Population growth, China, etc.

[Lusankya]

Whether the one child policy was ultimately necessary or not is debatable. Education and birth control programs ( in addition to reform of China's deplorably inefficient "communal farms") could have conceivably had many of the same effects, without resorting to the Orwellian horrors the Chinese government ultimately ended up imposing on their rural population.

Education would not have had the same effect, because China would not have been able to change its culture quickly enough in the absence of massive government penalties for children after the first. You obviously know nothing about Chinese culture, because aside from the usual pressures to have more kids that come with a subsistence-lifestyle, there is also a very strong cultural incentive to have children. Both Chinese-developed religions, Confucianism and Daoism stress the importance of children in having a rich and fulfilling life. Furthermore, since a son is a Chinese family's retirement policy, any families without sons would try and try until they got a son. And then they would try for a second one as added security, just in case something happened to their first. At least with the one child policy, they stop after the first son.

I live in China. I have friends who are peasants. Your 'lol, edumacate them' idea is full of shit, and is no different from the Europeans who went up to the aborigines in the 19th century and assumed that if you show them western stuff like Jesus and steam engines, then they will immediately want to join "enlightened western society" and start acting just like white people. If you are going to offer ideas, examine your cultural biases first and realise that social programs have to be tailored to the local culture or they just won't work. And you grandly busting in and saying "well, clearly it would be better if you'd done it this way" just shows you to be an ethnocentric piece of shit.

And the problem with the 'communal farms' came not when the farms were communalised, but rather when the profits of the farming were communalised. When people could gain rewards based on how hard they worked, rather than based on 1/x of the total profit of the commune, it was fine. The system they have now is decent: peasants are alloted land based on how many people their are in their family, which they can farm as they see fit (if you break the one and a half child policy, children after the second child/first if it's a son don't count as people in your family). Recently they even changed the law so that they can sell their farming rights to someone else in the village, and use the money for other business ventures. I suppose it would be better if they were using more modern farming methods, but illiterate peasants aren't going to do that, and there are moral issues with just kicking them off of the land and replacing them with someone "more efficient".

As an example of how productive a farm can be, let's take my friend's village:

There are about 100 people in the village, give or take.
They're peasants, which means they all ignore the one child policy and have about two children per family on average. Without the one child policy, they would have more, because there would be fewer penalties. Anyway, there are about 25 families.
My friend's currently has four "dependents", as far as the government is concerned - my friend's parents, their younger son and their grandson (son of their older son).
They usually have two crops a year: soy for the summer crop, wheat for the winter crop.
With this, my friend's father earns about 30 kuai a day, on average. That's $4.39. With this, they support my friend's mother, father and grandson. They also help my friend (who is in uni) and her younger brother (who is actually her cousin, but got adopted as her brother, since her uncle is a government worker who faced stricter penalties for disobeying the one child policy than her peasant parents). So five people. On $4.39/day. They supplement this with chickens and pigs and other farm produce. The grandson's parents help support their son.
Assuming my friend's farm is representative of the village, the village feeds about 100 people on $109/day. That's $1.09/person/day. Slightly more than a dollar a day.

Now, let's say that there was no one child policy, so people had more children. Say, every family had one more child (I know these peopld - this is a lowball estimate of how many extra children they'd have, but eh). That would increase the population of the village by about 25 people.
Farmland availability would stay the same. This village is in Anhui province in China. It has been developed for thousands of years. There are no mountains that they could level. No forests to clear, except for the monocultures they recently planted along the riverbanks in order to stop erosion. There is no extra land. So they have no option other than to feed this extra population on the same resources.
With one extra child per family, the village suddenly feeds 125 people on $109/day. That's $0.88/person/day. That's 20% less per person. Are you aware of how big a difference 20% of your resources is when you're already at subsistence level? I bet not.
It doesn't even matter how the extra babies are distributed amongst the families - since the land is communalised, the entire village gets the same reduction in land (and thus earnings) per capita.

This isn't even taking into consideration some of the other problems coming from having a larger population. The village doesn't have plumbing, so a 20% larger population means extra strain on the wells. It means an extra 20% more shit, which isn't getting treated. My friends parents can currently stretch their budget to help support her university study and to send my friend's brother to the better high school in the city. If they earnt 20% less, they would not be able to do that, any my friend and her brother would not be able to get their education. And then my friend, rather than being able to break out of poverty as she is doing, would have no option but to become yet another semi-literate peasant.

