Christian Fundamentalists Caught Torturing Children to Death

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

Given the massive population disparity something like per capita would be more relevant. Wiki (using the UK socialist party as their source) quotes a fifth of the population were slaves before emancipation- do you have any comparable levels for Europe?

Huh? Once again, we are talking about sex slavery here, not slavery in general. How is any of this relevant?

Except if it is required than there is no reason to have religious institutions.

However, there is no objective reason not to have them either.

How do you want me to seperate out religious from secular rationales?

Up to you. Its your statement, you can quantify it any way you want.

The US only started teaching evolution again because the USSR looked like it was overtaking us. I'd consider a movement that actively sabotages the educational system bad.

What...You mean that, that...pragmatic concerns trumped religious idiocy like they have done throughout history!?!?! OH THE HUMANITY!!!!

How does this prove much of anything?

It is rare. Only 3.5 other African nations have the death penalty for being gay

That's more than enough to establish a generally anti-homosexual trend in African culture. As I said, such attitudes are hardly uncommon outside of the "developed" world.

Why? If brothels are required to be registered and are regularly inspected, how can you hide as easily as when there is no supervision and the slaves stay silent for fear of being kicked out of the country?

A) It is easier for the illegal prostitutes to blend in with the legal ones.

B) Paper work can always be forged, and restrictions always worked around in any bureaucratic system.

Once again man, this is all empirically proven fact. The figures are readily available online. Nit picking at my arguments isn't going to change this.

If the industry is illegal, can't they charge higher prices?

Who takes in more money; a disease ridden street walker hiding in the shadows, or a high traffick red light district?

So it is imperialistic... because it makes problems easier for those who are being helped so they have less need for handouts in the future?

Is it? I haven't seen any objective benefits come out of population control efforts in the Third World. Once again, I'm not denying that a reduction in birth rates might help.

However, the fact of the matter remains that the Third World's primary problems aren't related to population growth, but botched economics and failed governments.

Europe has even more people than the US and has also outsourced manufacturing jobs. Care to try again?

Because Europe is bigger than the United States. Besides, its population is in wholesale decline. Would you care to try again?

[eyl]

Secular confession would be... tricky. The closest we have to that today is the psychiatric community, and they don't quite do the job, because of the implication that to go to them you have to have a mental illness. Most people are reluctant to admit that there's anything fundamentally wrong with their mind unless you spend their whole life drilling the idea that they do into them (which is, come to think of it, how Catholicism does it... sort of).

To replace the functional aspect of confessors, you need something that is at least as low-pressure as they are: you can talk to them, and they may drop some burden on you, but you don't have to either say or express the belief that you are a worse human being than the average person who comes in. Because even if you are, and you know it, the desire not to admit that you're a bad person will kill your willingness to get a load of your chest by admitting that you've done something wrong.

No one really wants to be judged by someone they know will be judgmental, and who won't be moved by whatever extenuating circumstances or special pleas they feel would justify their own actions. So at the very least you need the perception of sympathy between the confessor and the person confessing for the system to work.

Another aspect (pardon if soemone already brought it up and I missed it) is cost. How much does it cost to confess to a priest vs. seeing a psychiatrist? I'm not familiar with the fromer, but I suspect it's much cheaper (the only cost is a voluntary donation, no?). In that case, a priest, whatever his limits, may be the only form of therapy poorer people can afford

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

Whatever Stas. I don't really understand why you're being so prickly about this particular point, but I'm conceding it simply because I don't see any point in arguing about what should be perfectly obvious.

Europe tends to be more liberal about sex and prostitution. Period. Okay? Saying much more than that about the issue isn't relevant to the primarily religious-centric "cost-benefit-analysis" debate we are having here.

[eyl]

I'm doubting the Israelites would have seen any reason to have water clocks or sundials, but yes, I am aware they existed. I minored in classical culture in my undergrad. And yes, you can make an estimation, but this method makes a big deal of it being completely regular, on the clock, etc. If the baby cries and it's not the set hour, ignore him. Etc.

Not to derail the thread, but there were sundails in Judea during the 2nd temple period. They might have been brought over by the Romans, but I also seem to remember mention of a sundail somewhere in the OT (in connection with one of the Judean kings, I'll see if I can track down the reference later).

[Channel72]

Then you can show it in statistical correlation. Is Germany leading by porn actresses or porn actors per capita? By porn movies per capita, or by bulk porn movies made - which would show the consumption of porn - relative to other nations?

We're really getting sidetracked here. The Adult Entertainment industry isn't really important. Peter's originally comment was:

Fixed it for you. Video games, movies, books, TV- all these fall to the same logic.

That was actually my point. How is the Catholic Priesthood in any way more wasteful than any of these other excesses which we currently view as being essential to modern secular society?

So he's claiming that the Catholic Church is no more of an indulgence (heh...) than any other entertainment-related aspect of modern society. I think the best rebuttal here, is that firstly, the adult-entertainment industry, or just the entertainment industry in general, provides a service and justifies it's own existence by paying taxes to society. Secondly, I think Peter seriously underestimates the overall negative impact of the Catholic Church on Western civilization as a whole, in terms of social, philisophical, and scientific retardation, that is a direct consequence of the Church's insistence on it's own unquestionable, absolute authority over the fate of mankind.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Just to clear one thing up here, you do realize that I didn't write this thing, right? Take it up with the BBC.

You posted it, you are responsible for its contents.

