwide unlimited access to birth control and abortion on demand. She was roundly criticised in the Third World and, of course, by Western conservatives!.
After that the only time her name made it to the headlines was when she was talking about a worldwide ban on cigarette advertising.
Fertility control measures can be distressingly dysgenic. The very people you WANT to breed refrain and the least desireable go hog wild.
Some years ago I attended a meeting of a precursor group of VHEMT in Seattle. These were people dedicated to the premise of voluntary human extinction via nonbreeding. EVERY ONE of the people there were what I would call above average in cognitive power, in sense (if misguided) of social responsibility, and most quite attractive, competent seeming people. (In fact I wound up going home with a woman about twenty years older than myself, but still hugely attractive, and having great sex all night.)
People having large families today, on the other hand, tend to be less than bright or attractive in very many cases. Show me 100 big families and I will show you 60 or 70 where one or the other partner is either cognitively challenged or ugly. I have a cousin who married a half-American Indian woman and they had six kids in eight years before he finally wised up and got a vasectomy. He's a college graduate with a stable office job and his home life is a mess. Their two oldest boys are in and out of the juvenile system and he had his oldest daughter Norplanted last week since she has admitted to unprotected sex. She's 14.
I would, in fact, contribute to a free Norplant for black and mestiza girls program. If you Norplant them at 14 or 15, on average, each will have one or two less children than she would otherwise. Couple unlimited Welfare benefits to voluntary and irreversible sterilization for kids under 92-84 IQ and you would have real savings over the long run.
Stating the obvious, over population is something people of color are doing. Better to focus on global warming or some other abstrction lest we seem racist.
During the next Horn of Africa food crisis, we should spike the humanitarian rations with saltpeter.
These were people dedicated to the premise of voluntary human extinction via nonbreeding. EVERY ONE of the people there were what I would call above average in cognitive power, in sense (if misguided) of social responsibility, and most quite attractive, competent seeming people.
Any person vaguely interested in "voluntary human extinction via nonbreeding" is by definition an unattractive, sick individual.
The birthrate has come down, but in many places its still over 2.1 children/woman, so the population is still growing exponentially in those places
Not to worry. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Catholic social services and the Lutherans will invite them to settle in your home town (paid for out of your fewderal taxes), dump them on your county welfare department and pocket the difference.
And the SPLC and the ADL will call you racist if you complain.
Really, though, wouldn't Israel and Vatican City be better places for them to settle?
They are just too, too monocultural.
A batch of Ethiopians (and some Algerians, Moroccans, Somalians and Darfurians thrown in to culturally enrichen the mix) would be just what the doctor ordered.
The population growth is even worse in Afghanistan.
And that's why some argue the US needs to stay there and waste more US lives and money to prevent the young male population from being recruited into the Muslim Wacko Camp.
Great Kevin Myers piece months (year?) ago on this -- in the Irish Independent. Being Europe, he is now being investigated for 'incitement to hate' or whatever the Irish wording is.
Read William Easterly's books on foreign aid -- pretty disillusioning. Given the lack of feedback and accountability for most foreign aid orgs, they'll either flood an area with contraceptives who don't want them (3rd world women who want largish families), or they won't manage to get a measly amount to those who want smaller families.
Here's a laff: Morris Dees coined the phrase "the greening of hate" to denounce the Sierra Club members who opposed unlimited immigration from the third world because of environmental concerns.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0220/p01s04-ussc.html
I still don't undertand the Cathoic Church's stand against artificial birth control.It's stupidity. The church has lost all credibility and that's a good thing since they have been ruining many lives.
To the guy who had the hot woman at the conference, stop bragging.We don't need to know about your fun. I guess some of us are just losers and slaves to the corporations so a few people can have all the fun.
No, Whiskey, successful women are NOT having designer babies as single moms. Hardly anybody does this, it's not a trend, SHUT UP.
Also, I'm on my fourth pregnancy since I started reading isteve. Two live births, one more heading this way. What have you slackers been doing?
Looking at the HDI, I was kind of surprised that sub-Saharan Africa really hasn't developed AT ALL in the past thirty years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Human_Development_Index_trends.svg
Good Lord.
Here is an interesting chart on world population and distribution among the continents from 1750 to the present.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
Obviously you can account for Asia and Europe and later North America by the rise in their economic output. But look at Latin America and Africa. It makes no sense especially in Africa for their population to explode now. One has to be attribute most of this to Western medicine and food aid.
European numbers in decline all others on the rise.
Are we answering the question as to whether IQ is maladaptive?
We humans may yet lose our mortal struggle against the insects for world domination.
Ethiopia is 40% muslim and their fertility is 8
There has been a massive drop in fertility in the last 40 years.
I wonder what role China's one child policy has played in that.
Anyway, this is not unimportant of course. But when counting people, you actually have to count people. And it could be that even though fertility has declined, population growth is still massive.
For example::
The population of the Indian subcontinent, which stood at about 125 million in 1750, had reached 389 million by 1941. The region is currently home to 1.5 billion people.
So even if fertility in India fell by, say, half between 1941 and today, despite that there are still roughly 4x as many people there, and so raw, absolute population growth is still huge (albeit not as huge as it would've been sans fertility decline). And regarding all the concerns around population growth -- food, resources, pollution, habitat destruction -- it's the raw numbers (per capita) that matter.
Whiskey wrote:
" The best way to control population is to make it wealthy."
--------------
Maybe the best way to make a country wealthy is to control population.
" keypusher said...
There has been a massive drop in fertility in the last 40 years. The drop in the third world has been particularly striking....
There are problems with burgeoning populations in a few places, as your post shows. But it's just not the global crisis that it used to be."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
Look at the population given for the continent of Africa. Then, um...admit you were wrong?