Have a think about this, you fucking moron. I bet that if you lost 20c of income a day, all you'd have to worry about is eating one less fucking Mars Bar a week, rather than having to worry about feeding your family and being able to afford to send your kids to high school.


EDIT: Oh yes, and abortions have never been mandatory. That is a lie. Some corrupt officials in Guangzi province were doing it to make their stats look good, and once it came out, the people involved were punished. The One Child Policy involves fining families, denying the "one child" monetary bonus and firing government employees who break the policy. Saying that the one child policy is bad because of forced abortions is like saying that Chinese food standards laws are bad because of the milk scandal - despite the issue being with endemic corruption and NOT the laws as written.

[Simon_Jester]

Could a mod please split this thread, making this entire adult entertainment industry/sex trade/condoms for Africa tangent it's own thread? It really has nothing to do with the original news story or fundamentalist views on child training.

Or, I'll transliterate my spontaneous utterance upon seeing this... caca de toro en fuego still spewing into this thread:

"Oh my fucking god, will someone stop the fucking bleeding!"

Thirded. I've said my piece, and will say no more until the thread is split.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

What the fuck is the 'zero population growth' thesis and who here is actually supporting it?

Population Connection-(formerly "Zero Population Growth")

Groups like this are actually pretty common in the environmentalist movement.

Not even China has zero population growth.

No shit! I never said that it did. However, there are quite a few people who do state such a state of affairs as being their ultimate goal.

The empirical evidence does nothing but back up the claim that population growth in developing countries limits economic development. Inversely, in just about every case where effective Family Planning programs have been put in place, it has had a positive impact on per-capita income.

However, is this really causation, or simply correlation? I never denied that reduced population growth and greater per capita income tend to go hand-in-hand. I simply pointed out that nations with reduced population growth AND higher per capita incomes tend to already be fairly well economically developed any way.

Besides, most of the world's up-and-coming economic powerhouses also happen to have some of the largest and fastest growing populations on the planet. How do you account for that?

Additionally, it might be argued that greater "per capita income" shouldn't even be our goal in the Third World to begin with. Before a nation can even begin to think about bringing up its per capita income, a stable and productive economic system must first be established. History has shown repeatedly that massive increases in per capita income in developing nations where a reasonably stable econmic system is not in place generally tend to result in economic and political instability (think Iran under the Shah). By way of contrast, nations like China and India have massive and extraordinarily productive economies, but low per capita incomes in comparison to Western nations.

To make a long story short, you have to build the foundations before you even dream of building the tower.

Can you not read a graph? Death rates in the western world declined the most relative to birth rates in the 19th century.

You misunderstood my point. You stated that population growth in the Third World was problematic because your graph showed that death rates have decreased dramatically, whereas birth rates have remained constant. Furthermore, you stated that this differed from industrialization in the West.

However, there are two problems with your argument here.

A) Your graph representing the West goes all the way back to 1780, whereas your graph representing the Third World only shows the last 100 years or so. Frankly, if you only consider the period from 1800 to 1910 on the Western graph, it actually matches the Third World graph fairly well. Death rates plummet, while birth rates remain the same untill about the turn of the century.

B) Death rates had already been steadily declining since the Renaissance in the West.

Your graphs don't even support your argument.

You rather get shot than sterilized? What the fuck is wrong with you?

I'm sorry, but what's the point of living if you can't pass on your genes?

After 30 years of sabotaging the country they were overruled. That is a bit like claiming that Lamarkian genetics didn't hold the USSR back because they tossed it in 1965.

Ok, so when did the rest of the world begin teaching evolution in public schools?

Except 15 African states don't have any penalty at all.

To use your own argument, 15 out of 50 have no penalties.

Look at how that stacks up. Three African nations carry the death penalty for homosexuality, thirty two oppress the gay community to some extent, and fifteen carry no penalty.

I'm sorry Sam, but that's more than enough to establish a generally anti-homosexual cultural trend in my book.

Since the alternative is to be run out of the business, yes.

You do realize that there are A LOT of whores in New Amsterdam, right? I'm sure that there is plenty of room for everyone.

Besides, your argument here assumes that sex slaves would be easy to differentiate from other prostitutes. This isn't always the case.