Human rights: Mass birth control interferes with a person's right to have as many children as they wish

How is making voluntary birth control available interfering with a persons right to have their desired number of children? In fact, why is that a right to begin with?

The right to control reproduction to the extent that it exists, goes both ways. To have as many or as few as one wishes. In much of the third world, women do not have the power to refuse sex, they are considered property of their husbands in a lot of places, or there is conflict (read: war) which leads to a lot of women being the victims of rape.

Providing birth control allows them to have an modicum of control over whether or not a given sexual encounter has a chance of having children rather than having to rely on the magnanimity of the men to wear a condom.

Eugenics: Mass birth control programmes may be used to reduce the birth rate of certain classes, castes or ethnic groups

Even if that were true, there are some issues.

People in places with low life expectancy and high mortality have more kids. They have them early (because they may not otherwise live long enough to raise them) and they have more of them (as an insurance policy against infant mortality). This however creates more poverty as the available resources are insufficient to provision those children. This creates a positive feedback loop with more mortality leading to more children, which increases mortality.

By reducing the birth rate through voluntary birth control, over a couple generations a large part of this problem can be alleviated.

Gender bias: The majority of mass birth-control programmes operate by controlling only female fertility. This is because there are long-term female contraceptives such as the pill, hormone implants, and IUDs, but no male equivalents. As a result:
women unfairly bear the burden of population control
female fertility is treated as something dangerous that needs to be controlled
this gender bias operates regardless of the good intentions behind programmes of mass contraception

On the flip side, women now have the "burden" of being the ones in charge of their own reproduction. I fail to see how this gender bias is a problem when ultimately it is the women who have to take care of the damn kids.

Nothing in and of itself. I think the article was trying to make the point that the West trying to "impose its will" upon the Third World in the form programs essentially designed to make it so that there are "fewer brown people to beg on our doorsteps" is viewed by some as being a form of Western-centric Imperialism.

And people who think that are idiots. It is so there are fewer brown people starving to death, killing eachother, and suffering from protein deficiencies which lead to liver failure, and dying from infectious disease.

Do you deny that forced sterilization programs have been utilized in both the West and the Third World? Do you deny that such practices are still be utilized in countries like China today?

And in some cases it is needed. The problem with forced sterilization in the past was that it was done with malice toward certain groups chosen for arbitrary reasons. In china, they do it so that their population does not grow exponentially and thus faster than their economy leading to mass famine.

Exactly the same as it is now with only a few minor differences? Who knows, with a larger labor force, maybe we wouldn't be forced to outsource manufacturing jobs to the Third World to begin with.

And you prove that you know nothing of economics. We outsource manufacturing so that CEOs can pad theirs and their shareholders pockets with more money. There is no shortage of labor here.

Common sense isn't so common. There is also the minor problem that we are providing for much of the population by spending through natural captial which is a bad idea.

Most socialists who write about stopping birth control programs in the third world are not the ones, such as me, who know how populations work. They view things through an ideological lens which has not been checked with this thing called "Data" or a "textbook in population ecology" or even "a broad understanding of the world". They try to apply their western notions of the noble savage, and their particular branch of second or third wave feminism to a system where the rules are way the fuck different.

However, the fact of the matter remains that the Third World's primary problems aren't related to population growth, but botched economics and failed governments.

Or you are mistaking proximate causation (botched economics and failed governments) with the ultimate cause which is essentially a problem with population growth, carrying capacity in terms of available resources and the population that they can support, and the distribution of those resources in the population.

[K. A. Pital]

Europe tends to be more liberal about sex and prostitution.

I have brought forth evidence that European (German, because you identified them as example of sorts) porn laws are harsher than those in the USA. Meanwhile, prostitution is not legal in the USA, but legalized in Germany. Porn consumption is much higher in South Korea, USA and Japan than in Germany, which also indicates no correlation of porn consumption with prostitution laws. Ergo, porn and prostitution laws, and porn and prostitution consumption do not have a correlation. You pulled it out of your fucking ass-hole, idiot, and I'm not going to let this point slide as "something obvious".

Porn consumption is not corellated with legalization of prostitution, neither with prostitution itself.

[Liberty]

I'm doubting the Israelites would have seen any reason to have water clocks or sundials, but yes, I am aware they existed. I minored in classical culture in my undergrad. And yes, you can make an estimation, but this method makes a big deal of it being completely regular, on the clock, etc. If the baby cries and it's not the set hour, ignore him. Etc.

Not to derail the thread, but there were sundails in Judea during the 2nd temple period. They might have been brought over by the Romans, but I also seem to remember mention of a sundail somewhere in the OT (in connection with one of the Judean kings, I'll see if I can track down the reference later).

I'll amend my statement, then: I'm doubting that the common Israelite would have had a sundial, and especially skeptical that nursing Israelite women used sundials to time how often they nursed their infants.

[Akhlut]

I'm doubting the Israelites would have seen any reason to have water clocks or sundials, but yes, I am aware they existed. I minored in classical culture in my undergrad. And yes, you can make an estimation, but this method makes a big deal of it being completely regular, on the clock, etc. If the baby cries and it's not the set hour, ignore him. Etc.

Not to derail the thread, but there were sundails in Judea during the 2nd temple period. They might have been brought over by the Romans, but I also seem to remember mention of a sundail somewhere in the OT (in connection with one of the Judean kings, I'll see if I can track down the reference later).