Population "in the Third World" is not stabilizing. Population in India is stabilizing...as it gradually becomes less Third-World. Population everywhere in the world is stabilizing - as long as "everywhere in the world" is slowly catching up to the West in economic development. Sub-Saharan Africa is NOT catching up, and its population is not stabilizing. And since Africa is already the second most populous continent on Earth, this deviation from some "overall trend" of stabilization is not exactly negligible.
To me it's one more piece of evidence that the best, most fruitful categorization of humanity is into "sub-Saharan Africans" and "everyone else". What holds true for one half of the species, does not hold true for the other half. For our half of the species, it looks like the big population scare was just that - a scare. But what about Africa?
AIDS is having a major impact in Southern Africa, but not elsewhere.
Bull. We've never been presented with evidence that there is a high rate of AIDS in Southern Africa. The AIDS figures are all estimates (or fabrications) designed to extract money from the US.
Let us stop sending them medicine and food, and their population will plummet in two years. You have my word on that.
We should not allow any of these Ethiopians to immigrate here. Let them feed themselves and medicate themselves. Im all out of sympathy for a starving nation that makes 8 babies per female, counting on the rest of the earth to bail them out.
The coming famine is their own fault. The USA is broke.
Greg mankiw just linked to an article about The Great Gatsby royalties. Coincidence?
Whiskey, when I had my third child in 1996, people thought I had a big family. When I had my fourth in 2002, they thought I had a big family.
Now, just a few years later, at least in my town, four is not a big family.
Five is biggish; three is the most common number; I know two families with seven; pretty much the only people who have one are those who could not have more.
It's a wealthy, socially liberal area, not very religious. People come here to raise their families; the childless stick to the cities. But there are a lot of white, (and sizeable Asian minority - they tend to have two) married, successful, educated, intelligent people having babies because they think they should, and because it makes them happy.
"No, Whiskey, successful women are NOT having designer babies as single moms. Hardly anybody does this, it's not a trend, SHUT UP."
A-freaking-men, lady.
"weirdo said...
""These were people dedicated to the premise of voluntary human extinction via nonbreeding......""
Any person vaguely interested in "voluntary human extinction via nonbreeding" is by definition an unattractive, sick individual."
Seconded. Anyone interested in "voluntary" human extinction - I would tell him to carry on - why wait for that matter - they should get a jump on everyone else and make a personal contribution NOW. Act locally, etc.
How long before such deviant death-cult creeps start to think that "voluntary" is not good enough, and that involuntary human extinction is warranted.
OFF TOPIC QUESTION
Why does the government count "american indians" as a different race from Asians, even thought they are all the same race?
Arabs are lumped in with Europeans as Caucasion race, why wouldn't American Indians be considered Mongoloids?
One of these days some event--war, depression, political turmoil--will cause the West to become unable to send food and medicine to Black Africa.
When that happens, will the Chinese keep the people there fed? I'm guessing probably not. On second thought, make that no. On third thought, hell no.
I wonder what the population of Black Africa would be after a few years of no foreign aid.
In other words, population control has been shown to work, so we're not doing it anymore.
Oh, c'mon. You are the last pundit on earth who is going to think "the great and good in Washington aren't focussing on this, therefore it isn't happening." The fact is, birthrates have come way down.
eh Yes, world population is going to continue to go up for a while. Short of neutering every male in India, that can't be prevented. But the trends are good...in the developed world, of course, it's below-replacement fertility that is now the issue.
Look at the population given for the continent of Africa. Then, um...admit you were wrong?
But I am not wrong. For heaven's sake, look at the chart you posted. Africa's share of world population is about the same that it was in 1750. Maybe 1/5th of Asia's. Yes, it's going up. If present trends continue (and they won't), I'd guess they'll catch Asia in 700 years or so.
You're of course right that there is Africa and then there is every place else. But that has always been so.
There is going to be increased migration pressure into Europe, of course. The Europeans are going to have to figure that out.
"Whatever happened to environmentalists' enthusiasm for 3rd World population control?"
It seems, as several commenters pointed out, that a. most of the "recipients" weren't interested in controlling their population and b. most people don't see it any growth as a problem anymore; quite the opposite.
Why would any patriarchal people want to limit their growth? So long as they remain traditionalist, being submissive rather than dominant (Think of how Americans and Europeans are being taken over; we elected those elites because they offered other liberal goodies we did like) is quite antithetical. They usually don't judge their lives by our standards.
So what about the environmental problems? Easy. They'll try to do what every single like-minded group has done before: take over other people.
I tend to think of "population control" as a coward's war. The intent is annihilation or extermination, but one would rather obfuscate his intent and make it appear high-minded.
"But they'll advance and become more like us if they only they would grow responsibly! We're trying to help and mean no ill will" one might retort. Bull. Their I.Q.s will not change; the less able a people, the more they have to be communal in general and depend on their descendants in their old age.
A shrinking society is painful to us, but would be far more so to them.
Here is an important part of the answer: environmentalists decided to oppose Borlaug's green revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa (after it had already proven successful in Asia and Latin America) in the name of indigenous agriculture:
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/greens-and-hunger/?pagemode=print
The most astonishing thing is that they actually persuaded the Ford and Rockefeller foundations to go along with their view. Genetically modified versions of wheat and rice, you see, were not only foreign to nature but exotic to the region. They would upset the ecological balance. In other words, plants before people. Now that is green!
This is my main moral argument against conservation - it's just making room for more people to crowd in even closer to the subsistence level. Far better to live like men with some cushion in case something goes wrong.
There needs to be a greater emphasis on contraception education in Africa:
"far bigger crisis than global warming. Say good bye to Africa's wildlife as Sub-Saharan Africa's population doubles or more to between 1.5 and 2 billion by 2050.
Sub-Saharan Africa has been experiencing phenomenal population growth since the beginning of the XXth Century, following several centuries of population stagnation attributable to the slave trade and colonization. The region’s population in fact increased from 100 million in 1900 to 770 million in 2005. The latest United Nations projections, published in March 2007, envisaged a figure of 1.5 to 2 billion inhabitants being reached between the present and 2050....