Seriously man, just read up on it.

http://rt.com/Top_News/2009-03-01/Europ ... avery.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3071965/
http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1060878.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/07 ... index.html

I was able to find these in all of 5 seconds on google.

This is completely unrelated to the fact that Europe shares a land border with desperately poor areas and has poor border security with them

And the US doesn't share a border with Mexico and Cuba?

Also, how do you know the US doesn't have a sex slave problem?

The US has its problems like anywhere else. However, ours generally tend to revolve around illegal aliens being forced into indentured servitude, not sex slavery.

I wouldn't pay anything. It is a matter of supply and demand.

I'm sorry Sam, but your argument here simply doesn't make sense. In the prostitution business, quality matters (and if you don't believe me, enjoy your STDs!). Quality implies overhead, which implies more expensive services.

How do you know they got rid of the problem?

Unfortunately, this seems to be a somewhat obscure subject, so the only source I could locate was wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium#Proh ... t_in_China

However, the article does state that...

The Mao Zedong government is generally credited with eradicating both consumption and production of opium during the 1950s using unrestrained repression and social reform. Ten million addicts were forced into compulsory treatment, dealers were executed, and opium-producing regions were planted with new crops.

In other words, addicts were basically given the "go clean or we'll fucking kill you" treatment.

Actually alot of our priorities are messed up- we allocate too much resource to AIDs in comparison to malaria for example.

FINALLY! WE AGREE ON SOMETHING!!!

[Alyrium Denryle]

...hardly help your argument. My entire point here has been that there aren't going to be "infinity people" to begin with. Population growth tends to trend downwards in correlation to industrialization and social development.

And it does this due to changes in birth and death schedules. Life expectancy is high, and infant mortality is low. This creates a system where females delay reproduction until they have the resources in order to provision those offspring such that they can be competitive. Life history traits like this are phenotypically plastic in humans.

This arrangement takes a lot of energy and resources in order to bring bring about. It takes increasing amounts of energy per capita to bring about and maintain these changes, increasing amounts of food, building materials. All of that has to be produced, and much of it has a finite supply or area upon which it can be grown.

The only reason our population did not level off due to mass famine in the 70s was because of the green revolution which increased the amount of food that could be produced per acre. This is not speculation. This would have happened. We are starting to reach the new cap, and that is happening faster than economic growth can alter the birth and death schedules in order to compensate. Classic Density Dependent Growth. I looks like a nice slow leveling off on the graph. But that depends on how it happens. If birth rates are low, no one suffers. If death rates are high, as they will be if we can no longer feed ourselves, the holocaust will look like a sunny day by the beach.

Even if we do manage to out-produce over-population in the short term, we will soon hit the problem of maintaining it. The green revolution was not all candy and rainbows. It ha very real costs. Namely, high input agriculture changes soil and water chemistry, and increases topsoil erosion. This makes the land it is used on eventually reduces productivity, in addition to fucking up the ocean down stream in the watershed due to runoff. In other words, unless we find a solution, even if our population does level, we will eventually have food shortages and that population will collapse. And the third world will get hit harder than us.

[K. A. Pital]

Besides, most of the world's up-and-coming economic powerhouses also happen to have some of the largest and fastest growing populations on the planet. How do you account for that?

Hmm... Big industrializing or end-industrializing nations. Let's see. China's population grows slower than the US or UK one, IIRC. So is South Korea's. In fact, their rates are well below world's average, and below US and UK, for example.

So you either lie, or bullshit, or both? Want to show a trend? Do show it.

P.S. Ruminations on thread splitting in progress.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... rowth_rate

China's growth rate is between 0.58 and 0.66. India's growth rate is between 1.41 and 1.46. However, each of these nations are home to well over a billion people each, so I would say that this is hardly unexpected.

In fact, it actually goes towards my argument. Their population growth rates have balanced out due to economic development and sheer size.

[Lusankya]

India's growth rate is higher than the world average. That is not "low". Its fertility rate is 3.11 children per woman, which is about half a child more per woman than the world average. It is also well above replacement.

And China's growth rate, as you must know, given your bitching about the one Child Policy, is kept artificially low by government family size regulations and not due to economic or population density pressures.

I hardly see how either statistic indicates that the population growth rate has "balanced out due to economic development and sheer size".

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

India's growth rate is higher than the world average. That is not "low". Its fertility rate is 3.11 children per woman, which is about half a child more per woman than the world average. It is also well above replacement.