I'll amend my statement, then: I'm doubting that the common Israelite would have had a sundial, and especially skeptical that nursing Israelite women used sundials to time how often they nursed their infants.

A switch to scheduled feeding has only occurred within the past century, as I recall. Even the harshest disciplinarians would recognize newborns and infants as being incapable of taking direction and that they should be fed on demand. It is only with the rise of SCIENCE KNOWS ALL and incorrect assumptions that doctors began to tell women to feed on a schedule, especially with the advent of formula feeding.

[Broomstick]

Since Uganda just enacted legislation making homosexuality punishable by death, and which also appears to make protesting against the killing of homosexuals punishable by death... you might want to pick a better example.

They also happen to have one of the most productive economies in Africa and are one of the few African nations to successfully temper the AIDs empidemic.

The anti-homosexual legislation is unfortunate, but it is hardly unheard of in that part of the world. I doubt that even the Church endorses the "kill all gays" line of reasoning.

It is not unfortunate, it is obscene. You are opposed to birth control yet have no objection to slaughtering adults for the so-called crime of being sexually attracted to their own gender?

And while the Catholic church at this time does not endorse "kill all gays" there are certainly Protestant churches that do so.

However, many people would have serious moral objections to plans to use contraception in order to control population.

And what alternative are they proposing? Mass celibacy? Summary executions? War? Famine? Disease?

One objection that isn't covered here is that the real cause of poverty and damage is overconsumption by a few, and that if rich nations stopped consuming far more than their fair share of resources there would be no need for population control to be applied unfairly to poor nations.

A major flaw is that the "rich nations" are precisely those that have ready access to birth control! They are a "few" who are consuming because they did NOT breed themselves into "many".

However, if we did attempt a mass distribution of wealth from the rich nations to the poor, it wouldn't work. The problem is transportation. The logistics of moving food alone would be daunting, but everything else as well? Also, you can't move real estate. I suppose you could move people - but that would be force relocation of millions, and would devastate the local cultures of the areas you moved them to - unless, of course, you don't give a rat's ass about any culture that isn't brown enough.

Cultural imperialism: Bringing birth control to a community that has previously avoided it will inevitably change the relationships and power dynamics within that community. It's important to take appropriate precautions to minimise the impact of contraception on cultures to which it is introduced.

Uh... what? Contraception does alter "power dynamics" by allowing girls and women time away from birthing and raising baby after baby to get educated or perform work outside the home. In other words, it usually results in women gaining more power over their own lives. Gee, yeah, we'd want to minimize THAT nonsense, right? [/sarcasm] Because it's so much better to keep half the population reproductive slaves with no other purpose or function in society.

Human rights: Mass birth control interferes with a person's right to have as many children as they wish

Denial of birth control interferes with a person's right to have as few children as they want.

Eugenics: Mass birth control programmes may be used to reduce the birth rate of certain classes, castes or ethnic groups

As already stated, the "class" most affected is the wealthy, and the ethnic group most affected are white people of European descent - not poor, brown people in the third world.

Gender bias: The majority of mass birth-control programmes operate by controlling only female fertility. This is because there are long-term female contraceptives such as the pill, hormone implants, and IUDs, but no male equivalents.

That's because biology is a motherfucker and we have to deal with reality.

women unfairly bear the burden of population control

Women unfairly bear the burden of reproduction, including pregnancy, childbirth - and the risks of disability and death that can come with them even in an advanced society much less the third world - lactation, and raising the children. In other words, the burden is NEVER equally shared between the genders. Birth control (NOT sterilization) allows for better spacing of children, reduction of physical and psychological stress on the mother, less stress on the father to earn enough to feed an ever-growing family, and results in healthier, better educated adults.

female fertility is treated as something dangerous that needs to be controlled
this gender bias operates regardless of the good intentions behind programmes of mass contraception

EVERY society has regarding female fertility as something to be controlled. What is this horseshit?

Coercion: Using incentives to get people living in poverty to practice birth control amounts to coercion and violates the reproductive freedom of poor people
i.e. offering people on the edge of starvation food or money to use birth control amounts to an offer they can't refuse, and so deprives them of freedom of choice

I fail to see how "people on the edge of starvation" would benefit from yet more people to feed! People that close to starving need food, not more mouths. Maybe that's why they feel they can't refuse an offer of food? Freedom of choice? How about freedom from dying of hunger?

Unfairness: Incentive programmes are only likely to work on poor people - that's unfair

Maybe if they weren't popping out so many babies they'd have some extra funds to bring them out of poverty.

Eugenics: Incentive programmes which only work on poor people will tend to reduce certain classes and castes in society by causing them to have smaller families.

Since pouring resources into a lot of children is one of the factors that keeps poor people poor reducing family size would tend to benefit that smaller family - oh, wait, maybe then they wouldn't be poor anymore! Sure, let's reduce the "caste" of the impoverished by making them wealthy enough to no longer be considered poor. That is NOT eugenics, that's improving the average standard of living. Or maybe you think society has to meet a "quota" of poor people?

Abortion: Such programmes may encourage people to abort foetuses in order to obtain the benefit of small family policies if their birth control method fails

So? You say that like it's a bad thing.

something's going to fall apart when population densities approach 400 people per square kilometer in a country of subsistence farmers- as they did in Rwanda right before the genocide in '94

Proof? It was always my understanding that the Rwandan genocide had little to do with population growth, and everything to do with age old tribal hatreds and general human irrationality.