A parallel factor at work is fecundity, equal to or higher than 5 children per woman. This is two to three times higher as in the rest of the world, an important factor being that four out of five African women live in countries where there is little access to contraception. Indeed less than 20% of women use modern contraceptive methods, as against 60% or more in Latin America and Asia."
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/004914.html
"There is going to be increased migration pressure into Europe, of course. The Europeans are going to have to figure that out."
The liberal creationists who run the EU will probably see it as a great way to replace declining populations.
They're clueless about HBD so will assume the populations are just interchangeable.
Gapminder presents, the Bangladesh Miracle.
I started reading Greg Clark's "A Farewell to Alms" a little while ago. He points out that the really large family sizes seen today in the third world are in some sense relatively new (they were in a Malthusian equilibrium in the past). Technological & social improvements are allowing them to sustain higher numbers of children at lower levels of income. They are actually poorer than they used to be on a per capita basis because the population has expanded so much relative to GDP. If we made them poorer it would probably reduce population, though it wouldn't make them less OVERpopulated relative to their resources. Clark also notes that the "demographic transition" seems to have had little to do with birth control technology. Desired number of children is the most important factor. Having large numbers of children die before maturity probably raised that desired number in the past though.
As usual, Whiskey presents no evidence for his point of view. It is predominately poor, uneducated women who become single mothers, not successful ones having designer babies. And female education is more associated with reduced fertility than wealth.
Why does the government count "american indians" as a different race from Asians, even thought they are all the same race?
Arabs are lumped in with Europeans as Caucasion race, why wouldn't American Indians be considered Mongoloids?
Good question. Though I believe the genetic distance between Arabs and Euros is much closer than that between NE Asian Mongoloids and American Indians. The separation between NE Asian Mongoloid and American Indian is estimated to have been about 30,000 years ago.
This reminds me of Garrett Hardin's essay 'Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor'
Garrett Hardin, Psychology Today, September 1974
Environmentalists use the metaphor of the earth as a "spaceship" in trying to persuade countries, industries and people to stop wasting and polluting our natural resources. Since we all share life on this planet, they argue, no single person or institution has the right to destroy, waste, or use more than a fair share of its resources.
But does everyone on earth have an equal right to an equal share of its resources? The spaceship metaphor can be dangerous when used by misguided idealists to justify suicidal policies for sharing our resources through uncontrolled immigration and foreign aid. In their enthusiastic but unrealistic generosity, they confuse the ethics of a spaceship with those of a lifeboat.
A true spaceship would have to be under the control of a captain, since no ship could possibly survive if its course were determined by committee. Spaceship Earth certainly has no captain; the United Nations is merely a toothless tiger, with little power to enforce any policy upon its bickering members.
If we divide the world crudely into rich nations and poor nations, two thirds of them are desperately poor, and only one third comparatively rich, with the United States the wealthiest of all. Metaphorically each rich nation can be seen as a lifeboat full of comparatively rich people. In the ocean outside each lifeboat swim the poor of the world, who would like to get in, or at least to share some of the wealth. What should the lifeboat passengers do?
First, we must recognize the limited capacity of any lifeboat. For example, a nation's land has a limited capacity to support a population and as the current energy crisis has shown us, in some ways we have already exceeded the carrying capacity of our land..."
http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_lifeboat_ethics_case_against_helping_poor.html
Well count me as one of those environmentalists who really wish that the developing and the developed world would stop reproducing so much. I think many global problems could be solved or lessened if we had fewer people to deal with.
The fact is Africa would be better off under the colonial European rule it used to have. Just as blacks are better off in the US than they are in Africa. Even under Jim Crow they were better off than in Africa. "Oppression" by white men is not as bad as what they will do to each other. African countries should contract western companies to run their countries and schools. Rather than elect leaders, they should vote for a company to run their governments. They could then elect a different company to run the country every few years.
Here is how I would limit population growth (domestic and foreign):
1. Norplant or Deporovera shots for all individuals accepting TANF, Section 8, or SSI benefits. To make this gender fair, this should apply to men as well.
2. Child Tax Credit should be limited to 3 children.
3. Foreign Aid should be tied to recipient nations implementing a policy of negative population growth.
The most astonishing thing is that [environmentalists] actually persuaded the Ford and Rockefeller foundations to go along with their view.
What's astonishing about that? The Ford & Rockefeller Foundations have been doing stupid and/or evil things for a very long time.
I give up.
I have no idea from minute to minute and hour to hour what Komment Kontrol is going to approve or disapprove.
It's like a complete crapshoot around here.
it is really staggering to realize what the size of some of these growing third world nations will be in only 10 years.
it really shakes you out of your boots to realize how different the world will be in 2020. the philippines, vietnam, egypt, and the congo, will all be bigger than germany ever was. that's mind boggling stuff.
by 2030 both mexico and the philippines will be bigger than russia. thailand will be bigger than the UK.
how anybody can argue lucidly in favor of continued mass immigration into european nations is beyond me. advocating it at this point is simple political hostility towards european peoples.
The massive numbers of people living on the brink of starvation is overwhelming. I agree that this phenomenon is chiefly caused by foreign aid.
In the pre-industrial era, most Westerners (and Easterners) had high birth rates. However, high infant mortality rates and the lack of significant economic capital placed a limit on how many children were born.
This is why when one reads accounts of the poor before the industrial revolution, ~1830s, one learns of many living at the level of bare subsistence. However, the phenomenon of millions living at this level was unknown.
This may sound coarse, but I think if the poor in these countries were allowed to fend for themselves, a Malthusian scenario would ensue, and the population would diminish to a level consistent with their food supply and economic capital. It is the foreign aid which keeps millions on the brink of starvation.
-Victor
Here is how I would limit population growth (domestic and foreign)...Child Tax Credit should be limited to 3 children. - Pissed Off Chinaman
Ummm...immigration? What's immigration's contribution to US population growth, like 70%? Overall, ethnically European countries would not have growing populations were it not for immigration.