And China's growth rate, as you must know, given your bitching about the one Child Policy, is kept artificially low by government family size regulations and not due to economic or population density pressures.

I hardly see how either statistic indicates that the population growth rate has "balanced out due to economic development and sheer size".

Stas said it was low, not me. In any case, 1.4 isn't much compared to the 4.0 Liberia (I think) has to play around with, or the 3s and 2.5s sported by many other nations in the developing world. It is only half a point higher than the United States' own 0.9.

China's growth rate is kept artificially low, but 1.4 still isn't all that high by global standards to begin with.

[Lusankya]

Did you even read the link you posted to? It is higher than the world average. Its population will double roughly ever 46 years. Compared to America's which will double roughly every 78 years. I don't think you understand quite how these things work: that half a percentage point means that India's population will triple in the time that America's population doubles.

And Stas never mentioned India. He mentioned China and Korea, which are nations which are developing successfully. India is not. It is a "powerhouse" only in the sense that it has a lot of disposable population that it can use. Not in the sense that its people are actually having a decently improving quality of life.

[Samuel]

I'm sorry, but what's the point of living if you can't pass on your genes?

Living?

Ok, so when did the rest of the world begin teaching evolution in public schools?

How the hell is that remotely related to what I am talking about?

I'm sorry Sam, but that's more than enough to establish a generally anti-homosexual cultural trend in my book.

The ones with the death penalty are Somalia (which doesn't have a functional government), Sudan (which is busy commiting ethnic genocide) and Mauritania (which just banned slavery). Being against gays is common, but it is the absolute bottom of the barrel that execute them.

You do realize that there are A LOT of whores in New Amsterdam, right? I'm sure that there is plenty of room for everyone.

Because demand is infinite? Have you ever taken an economics class?

Besides, your argument here assumes that sex slaves would be easy to differentiate from other prostitutes. This isn't always the case.

Seriously man, just read up on it.

I'm not seeing a rebutal in there. The whole "foreigners who have trouble speaking the language is a big tip off.

And the US doesn't share a border with Mexico and Cuba?

In the prostitution business, quality matters (and if you don't believe me, enjoy your STDs!).

And you don't think the risk of STDs would increase the risk for prostitutes and hence increase the required cost?

In fact, it actually goes towards my argument. Their population growth rates have balanced out due to economic development and sheer size.

China has the lower population growth rate and higher economic growth rate than India. It sort of supports our point.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

It is higher than the world average.

It is sitting roughly in the middle.

Its population will double roughly ever 46 years. Compared to America's which will double roughly every 78 years.

So? The current trend in India's population growth is going downwards.

http://www.census.gov/ipc/prod/ib-9701.pdf

He mentioned China and Korea, which are nations which are developing successfully. India is not.

According to whom? You? India is doing fine economically. I suppose that all of the jobs we outsource over there are just a coincidence, right?

I never said jack shit about Korea, so I don't know why Stas brought it up.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

How the hell is that remotely related to what I am talking about?

You stated that the US only beginning to teach evolution in public schools in 1965 was an objective wrong in that it put us behind the rest of the world on education.

Back it up. When did most of the rest of the world begin teaching evolution in the classroom?

Being against gays is common, but it is the absolute bottom of the barrel that execute them.

I ever denied that?

Because demand is infinite? Have you ever taken an economics class?

How about you actually address the points I raised instead of spouting theoretical jargon which doesn't always hold true in reality?

The whole "foreigners who have trouble speaking the language is a big tip off.

What? Legal prostitutes can't be foreign? Once again man, you can try and ignore them all you want, but the objective facts in this case aren't going to change.

And the US doesn't share a border with Mexico and Cuba?

Don't be a smart ass. You know what I meant.

And you don't think the risk of STDs would increase the risk for prostitutes and hence increase the required cost?

Huh? What ass backwards school of economics do you subscribe to there Sam? Name one industry in which the presence of "tainted goods" actually encourages customers to pay more.

China has the lower population growth rate and higher economic growth rate than India.

Because China is more developed than India and has been for quite a while. This is exactly what I have been saying.

Even without the one child policy, China's population growth rate would likely be less than or equal to India's.

[K. A. Pital]

According to whom? You? India is doing fine economically. I suppose that all of the jobs we outsource over there are just a coincidence, right?