You do realize that the people who killed their neighbors then took their neighbors' stuff, INCLUDING farms? Right, no profit in killing people, taking their material possessions, and taking over their farmland. It's not impossible for multiple impulses to be at work at the same time.

Likewise, what do you think is the cause of Zimbabwe's problems? Overpopulation, or the ludicrous economic policies of Robert Mugabe?

Both. Honestly, both. The situation in Zimbabwe would still be awful but not as desperate if there were not so many people competing over dwindling resources.

Just because an idea may happen to be popular, doesn't mean that it is necessarily correct. How do you think history will view our forays into forced population reduction?

Where it involves birth control? Positively. Where it involves war, famine, "ethnic cleansing", and preventable catastrophes? Negatively.

You never know...Such things might surprise you. I'm sure that the Imperialists of the 18th and 19th Centuries would be both shocked and appalled by what they would read about themselves in any modern textbook.

Those same Imperialists had no qualms about forced relocation, extermination of inconvenient peoples, and involuntary castration of people they did not consider fit to breed. In other words, they did all the things you accuse birth control advocates of doing. Except birth control advocates don't advocate exterminating or [/i] sterilizing[/i] people. BC advocates don't have a problem with people having kids, they have a problem with them having too many offspring.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

WTF have you done to my thread and who do i get to yell at for doing it!?

[Liberty]

WTF have you done to my thread and who do i get to yell at for doing it!?

I was kind of wondering the same thing...I have no fucking clue how the hell it happened, but it wasn't me. I was still on topic.

[Simon_Jester]

This probably merits a thread split, with the split portion probably going direct to the Hall of Shame... I mean, I'm caught up in the middle of it, but I'll spare everyone my next rely to Petey since he seems to be getting most of it from other sources.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

You are opposed to birth control yet have no objection to slaughtering adults for the so-called crime of being sexually attracted to their own gender?

First off, I'm not opposed to birth control. If people want to use birth control, I'm all for it. It is their choice. I simply think that making it the utmost priority in relieving the problems of the Third World is a kind of ass backwards way of going about fixing things.

And while the Catholic church at this time does not endorse "kill all gays" there are certainly Protestant churches that do so.

Conceded. However, we were primarily discussing the Catholic Priesthood here, not fundamentalist Protestantism.

A major flaw is that the "rich nations" are precisely those that have ready access to birth control! They are a "few" who are consuming because they did NOT breed themselves into "many

".

You see, this is where things get shakey for me where the "Zero-Population Growth" model is concerned. That statement simply isn't true.

The West has lower birthrates and greater per capita wealth because it Industrialized first and used the economic, technological, and military advantages this provided to reshape the global economic system to meet its needs, not the other way around. In fact, the West experienced a pretty major population spike throughout the entire Industrial Revolution. The same has been the case throughout the Third World as well (India, China, Iran, etca).

Nations generally don't lower their birthrates and then industrialize. They focus on industrialization first and birthrates generally drop as a consequence of the societal benefits this brings about.

You are toting a ideologized "party line" which, as far as I can tell, doesn't have much of an historical basis in reality. It has simply become so ingrained in Western political thought that daring to challenge it generally results in the modern secular equivalent of a torch and pitchfork wielding lynch mob screaming things to the effect "BUUUUURRRRN HIIIM," and "HERESY!!! "

I fail to see how "people on the edge of starvation" would benefit from yet more people to feed! People that close to starving need food, not more mouths.

Exactly. They should focus on making more food and bringing up living standards, rather than shelling out exorbitant amounts of money on birthcontrol. This isn't to say that I think that population control is irrelevant. I simply believe that it should be more of a secondary of tertiary concern.

You do realize that the people who killed their neighbors then took their neighbors' stuff, INCLUDING farms? Right, no profit in killing people, taking their material possessions, and taking over their farmland. It's not impossible for multiple impulses to be at work at the same time.

No duh! However, "over population" was never the primary incentive behind the Rwandan genocide.

And in some cases it is needed. The problem with forced sterilization in the past was that it was done with malice toward certain groups chosen for arbitrary reasons. In china, they do it so that their population does not grow exponentially and thus faster than their economy leading to mass famine.

I'm sorry, but I simply disagree. Forced sterilization and birth control are NEVER right. Shit, why not just shoot all of the drug addicts while we're at it? The Chinese did that as well, and it turned out to be a rather expedient solution to their opium addiction problem.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

And you prove that you know nothing of economics. We outsource manufacturing so that CEOs can pad

theirs and their shareholders pockets with more money. There is no shortage of labor here.

Good lord! The last thing I'm going to do now is kick off yet another tangent about "spoiled labor vs greedy capitalists."

Let's just agree to disagree on this one.

[Anguirus]

Just to clear one thing up here, you do realize that I didn't write this thing, right? Take it up with the BBC.

And don't you dare try try to weasel out of these words because someone else wrote them and you just ordered it up on Google.

Die in a fire.

Do you deny that forced sterilization programs have been utilized in both the West and the Third World? Do you deny that such practices are still be utilized in countries like China today?

No, I don't deny that you are attempting to dismiss the extremely real problem of overpopulation by pointing out that evil people have used it as an excuse.

This is the same anti-logic behind all the right-wing sites crowing about the murder-suicide that supposedly had to do with the fear of global warming.