Steve, in general Ethiopian women are rather cute in the eyes of western men.
Generally, they do NOT resemble west-African women (where most of America's blacks originate), in terms of either facial physignominy or body muscalture.
- Their features are lot softer and gentler, this being due to the absorbtion of much caucasian blood in millenia past.I write this because there are quite a few attractive Ethiopian women on the streets of London, England.Most Ethipians are orthodox christian.
They have soft and gentle voices too.
Recenty many internet sites featuring 'Ethiopian brides' have popped up.I can envisage succesful inter-marriage and assimilation between Ethiopian women and White men.
I cannot say the same for Nigerians however - the physical differences are just too great.
I saw a movie about the life of the great Ethiopian runner Haile Gebrsellaise, in which he played himself. The scenes of his youth on a farm in the highlands could have been out of a movie about the Old Testament. Very patriarchal family, everybody working hard on the farm, etc. it seemed as Semitic as it did African. At that altitude, the climate and crops are more like the Fertile Crescent than like the tropics. The highlanders consider themselves direct descendants of the Queen of Sheba, so it all fits together.
The Vatican City, monocultural? Maybe, if you consider the fact that all its residents are Catholics. But in terms of ethnicity, how could you possibly consider it "monocultural"?
1. Norplant or Deporovera shots for all individuals accepting TANF, Section 8, or SSI benefits. To make this gender fair, this should apply to men as well.
Norplant for men? Has that even been clinically tested? I don't know of any chemical BC for men on the market ... nor any medium-term solutions. Condoms, or vasectomies, no in-between.
Looking at the HDI, I was kind of surprised that sub-Saharan Africa really hasn't developed AT ALL in the past thirty years.
Then there must be a mistake.
For a start parasitic whites have been displaced in SA. Without them holding down the blacks, who we were always assured were the real source of South African wealth, the economy should have let rip.
Then we have the collapse of government in places like Sierra Leone. What with the local individualists empowered and wealthy white libertarians flocking there as immigrants everything should be going a storm.
Whatever ideas any of us come up with about what should be done is just the opposite of what the ruling elite WILL do.
Jody wrote, "advocating [continued mass immigration] at this point is simple political hostility towards european peoples."
Seemingly unrelated, the iconoclastic and sensible lefty labor-law professor Steve Diamond has written another post on his bete noir, Wee Willy Ayers. (Diamond's 2008 posts at his old blog Global Labor and Politics are back online; they are a trove of information and context on America's Favorite Terrorist. More Diamond in the comments of this old post.)
At King Harvest, Diamond writes,
--- begin excerpt ---
Multiculturalism, of course, is a theme dear to the heart of Bill Ayers. His most recent book co-authored with his wife and Weather Underground comrade Bernardine Dohrn argues that the original sin of American life is white supremacy and that this continues to be central to what ails this country.
Ayers has been peddling a heavily racialized, even racist, view of American life since his days in the SDS and Weather Underground in the late 1960s.
--- end excerpt ---
Last October's petition of support (printed in the Wall Street Journal) gives a sense of the Establishment's admiration of Ayers' views:
--- begin excerpt ---
We, the UIC College of Education Alumni Board, write to champion our colleague Prof. William Ayers. Mr. Ayers is a Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, a nationally known scholar and Vice President-elect of the American Educational Research Association. Throughout his 20 years at UIC...
We reject the recent and ongoing derogations of his character, and stand beside Prof. Ayers, an advocate for education devoted to human enlightenment and liberation. That goal is also ours.
--- end excerpt ---
The promotion of mass immigration by all means necessary fits beautifully into the worldview of large swathes of the cognitive elite, including those in charge of liberal-arts colleges and professional schools.
More stuff that white people like, and it doesn't get much whiter than Ayers and his chums.
Sub-Saharan Africa has been sparsely populated for a very long time due to its relative lack of industrial development. If it were to reach the population density of most of the rest of the world ... exhibited by India, Europe, and Southeast Asia ... there could easily be 6 to 10 billion people living south of the Sahara.
maybe someone very rich will have to dscreetly implement a rational policy in africa:
universal free contraception, empower women to make choices re family size, pay women with 2 children to get their tubes tied, clear and tangible rewards for declining fertility.
Anybody remember the organization called Zero Population Growth? Ever wonder what happened to it?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Population Connection is an organization in the United States, formerly known as Zero Population Growth. They adopted their current name in 2002. Zero Population Growth was originally founded in 1968 by Paul R. Ehrlich, Richard Bowers, and Charles Remington, in the wake of the impact from Ehrlich's best-selling book, The Population Bomb.
Population Connection started educating young people nearly forty years ago with their Population Education program. They also advocate for action to stabilize the world population through voluntary measures, primarily through increased access to reproductive health services and supplies. Their mission statement is as follows:
Overpopulation threatens the quality of life for people everywhere. Population Connection is the national grassroots population organization that educates young people and advocates progressive action to stabilize world population at a level that can be sustained by Earth's resources.
Population Connection has 34,000 members who provide the majority of the organization's revenue. The organization's headquarters is in Washington, D.C. Population Connection works on issues concerning overpopulation, the environment, poverty, and reproductive rights, and publishes a quarterly magazine, The Reporter.
Population Connection supporters live nationwide. The organization has six chapters, located in California and Florida.
Double the Money is Population Connection's campaign to increase funding for international family planning to $1 billion. The United States appropriated $545 million for FY2009. Population Connection lobbies to end federal funding for abstinence-only sex education programs in the United States.
On May 7, 1994, the group officially abandoned the policy of advocating reduced immigration to the U.S. as a method of limiting population growth. Its newly adopted policy states:
It is Population Connection's view that immigration pressures on the U.S. population are best relieved by addressing factors which compel people to leave their homes and families and emigrate to the United States.