India has been doing far, far worse than China despite having initially similar starting conditions.

This has been brought up time and again.

You argued that one should look at India to see how badly China would have been as a democracy. India however is also the second growing giant of the world. Her economy is moving forward, the education system is in no way inferior to the Chinese and so is the country. The population pressures are larger, but the successes India had in managing it without enforcing authorian dictates is remarkable.

Poor, in millions.

Malnutritioned, in millions.

Life expectancy, China, India

I would not dare to say India has "freed" itself from the caste system damage, that it's education is "in no way inferior" to Chinese, and "so is the country", unless I was willing to commit to saying blatant falsehoods.

Blah. I had so many arguments about transitions from autocracy to democracy and the like here that I can't remember that particular one, sorry.

The graphs I posted on the previous page though do show that PainRack's "India = China, but with democracy" argument doesn't have much to base on. India's progress from 1978 to 2000 hasn't been all that stellar in health, poverty, nutrition and education indicators, and compared to China's last 50 years they've been doing a fairly lousy job, despite both nations starting with equal numbers of poor in the late 1970s, and despite India actually exceeding China's life expectancy at first.




Something more to ponder:

I see no reason to deny the obvious - India has been doing a lousy job. India also did a very, very lousy job at population control. These things are connected.

[Lusankya]

It is higher than the world average.

It is sitting roughly in the middle.

So middling = low, now?

According to whom? You? India is doing fine economically. I suppose that all of the jobs we outsource over there are just a coincidence, right?

I think I'll wait for Stas to show his graphs comparing India and China's development, since I always forget where to find the links, but he doesn't.

I never said jack shit about Korea, so I don't know why Stas brought it up.

You said "up and coming economic powerhouses", indicating the recently industrialising nations, of which South Korea is one. It's like when people complain about Islam being incompatible with democracy, and then someone says "what about Indonesia?" and then they go "Indonesia isn't an Islamic country!" thus showing their ignorance of world matters.

Because China is more developed than India and has been for quite a while. This is exactly what I have been saying.

You really need so see Stas's graphs, which I guarantee that he will show in his next post. （EDIT: or he can post it the post before mine while I'm not looking) Or you can look at them in this thread. China has only been more developed than India for quite a while if you consider "quite a while" to be "since the eighties". In the 1950s, India was much more developed than China. And it didn't have the disadvantage of being mismanaged by Mao in the meantime.

Even without the one child policy, China's population growth rate would likely be less than or equal to India's.

Please read my first post in this thread. I know a lot more about Chinese culture than you, and I tell you that this sentence is full of bullshit.

[TheKwas]

What the fuck is the 'zero population growth' thesis and who here is actually supporting it?

Population Connection-(formerly "Zero Population Growth")

...
No shit! I never said that it did. However, there are quite a few people who do state such a state of affairs as being their ultimate goal.

Groups like this are actually pretty common in the environmentalist movement.

Great, so this "zero population growth" thesis isn't actually a thesis, but a group? Do anyone here belong to this group? I'm fairly certain none of my eco profs were part of this group. I don't think that anyone here has stated that a zero growth rate is needed for developing countries (although it is certainly needed at some time in the future), but rather a reduction in population growth rates.

However, is this really causation, or simply correlation? I never denied that reduced population growth and greater per capita income tend to go hand-in-hand. I simply pointed out that nations with reduced population growth AND higher per capita incomes tend to already be fairly well economically developed any way.

It's causation, for reasons already explained to you: Marginal diminishing returns to land and dilution of capital. Again, economics 101.

You seem to be entering this discussion from a position of total ignorance.

Besides, most of the world's up-and-coming economic powerhouses also happen to have some of the largest and fastest growing populations on the planet. How do you account for that?

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

Also, are we talking up-and-coming powerhouses on the international level, or up-and-coming developing countries. China is a powerhouse, but it's also very poor. The goal of any country should be development first, and then maybe international significance.

Additionally, it might be argued that greater "per capita income" shouldn't even be our goal in the Third World to begin with. Before a nation can even begin to think about bringing up its per capita income, a stable and productive economic system must first be established. History has shown repeatedly that massive increases in per capita income in developing nations where a reasonably stable econmic system is not in place generally tend to result in economic and political instability (think Iran under the Shah). By way of contrast, nations like China and India have massive and extraordinarily productive economies, but low per capita incomes in comparison to Western nations.