Don't dismiss the problem by tarring one proposed solution with the brush of another. You should know better than to assume that when someone brings up overpopulation as a problem, than to introduce a tangent about forced sterilization.

Exactly the same as it is now with only a few minor differences? Who knows, with a larger labor force, maybe we wouldn't be forced to outsource manufacturing jobs to the Third World to begin with.

You are a true failure of a human being. The companies don't outsource because there are no local workers, they outsource because it's cheaper. That's why American workers get LAID OFF. It's not like companies are just searching in vain for workers; rather, they are searching for workers who lack legal protections.

In addition, Freakonomics may be a popular science book but it produced some pretty convincing data that the drop in the US. crime rate over the past 50 years is more or less due entirely to legal abortion. And you know how our prisons are now overflowing with 10% of our population? Yeah, imagine THAT problem as even WORSE.

Forcing women to have babies is just as bad as forced abortion or sterilization (ethically...in utilitarian terms, tragically, it may be even worse). Unfortunately, it's the default.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

Die in a fire.

Ditto.

No, I don't deny that you are attempting to dismiss the extremely real problem of overpopulation by pointing out that evil people have used it as an excuse.

Once again, overpopulation is the least of the Third World's problems.

You are a true failure of a human being. The companies don't outsource because there are no local workers, they outsource because it's cheaper. That's why American workers get LAID OFF.

Ahem... VVVVV

Good lord! The last thing I'm going to do now is kick off yet another tangent about "spoiled labor vs greedy capitalists."

Let's just agree to disagree on this one.

[Anguirus]

Once again, overpopulation is the least of the Third World's problems.

It is far from the least of their problems, since it is far from the least of the WORLD'S problems. Remember Malthus?

If only we could feed upon your endless bullshitting and your casual disregard for womens' reproductive freedom.

Ahem... VVVVV

So you admit that your earlier statement was without foundation and you are making no attempt to defend it? Works for me.

[Simon_Jester]

First off, I'm not opposed to birth control. If people want to use birth control, I'm all for it. It is their choice. I simply think that making it the utmost priority in relieving the problems of the Third World is a kind of ass backwards way of going about fixing things.

Is it made the utmost priority in normal aid programs? Compared to, say, providing clean water or medical treatment? Or pressuring governments to stop the oppression of women in rural areas? Or providing food during famines?

You are toting a ideologized "party line" which, as far as I can tell, doesn't have much of an historical basis in reality. It has simply become so ingrained in Western political thought that daring to challenge it generally results in the modern secular equivalent of a torch and pitchfork wielding lynch mob screaming things to the effect "BUUUUURRRRN HIIIM," and "HERESY!!! "

Umm... I think you are missing a really huge point here.

Specifically, you're ignoring that the entire "zero population growth" argument revolves around the claim that limiting population growth in rapidly growing countries would be a good idea, not that it has happened in the past. There are a lot of arguments for it being a good idea, of which you have addressed none as far as I can tell.

In favor of addressing these arguments, you make up fictional versions of the argument, accuse your opponents of believing them, and then oppose your opponents of coming after you in a mob. This is convenient, of course, because it allows you to ignore that they aren't saying HERESY! They're saying "Do you seriously believe X, Y, and Z?"

I suspect you're doing this because you can't bring yourself to deny X, Y, and Z with a straight face, nor can you deny with a straight face that X, Y, and Z logically imply that you've been wrong all along.

Exactly. They should focus on making more food and bringing up living standards, rather than shelling out exorbitant amounts of money on birthcontrol. This isn't to say that I think that population control is irrelevant. I simply believe that it should be more of a secondary of tertiary concern.

Question: which is cheaper, birth control for one couple or feeding one person? You do the math; I already have.

"Exorbitant amounts of money," my hat...

I'm sorry, but I simply disagree. Forced sterilization and birth control are NEVER right.

A question: is it right for a government to knowingly sit and do nothing while a famine occurs?

If so, then your standards of right and wrong are so alien to mine that I cannot consider you a moral authority.

If not, then consider:

A government is busily running around trying to increase agricultural production, after the disastrous damage done by a previous administration of incompetent morons. They are already trying to produce food for roughly 20% of the human race on roughly 7 to 8% of the world's cropland. By longstanding custom, rural families have roughly four children apiece. The government has recently introduced semimodern medical care to the country, so that infant mortality has dropped down into the single digits- of those four children, all will probably survive to adulthood, instead of two or three.

Given four children per two parents, and near-zero infant mortality, it is extremely obvious that the population is going to double or triple in the next twenty or thirty years. Meanwhile, agricultural output will NOT double or triple, because the technology to make it happen physically does not exist. Attempts to invent this technology (which does not exist and might not even be possible) are likely to fail, because this government lacks the scientific infrastructure to outpace the combined efforts of the rest of the world to invent better ways to grow crops.

Again: Food production will not increase to match population growth when all available land is already under cultivation.

Now, the government has several choices:

1) It can do nothing.

Unless they manage to import extra food (from where?) for several hundred million people, possibly billions, there will be mass famine. The famines in question will cause deaths in, again, the hundreds of millions, making the Holocaust look like a crime wave by comparison. All this is directly predictable from the government's decision to do nothing; it is simply a matter of arithmetic. Mostly subtraction: "Number of people there will be in thirty years minus number of people we can feed in thirty years equals number of people who won't have anything to eat in thirty years."

Would this be right?

2) The government can restore the stable status quo by removing modern medical care.