....
I especially liked the last paragraph.
- Black Death
Anon. said
> A shrinking society is painful to us, but would be far more so to them. <
If it's us v. them, I'm for us. And you're against us.
Actually as other commenters have observed foreign aid keeps an ever-larger number of people on the brink of starvation, quantitatively increasing human misery, like an anti-utilitarianism.
Dahl, wonderful comment. The wannabee swipples where I live have more dogs than Ellie May had critters ("Bevery Hillbillies" reference). But, they have bumper stickers rooting for Obummer and one that states "If you love America, GET RID OF YOUR SUV." It's on the back of an SUV, though...
Anon. said
> Their population must have been around 40 million during the famous "Do they know it's Christmas" and "We are the World" fund raisers in 1984. Yet contrary to what one would think, their population has doubled despite the famine.
How is this possible? <
Those fundraisers must have been successful.
I can't believe people actually think that without western aid, Ethiopia as a whole would just dry up. For the most part, vast reaches of the country never see that aid. The real reason ethiopia has risen in population and will continue to do so is because the land supports it. There are large parts of ethiopia that have temperate climate suitable for great agriculture. The great ethiopian famine of the 1980's was was really limited to a few districts and only became severe to those districts because of a drought and war in the region.
If you guys really want to help limit population overgrowth in the 3rd world, stop buying items, especially agriculture, from them.
Every iSteve reader should start by not consuming chocolate and coffee. Both items are only grown in 3rd world countries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee#Production
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate#Production
Every time you drink a bag's worth of coffee or 100 pounds of chocolate, you're allowing one 3rd world women to be come impregnated and have a child.
I like the Ethiopians. They get a bad rap and lumped in with the rest of sub-Saharan Africa because of their current bad state, but they actually have a lot to be proud of historically. The fact that a good chunk of the country is highlands makes it more Near Eastern than tropical in climate, and the early Ethiopians developed agriculture independently and domesticated a lot of interesting grains (like the one that they make injera bread out of) that you don't really see anywhere else. They evolved from a tribal orientation to nation-state/kingdom much earlier than most of their neighbors, had a literate priesthood and fairly sophisticated art, and were the only sub-Saharan African country to successfully resist European imperialism.
As other commenters have pointed out, they're (to Western eyes) a graceful, good-looking people (not from white admixture but simply from being largely non Bantu) with cultural mores that again feel more Near Eastern than tropical.
That said, perhaps 80 million of them is a bit excessive. I wish the Ethiopians well in getting their population under control. As an environmentalist, I'm particularly interested in the survival of the Ethiopian wolf, Africa's only native wolf and a highly endangered animal. And 150 million Ethiopians = no more wolves.
The left talked about the 3rd world because they, as Soviet Puppets, were supporting their master. The good guys were always the Soviet supported stooges, the bad guys were everyone else. Ever since Lenin and maybe before the Left has presented itself using the language of humanitarianism. They never mention Africa now because they never cared about the actual people in the first place. Actually, Africa is only mentioned now as part of the Left's continuing attempt to destroy Christianity.
When a country adopts a contraceptive mentality, it dies. Look at Europe, Japan, South Korea, and whites in America. Why would Ethiopia want to do that?
Ethiopia's real problem is its government's habit of becoming a proxy in ideological wars. Under the Soviet-backed Mengistu regime's Marxism, the man-made famine struck; it ended when Mengistu was toppled. In recent years, the country has bankrupted itself as a U.S. proxy in Somalia, and in periodic wars with Eritrea.
Other problems: It accepts foreign aid, which goes to the corrupt ruling regime. And it's 80% dependent on commodities, whose values have swung wildly because the world isn't on the gold standard.
Ethiopia would be OK if it adopted peace and capitalism at the same time. The U.S. can "help" by ending all foreign aid, ending the proxy wars, and re-establishing the gold standard.
Steve Sailer:
At that altitude, the climate and crops are more like the Fertile Crescent than like the tropics.
Which could explain why Ethiopia was one of the first nations to convert to Christianity. Ethiopia is certainly closer the Middle Eastern than Sweden or Lithuania.
I concur about the attractiveness of Ethiopian women. Besides pleasant features many have outstanding figures -- I'll say no more here, but that I believe this is the real reason Italian fascists wanted Ethiopia for a colony. Italian males are notorious breast fetishists.
No, Whiskey, successful women are NOT having designer babies as single moms. Hardly anybody does this, it's not a trend, SHUT UP.
That's going to come as a HUGE shock to some of my wife's female friends and business associates. Especially the single, never married lawyer who is a partner at a law firm and DIDN'T conceive two daughters through artificial insemination in her late 30's.
Nope, you're right, college educated single women aren't delaying marriage and childbirth and having children as single moms.
The modern consensus is that we understand how demographic transition works, that it's happening and that there really isn't anything that we can do to speed the process which we know will not have adverse effects and which is also ethical. And, yeah, the racist thing, but that's only part, and it's only because they think that demographic transition's gonna happen anyway. Otherwise they'd totally finagle their way out of it with practiced Leftist sophistry.
See - http://www.gapminder.org/videos/what-stops-population-growth/
Yeah, I wish foreign countries had gone through demographic transition at the same time as European and American and East Asian populations, so the Euro and Aisan ethnies would have a high relative share of the future resources and population, but doesn't look like there's anything moral that can be done about it and Third World growth seems like it's reducing anyway so that one'll just have to be accepted.
One thing I think the Greens should get on side with is opposing immigration.
Witness:
Your average Third Worlder consumes far more resources in the West than in his native country while a) not having that much better a life expectancy and b) not going through any more of a demographic transition in number of children than in his native country. Third Worlders even even go through it better in their native land, if the examples of Mexico and the US and Bangladesh and the UK are to be believed.