How the fuck do you come to the conclusion that large population growth is the key to stable economic foundations? Again, the exact opposite is the truth. Large populations cause bureacratic nightmares, dilution of existing agricultural lands/destruction of traditional ways of life, low wages, ethnic tensions, and demographic transitions. A high pop growth rate means that you have what are called expansive population pyramids, where you have many more youths than adults. In the short-run, this causes what is called "youth dependency" where every working person has to support a high proportion of youth. In North America, the workforce only has to support 20% of the population as youth dependents, while in countries like Ethiopia the proportion is more like 45%. This is a huge strain on existing workers. In the long run, it causes foundational problems in the economy due to demographic transitions: if you think the baby-boomers retiring will be tough on North America/European economies, it will be more than twice as bad for these currently developing countries.

A) Your graph representing the West goes all the way back to 1780, whereas your graph representing the Third World only shows the last 100 years or so. Frankly, if you only consider the period from 1800 to 1910 on the Western graph, it actually matches the Third World graph fairly well. Death rates plummet, while birth rates remain the same untill about the turn of the century.

Of course the timeline is different, the graph represents the current development process. Western nations developed first, so their graph goes back further in time.

Obviously posting a graph was a waste of time, since you are totally unable to read graphs. Yes, death rates plummet in both situations, but the case is more than twice as severe in the one graph as it is in the other. Western nations never hit growth rates much about 1%. Currently developing countries often hit rates above 2%. Currently developing countries have growth rates that are without precendent in the history of man.

I'm sorry, but what's the point of living if you can't pass on your genes?

You live a very shallow life.

Seriously man, just read up on it.

Before you go on telling others to read anything, you should really read an economic growth textbook before dismissing the entire field as some sort of environmental fringe conspiracy. David Weil or Charles Jones both have fantastic textbooks on the matter that summarize the field.

Because China is more developed than India and has been for quite a while.

They started out equal in the 50s, and the divergence started after the 1-child reforms. But do continue to make shit up out of your ass.

"In both countries, this growth has been accompanied by substantial—in the case of China,
dramatic—reductions in the aggregate incidence of absolute poverty measured in terms of income
or consumption. Figure 6.1 displays these two trends for the two countries over the period from
1981 to 2001.1 The headcount rates of poverty are calculated on as comparable a basis as is
currently feasible with the data available. The poverty line is the World Bank’s dollar-a-day
global standard of about $32.74 per month at 1993 Purchasing Power Parity. China started this
period with the higher poverty rate, but soon overtook India"
Source

Huh? What ass backwards school of economics do you subscribe to there Sam? Name one industry in which the presence of "tainted goods" actually encourages customers to pay more.

Do you understand what a 'supply' curve is?

[Alyrium Denryle]

Same with mine.

This is a huge strain on existing workers. In the long run, it causes foundational problems in the economy due to demographic transitions: if you think the baby-boomers retiring will be tough on North America/European economies, it will be more than twice as bad for these currently developing countries.

There is a dark side to cases where population growth rates are dropped too quickly, as per the one child policy. They go from a situation where they have a fuckton of young to those individuals supporting the economy. Productivity will boom. Then it will collapse, because that population will age and not be replaced.

Then everything will stabilize.

[Alyrium Denryle]

It is sitting roughly in the middle.

Only if the numbers 2.55 and 3.11 are the same...

So? The current trend in India's population growth is going downwards.

Does not matter. The question is, will the growth rate decrease fast enough. Are you reading my posts BTW?

According to whom? You? India is doing fine economically. I suppose that all of the jobs we outsource over there are just a coincidence, right?

Only if you consider hundreds of millions of people living in abject poverty as fine.

[K. A. Pital]

India's poverty is itself a massive human rights abuse. How can't people wrap around their head that poverty is incompatible with human rights, it destroys the very basis on which human rights can be built, that is economic welfare?

[Alyrium Denryle]

India's poverty is itself a massive human rights abuse. How can't people wrap around their head that poverty is incompatible with human rights, it destroys the very basis on which human rights can be built, that is economic welfare?

I take a somewhat different approach. Human rights are abstract concepts, the goal of which are to maximize happiness. If a human right runs counter to this goal in a particular application (such as in preventing poverty through population control) then the concept of the right must take a back seat to the goal itself.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

This is completely unrelated to my point.