The infant mortality rate zooms up to about 20%, with numerous additional deaths in childhood or early adulthood, along with many deaths of women in childbirth. This keeps the population from expanding beyond the limits of what the available farms can support because, as in medieval times, the farmers are now having just enough children to work their own farms after they die.

The cost, of course, is hundreds of millions of dead babies, dead children, and dead women over the next few decades. The world will (rightly) wonder what kind of bizarre twisted freak of a government could withhold medical care from its own people, and will (rightly) condemn the government for doing so.

Would this be right?

3) The government can attempt to find more land within its own borders to farm.

Theoretically, this would be a great solution if there were any to be had. Unfortunately, as is true in most of the world, practically all the land the government controls that can be farmed is being farmed, as intensively as local infrastructure allows. Expanding farming within the government's borders would require extensive land reclamation projects, at a very high cost in labor and resources per acre. To make matters worse, the reclaimed land would often not be viable in the long term, because it would only be farmable at the expense of draining non-renewable resources like water and oil-based fertilizers. Eventually, this newly claimed land would become desert once again, the farms on it would fail, and the food supplied by those farms would be gone. At which point we're back to option (1), mass death on a scale that makes the Holocaust look petty.

Would this be right?

4) The government can attempt to find more land outside its borders to farm.

This would involve conquering land and killing the occupants, for reasons and with consequences so obvious I won't insult even your intelligence by trying to detail them.

Would this be right?

5) The government can enact enforced birth control policies on its own soil, to limit future population growth to the bounds set by future agricultural growth.

This is what China did.

Now, you think this is not right. But what you need to ask yourself is not merely "Is option (5) right?" You need to ask the grown-up version of the question: "Is option (5) more wrong than options (1), (2), (3), and (4)?

So, what do you think, and why?

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

Is it made the utmost priority in normal aid programs? Compared to, say, providing clean water or medical treatment?

The sad part is that, in many parts of the Third World, it actually is. I've heard plenty of stories about medical clinics in dire need of supplies being packed to the roof with boxes of condoms and contraceptives instead.

I will try and find a source for this claim. However, my "google fu" seems to be failing me at the moment.

Specifically, you're ignoring that the entire "zero population growth" argument revolves around the claim that limiting population growth in rapidly growing countries would be a good idea,

Specifically, this is the part of the "Zero Population Growth" argument which I have a problem with as there is little to no empirical evidence in either historical industrialization or current efforts to suggest that this is actually the case. Everyone simply seems to assume that it is and try to silence any opinion which tries to state otherwise.

If you attempt to ask why, the answer you will inevitably recieve is some red herring along the lines of "global warming...*mumble, mumble*...poverty...*mumble, mumble*" which totally ignores the points I have raised about the reduction in population growth rates generally being historically tied to greater industrialization and societal development.

Here is another article which posits an alternative to such an approach.

Seamus Grimes - The Ideology of Population Control in the UN Draft Plan for Cairo

Question: which is cheaper, birth control for one couple or feeding one person?

Which is not only cheaper, but better for a man in the longrun; giving him a fish, or teaching him to fish?

A government is busily running around trying to increase agricultural production, after the disastrous damage done by a previous administration of incompetent morons. They are already trying to produce food for roughly 20% of the human race on roughly 7 to 8% of the world's cropland. By longstanding custom, rural families have roughly four children apiece. The government has recently introduced semimodern medical care to the country, so that infant mortality has dropped down into the single digits- of those four children, all will probably survive to adulthood, instead of two or three.

You are inadvertently offering a false analogy by ommitting one major fact; China never would have had such problems with famine if Mao hadn't wrecked Chinese agriculture in the interests of forcing breakneck pace industrialization to begin with. In this case, population control was a direct measure intended to cover up for the general incompetence of the Chinese government.

3) The government can attempt to find more land within its own borders to farm.

Theoretically, this would be a great solution if there were any to be had. Unfortunately, as is true in most of the world, practically all the land the government controls that can be farmed is being farmed, as intensively as local infrastructure allows. Expanding farming within the government's borders would require extensive land reclamation projects, at a very high cost in labor and resources per acre. To make matters worse, the reclaimed land would often not be viable in the long term, because it would only be farmable at the expense of draining non-renewable resources like water and oil-based fertilizers. Eventually, this newly claimed land would become desert once again, the farms on it would fail, and the food supplied by those farms would be gone. At which point we're back to option (1), mass death on a scale that makes the Holocaust look petty.

Would this be right?

If at all possible, I would go with this option. If handled properly, there is no reason why it could not work.

[TheKwas]

You are opposed to birth control yet have no objection to slaughtering adults for the so-called crime of being sexually attracted to their own gender?

First off, I'm not opposed to birth control. If people want to use birth control, I'm all for it. It is their choice. I simply think that making it the utmost priority in relieving the problems of the Third World is a kind of ass backwards way of going about fixing things.

Then you have never opened a textbook on development economics. Population growth is a central concern and will be one of the first things you'll discuss.

The Standard production function for a developing country: Y=f(K,L,R,T)
Where K = capital
L = Labour
R = Resources
T = technology.

Holding resources constant and deriving for rates, you end up with

(y-l)=a(k-l)+t

where y = rate of GDP growth
l = rate of labour/population growth
k = growth in the capital stock
t = growth in technology level
a = capital elasticity of output

(y-l) is the term for output per capita. Notice the role that 'l' plays. The higher the population growth, the poorer the country. It's as simple as that. Considering that some developing countries have fertility rates above 5%, this is a massive problem.