Now, since Western overconsumption is what Greens claim drives the problem, rather than Third World population growth, the ideal is to limit Western population growth and population to limit the number of Western consumers, who each have an effect many times (even to many hundreds of times) larger than that of Third Worlders. As the only population growth in the West is from immigration, this is obviously what should go.
Well Mark, while I favor restricting immigration for environmental reasons I did not list it since my comment was about reducing global levels of population, not just the growth rate in the United States. In any case, it is my position that improved conditions in the developing world as a result of population decrease will end up reducing the number of people who wish to immigrate to the U.S.
Let's imagine a Boomer who lives to be 100. Born in 1950, dies in 2050.
According to Wikipedia (and according to current guesstimates), this Boomer will see world population nearly quadruple in his lifetime:
1950: world population 2.5 billion
2050: world population 9.7 billon
That's some pretty impressive growth.
"Let's imagine a Boomer who lives to be 100. Born in 1950, dies in 2050."
I actually dread the thought of being assisted in my old age by blacks and Mexicans. Two of my elderly relatives who were big shot DC bureaucrats in their prime complain constantly about black visiting nurses, who watch the clock, and do things like make lunch for an 86 year old wife but then refuse to do so for the 90 year old husband "cause dat ain't in my mah job description." How much effort does it take to spread some goddam liverwurst on a slice of bread?
NAMs will end up literally burying the White race in America -- since there are no more White ditch diggers. I am going to demand that my children personally bury me if they want the inheritance.
Of course Ethiopia is one of the oldest established Orthodox christian nations.
As Russia has traditionally taken the role of the defender of orthodox christians everywhere in the world, it is surprising that Russia has never really made Ethiopia a protege.
Some Cossacks attempted to conquer Ethiopia around 1898. The Czarist government apologized and pushed for a Russian-Abyssynian special relationship based on religion.
Anonymous wrote, "Anybody remember the organization called Zero Population Growth? Ever wonder what happened to it?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.....:"
I wonder if Zero Population Growth was bought out by a fabulously wealthy Jewish mathametician. This is what happened to the Sierra Club.
Great Kevin Myers piece months (year?) ago on this -- in the Irish Independent.
One of the most incisive columns I've ever read.
"How much morality is there in saving an Ethiopian child from starvation today, for it to survive to a life of brutal circumcision, poverty, hunger, violence and sexual abuse, resulting in another half-dozen such wide-eyed children, with comparably jolly little lives ahead of them? Of course, it might make you feel better, which is a prime reason for so much charity. But that is not good enough.
For self-serving generosity has been one of the curses of Africa. It has sustained political systems which would otherwise have collapsed."
it's not true that 100% of US population growth is from immigration. the african and mestizo population is growing on it's own. black americans have about 3 kids, mestizos more. also, they have kids sooner. as steve has pointed out, this means their population grows rapidly. if they have their first kids 6 years sooner than europeans, then it only takes 18 years for them to have produced 1 entire extra generation.
18 + 18 + 18 = 64
24 + 24 = 64
also, arab muslims in the US have 3 kids or more, too. there are not enough of them matter (yet).
the democrat party in the future will be wild. multiple groups, with nothing in common, at each other's throats, united only against the dwindling number of white males.
i wonder how long liberal white males will continue to participate in the democrat party until even the most dense among them realizes everybody else in the party hates them, and them specifically.
oops. goofed the math there. was working on something else in another window. should have been something like this:
16 + 16 + 16 = 48
24 + 24 = 48
that's probably the 1980 version of the numbers. the 2010 version would be more like:
20 + 20 + 20 = 60
30 + 30 = 60
Without immigration US population would be falling. All growth is from immigration.
I wonder about that. Without immigration (especially from Mestizos) homes in neighborhoods with "good schools" (wink, wink)would be cheaper, and that's probably one of the biggest factors in when couples decide to have kids and how many they wind up having.
Well Mark, while I favor restricting immigration for environmental reasons I did not list it since my comment was about reducing global levels of population
Just checking, for consistencies sake, but...there is no such thing as a global tax credit for children. That is part of the United States tax code. There's almost nothing we can do globally to reduce population that will work for a certainty. The only control we have is over what happens in this country, and the biggest part of that is immigration policy.
Well Mark I disagree. I think we can do many things to help reduce global population levels.
1) Distribute free birth control through the UN and other international organizations (in the long run the cost is worth it)
2) Tie foreign and development aide to population reduction.
3) Promote female social equality
4) Offer other goodies for low population growth (immigration, trade treaties....etc)
Oh and to the Anonymous who is an environmentalist, I concur with your entire post.
According to UN data the number of people in the 0-4 age group had been going down since 1990. Recent numbers show an up tick of about 7 million in 2005.
I guess it doesn't take long for those with high birth rates to compensate for the falling rates in the other countries.
"it's not true that 100% of US population growth is from immigration. the african and mestizo population is growing on it's own. black americans have about 3 kids, mestizos more."
Sorry, you are mistaken. Not your fault really. The way the census counts population obscures it.
All growth in US population is from immigration.
When an American has a baby that counts as one new American. When and immigrant moves to the US and has two kids, that counts as one immigrant and two new Americans.
So according to census figures that would be three new Americans and one immigrant. When in fact it is more like three immigrants and one new American.
This is creative accounting. Technically, the kids of immigrants are native born. Without immigrants and their children, US population would be falling at least in the under 18 age group if not as a whole.
As for whether people whose great grandparents were born here would have more children if there weren't so many immigrants, that is pure speculation. I am just looking at numbers, not speculating as to what people would have chosen if things had been different.
Jody is right: The number of children a woman has is important but the age at which she has them is also important. If we control for 2 children per woman spaced 2 years apart - replacement level - and make generation A 18 years and generation B 30 years, and assume death in their early 80's, then woman A will have 30 descendants at her death and woman B will have 6. Of course, not all of A's children will have 2 children starting at 18. OTOH, neither of B's children may ever have children.