In that case, I'm sorry Sam, but I have no idea what point you are even trying to make.

I said it hurt us which is bad. What part of this are you not getting?

Once again, how was 1965 in relation to the rest of the world? If we began teaching about evolution in 1965, and most of Europe only started doing so in 1945 or 1950, I would hardly say that it made much of a difference on the whole.

Uganda is the one that you pointed out as an economic success story and yet is thinking of creating witchhunts.

In case you missed it, I said that I thought this was unfortunate.

Theoretical jargon? You do realize what the term "market saturation" means and why keeping competitors out would be good for current providers of a service? Do you really want me to explain basic economic terminology to you.

In other words, "LALALALALA...jargon, jargon....LALALALALA...jargon, jargon...NOT LIIIIISSSTEEENINGGG TO YOUUUU."

Once again Sam, if you can't take this conversation seriously and stay on topic, why are we having it to begin with?

They can, but legal prostitutes generally know the language of the country they are working in.

Once again Sam, read the articles and educate yourself on how traffickers function before spouting baseless speculation.

I'm not going to bother explaining it to you any more.

STDs are a risk to the prostitute . It is why you'd have to pay people higher wages if you had a tendency to randomly execute them- crappy work environments require a large incentive.

And when the service you are offering is illegal to begin with, such sentiments effectively count for nil.

Only if the numbers 2.55 and 3.11 are the same...

Do you care to elaborate on that?

Does not matter. The question is, will the growth rate decrease fast enough.

In any case, I doubt that the world is going to collapse around our ears before the end of the next century at least. India and China have plenty of time to develop their economies and curb their birthrates.

Are you reading my posts BTW?

I'm honestly trying to address everything that people are saying. However, I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't beginning to become bogged down here.

Only if you consider hundreds of millions of people living in abject poverty as fine.

This is going to magically change if we spend more condoms to India?

Once again, I'm not saying that birth control can't serve a purpose. I'm simply saying that it shouldn't be the major priority of our aid efforts to the Third World.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

Quote:
So middling = low, now?

Once again, I never even said that it was low. Stas did. Frankly, why is middling even a bad thing when the fact remains that population growth in India is generally trending down anyway?

Slower population reduction versus massive and horrific human rights absuses? I'll take option A), thank you.

Quote:
I think I'll wait for Stas to show his graphs comparing India and China's development, since I always forget where to find the links, but he doesn't.

Once again, did I ever claim that India was doing as well as China?

No, I only said that it was one of the "up-and-coming economic powerhouses" of the world.

Quote:
of which South Korea is one.

South Korea is an entirely different issue. Developing the South Korean economy has basically been a pet project of the United States' for the last 50 some-odd years.

How is Korea's current situation relevant to the issue of Chinese and Indian ascendency?

Quote:
I see no reason to deny the obvious - India has been doing a lousy job. India also did a very, very lousy job at population control. These things are connected.

I'm not going to deny that China has been doing better than India on average. However, I wouldn't say that this is entirely due to population control either. Deng was a rather shrewd leader, and he did a lot to reform China's economy which the Indians have only recently picked up on.

[K. A. Pital]

Slower population reduction versus massive and horrific human rights absuses? I'll take option A), thank you.

Extreme poverty is bad for people. It causes more suffering than China's One Child policy, that's quite certain. Don't fucking even try to compare scavenging for food and being malnutritioned to simply being denied the right to having more than one child.

Once again, did I ever claim that India was doing as well as China? No, I only said that it was one of the "up-and-coming economic powerhouses" of the world.

You said that all up and coming "economic powerhouses" have "the fastest population growth rate". That was false. You also ignore the fact that India and China had roughly similar starting points, in the socio-economic aspect, but India did much worse. It also had bad population control. To deny that the two have at least a correlation is being obtuse and blind.

South Korea is an entirely different issue. Developing the South Korean economy has basically been a pet project of the United States' for the last 50 some-odd years. How is Korea's current situation relevant to the issue of Chinese and Indian ascendency?

South Korea is just one nation that recently industrialized. It has a low reproduction rate.

I'm not going to deny that China has been doing better than India on average. However, I wouldn't say that this is entirely due to population control either. Deng was a rather shrewd leader, and he did a lot to reform China's economy which the Indians have only recently picked up on.