You see, this is where things get shakey for me where the "Zero-Population Growth" model is concerned. That statement simply isn't true.

The West has lower birthrates and greater per capita wealth because it Industrialized first and used the economic, technological, and military advantages this provided to reshape the global economic system to meet its needs, not the other way around. In fact, the West experienced a pretty major population spike throughout the entire Industrial Revolution. The same has been the case throughout the Third World as well (India, China, Iran, etca).

Nations generally don't lower their birthrates and then industrialize. They focus on industrialization first and birthrates generally drop as a consequence of the societal benefits this brings about.

You are toting a ideologized "party line" which, as far as I can tell, doesn't have much of an historical basis in reality. It has simply become so ingrained in Western political thought that daring to challenge it generally results in the modern secular equivalent of a torch and pitchfork wielding lynch mob screaming things to the effect "BUUUUURRRRN HIIIM," and "HERESY!!! "

Birth rates are not population growth rates, idiot.

You're blantantly missing the other half of the equation: death rates. Western nations didn't lower their birthrates and then industrialized, but they DID keep relatively constant population growth rates.

Here's the gap between birth and death rates throughout western countries' development:


Notice that the gape between the two has been relatively constant throughout most of their development. Death plunged a bit deeper in stage two, but no so great that the west experienced significant population problems.

In contrast, here's the same graph for developing countries:

Imported medicine and vaccines drastically reduced the third world's death rate, but the third world's culture of marrying young and pumping out kids didn't change at all, resulting in a massive gap between birth and death rates, and thus in a massive increase in population growth.

Case A refers to countries that combined population control methods with rising incomes: including South Korea, China, Taiwan, Cuba, Sri Lanka and some others. Case B refers to countries that never imposed population control methods, and they continue to grow at an astonding rate. These countries include most sub-sahara african countries and the middle east.

I'm sorry, but I simply disagree. Forced sterilization and birth control are NEVER right. Shit, why not just shoot all of the drug addicts while we're at it? The Chinese did that as well, and it turned out to be a rather expedient solution to their opium addiction problem.

Because limiting yourself to one child is EXACTLY like shooting people.

EDIT: My graphs are much bigger than I thought they were, but I'm already late for class. Anyway for a mod to resize them?

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

Then you have never opened a textbook on development economics. Population growth is a central concern and will be one of the first things you'll discuss.

The Standard production function for a developing country: Y=f(K,L,R,T)
Where K = capital
L = Labour
R = Resources
T = technology.

Holding resources constant and deriving for rates, you end up with

(y-l)=a(k-l)+t

where y = rate of GDP growth
l = rate of labour/population growth
k = growth in the capital stock
t = growth in technology level
a = capital elasticity of output

(y-l) is the term for output per capita. Notice the role that 'l' plays. The higher the population growth, the poorer the country. It's as simple as that. Considering that some developing countries have fertility rates above 5%, this is a massive problem.

Make no mistake. I have absolutely no doubt that there is quite a bit of literature backing the "Zero Population Growth" thesis.

My point is that we still have yet to see much out of the real world in terms of either historical examples or current developmental prospects in the Third World which actually backs up that literature.

You're blantantly missing the other half of the equation: death rates. Western nations didn't lower their birthrates and then industrialized, but they DID keep relatively constant population growth rates.

Here's the gap between birth and death rates throughout western countries' development:


Notice that the gape between the two has been relatively constant throughout most of their development. Death plunged a bit deeper in stage two, but no so great that the west experienced significant population problems.

In contrast, here's the same graph for developing countries:

Imported medicine and vaccines drastically reduced the third world's death rate, but the third world's culture of marrying young and pumping out kids didn't change at all, resulting in a massive gap between birth and death rates, and thus in a massive increase in population growth.

The reason for that is fairly obvious. Death rates declined rapidly during the Renaissance and Early Modern era in Europe prior to the Industrial Revolution. The Third World has essentially skipped this first step by being introduced to both modernized medicine and industrialization at the same time.

Because limiting yourself to one child is EXACTLY like shooting people.

When forced sterilization and mandatory abortions are involved, yes, it is.

[Samuel]

Huh? Once again, we are talking about sex slavery here, not slavery in general. How is any of this relevant?

I'm assuming all the attractive females in that group are probably sex slaves. Is there anything wrong with such an assumption?

What...You mean that, that...pragmatic concerns trumped religious idiocy like they have done throughout history!?!?! OH THE HUMANITY!!!!

Once again, this is only subjectively "bad." The fact that you simply happen to disagree with a certain political stance doesn't necessarily make it objectively wrong from an empirical standpoint.

Care to quit moving the goal posts? You asked for me to show how they did something objectively bad- I gave an example of something that interfered with the national security of the United States and weaked us in the face of foreign enemies and had to be overturned by a conservative president.

Seriously, if the KGB had been responsible, individuals involved would have been tried for treason, considered to have sold out the US and possibly put in the chair. But since they were true believers (ironically like the GODLESS COMMIEStm) it was okay for them to do that.

That's more than enough to establish a generally anti-homosexual trend in African culture. As I said, such attitudes are hardly uncommon outside of the "developed" world.

There are 50 nations in Africa. How is less than 10% a trend?

A) It is easier for the illegal prostitutes to blend in with the legal ones.