FWIW, there is a group called Negative Population Growth (NPG) and they most certainly do understand the immigration connection. I stopped giving to ZPG/Population Connection years ago and give to NPG instead.
"Anonymous said...
Of course Ethiopia is one of the oldest established Orthodox christian nations.
As Russia has traditionally taken the role of the defender of orthodox christians everywhere in the world, it is surprising that Russia has never really made Ethiopia a protege."
Russia hasn't, but the USSR supported Mengistu Haile Mariam's communist regime in Ethiopia in the 70s and 80s. That was just a communist / cold-war struggle affair, however.
doucebag,
Where does the foreign aid go, then? When I send my nickel to Sally Struthers, does it not go to that little boy I see on TV?
If the foreign aid mentality isn't ruining the world, it's not from lack of trying.
Well Mark I disagree. I think we can do many things to help reduce global population levels.
Well I agree with most of those. They probably work to some degree. But there is only one thing the US can do that is guaranteed to reduce population growth here or anywhere and that is reduced immigration.
But judging from your point #4 you still don't support that idea. Why should countries be allowed to send immigrants here for reducing their popualtion growth?
I wonder what the relation between Somalis and Ethiopians is. Are the former an offshoot of the latter or vice versa? There are clearly ethnic differences between the two groups, but they do seem to be as close to each other as the various Bantu groups are to each other.
Here's a Somali woman:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSi_eLCym_c
What evidence is there by the way that Ethiopian Amhara/Habisha people are mixed in any way? Perhaps they're the ones from whom Caucasoids are descended.
NAMs will end up literally burying the White race in America -- since there are no more White ditch diggers. I am going to demand that my children personally bury me if they want the inheritance.
What an utterly mean-spirited statement! From the grave, you are planning to show your contempt for NAMs, as if their burying your dead body will sully the dignity of your interment.
Many of you complain about mainstream people's rejection of HBD. Perhaps they are rejecting you instead. Your ostensible anger, contempt, and mean-spiritedness are pushing away decent-minded people. If you guys would tone down the meanness, maybe people will actually give ear to your HBD claims.
"Nope, you're right, college educated single women aren't delaying marriage and childbirth and having children as single moms."
Not in any numbers that matter, you moron. Whiskey's thing is to constantly bitch like the super beta he is about what women prefer, which turns out to be NOT comic book reading nerds, so this has left him very disgruntled. He also posts his rubbish on Nikki Finke's site, basically bemoaning the fact that Hollywood doesn't make more contemptibly stupid science fiction and comic book material for him to wallow in. It's just pathetic, the guy really needs to get laid AND HOW.
Mark,
I do support reduced levels of immigration to the United States but I just don't see how reducing immigration will lower WORLD population. All it does is shift the population problem to another region of the world.
POC,
>>>
I do support reduced levels of immigration to the United States but I just don't see how reducing immigration will lower WORLD population. All it does is shift the population problem to another region of the world.
>>>
No--immigration is what shifts the population pressure from the countries which create the problem (the Third World) to those which do not. A tight restriction on immigration and ending foreign aid would STOP shifting the problem away from those who rightly should be held responsible for it. How the problem gets solved after that point is entirely on the heads of those who made it.
I wonder how limiting immigration in the US will affect the stability of the immigrants' home countries. The US economy sends tons of money to El Salvador and Mexico and such, in the form of remittances. We also take a big pool of ambitious risk-taking unemployed men, who would otherwise be available for rioting and other social unrest.
"Pissed Off Chinaman said...
Mark,
I do support reduced levels of immigration to the United States but I just don't see how reducing immigration will lower WORLD population. All it does is shift the population problem to another region of the world."
Yeah, it shifts the problem to the part of the world whose problem it is. I don't care if Africa is overpopulated - that's their own damned fault. We should stop sending them foreign aid - that might help. Other than that - their problem, their concern.
I do support reduced levels of immigration to the United States but I just don't see how reducing immigration will lower WORLD population. All it does is shift the population problem to another region of the world.
1) It seems we mostly see eye-to-eye...
2) ...however, immigrant birthrates soar after they arrive in the US. Immigrant Hispanic women average around 3.7 children, significantly higher than the birthrate in Mexcio (and the birthrate here). So it is not just a population shift.
3) To reiterate, I agree with contributing to family planning program worldwide, stressing women's rights, etc...
4) ...however, the only way to reduce population growth that is guaranteed to work is reduced immigration. It is 100% effective.
Well I for one do care about population pressures across the world because such pressures will eventually become our problem, even if we manage to wall in the country like a lot of ya'll wish to do.
1) Instability tends to spill over from their original source regions and affect other nations...like Somalian Pirates for example.
2) Deforestation in Africa and South America has a negative environmental effects: top soil erosion, climate change....etc
3) Ecosystem diversity...I find it hard to accept that you folks would accept mass extinctions of so many plant and animal species.
That is why I want to see WORLD population reduced, not just American population levels. While cutting off foreign aide may lead to a population equlibrium at some point, it is the time period before that point is reached which concerns me. It would be nice if we could reach that point without making huge swathes of the earth a barren wasteland.
Mark, the high Hispanic birthrate is a result of Latin America exporting its underclass to the United States to insure regime stability. I concur that this situation needs to end. However, if we had an immigration policy that among other things attempted to control the populace levels of other nations, it is my position that in the long run we would get better immigration and less of it.
"however, the only way to reduce population growth that is guaranteed to work is reduced immigration. It is 100% effective."
Mark, that should be amended to:
"the only way to reduce population growth IN THE UNITED STATES..."
I agree, I just don't think reducing population growth in the US is sufficient. I'd like to see a global negative population growth rate....especially in the developing world.
"No--immigration is what shifts the population pressure from the countries which create the problem (the Third World) to those which do not."
So the third world nations are the ones that create "the problem"
Huh?
Truth,
While you and I are normally on the same wavelength, the garbage patch is not so much a population problem as it is a problem of consumption and waste.