I never said it's "entirely due to" population control. Stop strawmanning. I said it's connected. Moreover, India started with a democracy and with a structure that was a mix of capitalism and feudalism. China started in a similar economic situation in the 1950s - a mix of rural feudalist remnants, just recently freed from warlordism, and a very scant little of modern industry. India's failure cannot be merely explained by Deng's reforms alone, because India's failure to attain a high rate of social progress in the aspects of healthcare, etc. has been continous and long-lasting. China's healthcare indicators started massively improving in the 1960. In fact, they spiked upwards. India had nothing of the sort, it's progress in human welfare has continously been very slow and lagging.

I challenged you to prove what you said, that rising economic "powerhouses" all have a "fastest growth rate". I have shown that this is false and that nations with a a higher growth rate did worse than those with a lower growt rate, often with similar starting conditions. Your answer to that is?

[Lusankya]

Don't worry about it, Sam: so did Mr Stupid Name. I'm posting my reply to that one here, though, under the assumption that mods will merge his post into this thread at some point or other.

Once again, I never even said that it was low. Stas did. Frankly, why is middling even a bad thing when the fact remains that population growth in India is generally trending down anyway?

Stas never said that India's economy wasn't a piece of shit either. India's economy is growing because it has cheap labour, lots of it, relative stability and an English-speaking population (for a given definition of "English"). It is not actually associated with poverty reduction, which is a far more important indicator of development than GDP per capita.

Slower population reduction versus massive and horrific human rights absuses? I'll take option A), thank you.

And these "massive and horrific" human rights abuses would be? Give me an example of something that you think is both "massive" and "horrific". I want to laugh at your ignorance again.

Once again, did I ever claim that India was doing as well as China?

No, I only said that it was one of the "up-and-coming economic powerhouses" of the world.

What is the point of being a powerhouse if it is only due to sheer volume and not actually do do with, say, having less than 80% of your population living on less than $2/day.

How is Korea's current situation relevant to the issue of Chinese and Indian ascendency?

We are talking about economic development in the context of population growth. There are examples of countries massively reducing poverty while having low population growth. Where are the examples of countries that are reducing poverty while maintaining high population growth?

I'm not going to deny that China has been doing better than India on average. However, I wouldn't say that this is entirely due to population control either. Deng was a rather shrewd leader, and he did a lot to reform China's economy which the Indians have only recently picked up on.

Nobody is saying that it is entirely due to population control. Population control is essential, but not sufficient to alleviate poverty.

[Lonestar]

According to whom? You? India is doing fine economically. I suppose that all of the jobs we outsource over there are just a coincidence, right?

Not to dogpile, but I've been to both India(Goa) and China(Hong Kong). Now, Hong Kong isn't a carbon copy of every Chinese coastal city out there for obvious historical reasons, but widespread poverty appears to be much, much, worse in India than in China. Or at least in major Indian cities compared to major Chinese cities. I can expand this out to compare, say, Singapore to Goa. The vast majority(80% +) of housing in Singapore is government owned/managed. Singapore doesn't appear to be the nightmarish poverty-ridden city that Goa is, despite being an island smaller than San Diego County with no natural resources to speak of.

It's obvious (to this gringo, anyway) that India is not a well-managed country by any stretch. Appeal to personal authority, I know, but there it is.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

Great, so this "zero population growth" thesis isn't actually a thesis, but a group?

They are fairly representative of the ideology of the "Population Control" movement.

It's causation, for reasons already explained to you: Marginal diminishing returns to land and dilution of capital. Again, economics 101.

Once again, you can spout esoteric theory all day long. How does it actually compare to the reality on the ground?

Nations with lower birth rates have better economies. Which causes the other? Your text books may claim that A) causes B), but history would seem to indicate that it is the other way around.

How the fuck do you come to the conclusion that large population growth is the key to stable economic foundations? Again, the exact opposite is the truth.

Did I ever say that? No, I did not.

I said that reasonable population growth rates, while important, are of secondary or tertiary importance to ensuring economic stablity.

Don't misrepresent my viewpoint.

Of course the timeline is different, the graph represents the current development process. Western nations developed first, so their graph goes back further in time.

Way to miss the entire point of what I said...

Obviously posting a graph was a waste of time, since you are totally unable to read graphs.

...annnnnnd resort to an evasive Ad Hominem attack.