Because legal prostitutes won't turn in the competition to the police?

B) Paper work can always be forged, and restrictions always worked around in any bureaucratic system.

We need a name for this logical fallacy. Just because a system isn't perfect doesn't matter- it must be better than the alternative.

Who takes in more money; a disease ridden street walker hiding in the shadows, or a high traffick red light district?

The first. You can charge higher prices if the occupation has such high risks.

Because Europe is bigger than the United States.

Than you are refering to population density and not overall population... and parts of Europe have extremely population densities.

Another aspect (pardon if soemone already brought it up and I missed it) is cost. How much does it cost to confess to a priest vs. seeing a psychiatrist? I'm not familiar with the fromer, but I suspect it's much cheaper (the only cost is a voluntary donation, no?). In that case, a priest, whatever his limits, may be the only form of therapy poorer people can afford

That is because the church gets money from other sources. I'm sure that if therapists had people who gave them free money all the time they could set rates lower.

rather than shelling out exorbitant amounts of money on birthcontrol.

Condoms and female education are not massive costs.

Shit, why not just shoot all of the drug addicts while we're at it?

Because than the problem hides in the shadows and gets worse. Unless you are already a totalitarian state or there are only a few points where the drugs can get in from.

I've heard plenty of stories about medical clinics in dire need of supplies being packed to the roof with boxes of condoms and contraceptives instead.

Given that condoms don't require any special training to use, don't need refrigeration and are dirt cheap I can see why this could occur.

Which is not only cheaper, but better for a man in the longrun; giving him a fish, or teaching him to fish?

If you give a man a fire he will be warm for a day, but if you set a man on fire he will be warm for the rest of his life.

You are inadvertently offering a false analogy by ommitting one major fact; China never would have had such problems with famine if Mao hadn't wrecked Chinese agriculture in the interests of forcing breakneck pace industrialization to begin with. In this case, population control was a direct measure intended to cover up for the general incompetence of the Chinese government.

The Great Leap Foward was in 58-61. The one child program was introduced in 1977.

If at all possible, I would go with this option. If handled properly, there is no reason why it could not work.

Because of marginal productivity- each additional piece of land added is less effective than the one before (if it was as effective it would already be exploited). The result is a reduction in productivity and drop in per capita income.

When forced sterilization and mandatory abortions are involved, yes, it is.

Potential people and actual people are not equivalent- otherwise we'd all be murders for not fucking 24/7.

[Formless]

We need a name for this logical fallacy. Just because a system isn't perfect doesn't matter- it must be better than the alternative.

Perfect solution fallacy.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

I'm assuming all the attractive females in that group are probably sex slaves. Is there anything wrong with such an assumption?

Perhaps the fact that you have provided no evidence to support this assumption whatsoever? Besides, I still fail to see how slavery in the Middle East is at all comparable to the Adult Entertainment Industry in the West.

Care to quit moving the goal posts? You asked for me to show how they did something objectively bad- I gave an example of something that interfered with the national security of the United States and weaked us in the face of foreign enemies and had to be overturned by a conservative president.

Who's moving goal posts? The simple fact of the matter is that the religious right was overruled on the matter, as they have been in the majority of all cases involving this subject.

I'd hardly chalk that up as a victory for "religious ignorance."

There are 50 nations in Africa. How is less than 10% a trend?

Only 3 have the death penalty for homosexuality. They are undoubtedly the extreme fringe. However, in order to exist, every fringe ultimately must have a more moderate base which carries more wateredown versions of its views.

Likewise, the "tea bagger" movement, while making up only an extreme fringe, underlies the conservative nature of most of American politcis.

Because legal prostitutes won't turn in the competition to the police?

And do you think that the average hooker is going to risk crossing the Russian Mafia just to turn in her competition? C'mon man, no one is this naive.

We need a name for this logical fallacy. Just because a system isn't perfect doesn't matter- it must be better than the alternative.

According to who, you? Once again dude, this is all empirical fact here. Europe OBJECTIVELY has a bigger problem with sex slavery than the US because of its relaxed prostitution laws. Studies have confirmed this, and politicians in these nations acknowledge it as fact.

Quibbling with me isn't going to change any of this.

The first. You can charge higher prices if the occupation has such high risks.

Bull shit. Would you pay 300 dollars for some skanky street walker? How about a nice and clean girl from a brothel run by the Russian Mob?

Yea...That's what I thought.

Condoms and female education are not massive costs.

To the extent that the UN relies on such methods, yes, they are.

Because than the problem hides in the shadows and gets worse.

Actually, the Chinese were almost completely successful in removing the opium problem. Of course, they had to not only shoot drug addicts, but make examples out of their entire familes to do so...

Given that condoms don't require any special training to use, don't need refrigeration

Wrong on both counts actually. Studies have shown that most people use condoms improperly, and that they are not as effective when exposed to above room temperature heat.

Besides, are you honestly trying to say that it is okay to have Third World medical clinics stocked almost exclusively with condoms and contraceptives when people are dying of preventable diseases?

Because of marginal productivity- each additional piece of land added is less effective than the one before (if it was as effective it would already be exploited). The result is a reduction in productivity and drop in per capita income.

Once again, none of this was the case in China. The Chinese government simply happened to suck at agriculture.

Potential people and actual people are not equivalent

That is your opinion on the matter. Besides, even you do take that view of abortion, forced sterilization is still a ghastly practice.