See I think our global environmental problems are a function of two large issues:
1. Overconsumption in the developed world
2. Overpopulation in the developing world
Both issues need to be addressed.
"Pissed Off Chinaman said...
1) Instability tends to spill over from their original source regions and affect other nations...like Somalian Pirates for example."
A problem easily solved by equipping commercial ships with a few .50 caliber machineguns.
"2) Deforestation in Africa and South America has a negative environmental effects: top soil erosion, climate change....etc"
I'm sure we'll manage.
"3) Ecosystem diversity...I find it hard to accept that you folks would accept mass extinctions of so many plant and animal species."
Let them hunt every last exotic species on their continents to extinction. Then when the environmentalist retards start bloviating about how awful western civilization is, we can point them to Africa and South America as an example of how those spiritually tuned-in, eco-friendly brown people do things.
"However, if we had an immigration policy that among other things attempted to control the populace levels of other nations, it is my position that in the long run we would get better immigration and less of it."
The world already mostly hates us (and by us I mean Americans, which you apparently are not) for telling them how to run their affairs. Imagine how much they'll hate us if we try to regulate their population.
What western civilization needs now is a good dose of callousness. Not the "we're here to help you" callousness that we now practice - the kind that is deeply concerned whether native women can vote, when we're not cluster-bombing them and their families. I mean the old fashioned "you can all go to hell" kind of callousness, where I don't give a damn about you and you're on your own. It's better for us.
>Overconsumption in the developed world.
Obvious nonsense. The developed world produces far more than it consumes. You have about as much grasp of the subject matter as Testing99 does of Game.
You are right P.O.C, but consumption and waste by whom?
What I do not think the posters upon this site do is to look at both sides of the issue;
The constant gestalt here is "what will become this world if the white people disappear?" My question, taking into advisement, climate change, peak oil, garbage build up, melting polar ice caps, etc. is, "what will become of this world if they do not?"
White people are not "smarter" than others, they are "more clever" so to speak.
There are stories from Africa to ancient America about how confounded the locals where about the treatment of the local environment by "the newcomers." Native Americans were generally dumbfounded as to why whites would not just kill a buffalo for food, but slaughter an entire herd for sport.
Therefore, nowadays, there are no more buffalo, there are 2000 lb. housecats that look like them.
"Native Americans were generally dumbfounded as to why whites would not just kill a buffalo for food, but slaughter an entire herd for sport."
Twoof reveals his abysmal ignorance yet again.
Truth,
Unlike the smallpox blankets myth, killing off so many buffalo may have been genocidal: starve the enemy. Or it might have been to force the natives into settled agriculture, or just an accident. Not exterminating appealing flora and fauna is a fairly recent thing. I for one have always wanted to eat both dodo and moa birds, it is a shame I can't.
I'm not big on either native or ancient wisdom, but Mann convinced me that Indians shaped big chunks of North and South America for their purposes. Without people maintaining the grassland for herds, the buffalo population might have crashed on it's own.
I think the biocon right and the blank slate left don't share enough assumptions to have a productive discussion on development. Agreeing on facts is the first step towards deciding appropriate policies. It doesn't help that biorealist conservatives get guilt by association from both the more-babies-for-Jesus conservatives, and the genocidal stormfront fringe that also thinks (some variety of) hbd is true.
Evolcons look like we're somewhere on the hypocrite-evil spectrum to those who don't share our axioms. We think that a larger white population relative to third world population is good for the third world. The left thinks the third world is poor because the west exploits them. More exploiters means worse lives for the exploited, and a smaller white population would make the undeveloped world better off.
As Steve implied, thinking that limits to population exist was a liberal belief thirty or forty years ago. That was before the left decided playing "You're a racist!" was more fun than preventing black people from dying of hunger. Liberals are also torn between believing in the white man's burden and thinking it's racist.
Bob, yes there are still buffalo. Just not many.
Ah crap, sorry kudzu bob. Thought you were arguing something you weren't.
We slaughter cows, but not with abandon. Looks like Head Smashed In was an Indian slaughterhouse. Indians did not hunt buffalo to near extinction. I do grant that this may have been the result of inability rather than foresight. This can be proved by citing the huge numbers of buffalo when we came.
I do wonder if part of the buffalo decline attributed directly to whites wasn't the result of Indians hunting more efficiently with horses, guns, and metal. Spike in predator ->decline of prey.
Oh, so people without metal weapons came up with an innovative way to kill dangerous 2,000lb beasts and actually feed their families. And these "Buffalo Jump" led to the near extinction of the buffalo we have today.
Once again, Bob, you have shown me your superior intellect. Someday I will have to learn my place around here.
More time is spent in grade school covering the near extinction of bison than almost any subject of significance (see also Harriet Tubman). Classrooms have been inane for decades, but I suppose since it's just nine year olds it doesn't matter too much. Most of them don't retain much more than a cartoon impression, Elmer Fudd hunting buffalo or something.
Twoof believes that when white men shoot herds of buffalo it's "slaughter," but when Indians stampede a herd of them over a cliff, then it's really "innovation."
It was "innovation" like that that likely brought about the extinction of North America's Pleistocene megafauna, Twoof.
> What an utterly mean-spirited statement! From the grave, you are planning to show your contempt for NAMs, as if their burying your dead body will sully the dignity of your interment. <
What an utterly asinine and offensive statement! Are you so uneducated as not to know that a dignified Hindu family, as example, would insist or prefer a Hindu burial service and not a Holy Roller service conducted by Appalachian yahoos (hint: they are white)? Same goes for Russian Orthodox, Chinese, et al. Do they - or does a Jew - want an AMC Baptist eulogizing? (Hint: they are usually black.) Short answer: no.
I guess they're all mean-spirited racists, having their own cultures and all. But what happened to "cultural diversity"? Ah, swipples like you don't really give a s--t about cultures. It's all about dumping on whites and the feeling of phony supremacy when you morally preen for doing so.
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