Population growth, China, etc.

[K. A. Pital]

Don't misrepresent my viewpoint.

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

I await proof of your thesis above. Until you provide it, or concede it, consider this line of debate under moratorium. Same goes for others. We shall wait for Peter to provide proof of his statement above. Until then, I urge you not to continue exploding the debate into a flurry of small replies.

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.

Better economy is industrialization. Industrialization is critical for birth rate to fall, but it should be supported by government measures ensuring that it does fall. Explosive (= high, higher-than-average) population growth often hinders the economic progress of industrializing nations.

The two are interdependent. Not "one causes the other", but interdependence. I hope the concept is not hard to grasp.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

As it is roughly 2 a.m. over here, and I can't really afford to miss another morning class, I'm going to go ahead and call it a night. However, feel free to continue in my absence.

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").

This is a bad thing? Why? Frankly, you could describe any early industrial European nation in much the same way.

Remind me again, how did that turn out in the longrun?

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.

I have already cited them. Frankly, you can smugly sit there and go "nu-uh" all you want, it won't change the fact that they DID HAPPEN, and might still be happening in certain parts of China for all we know.

After all, the Chinese government isn't exactly know for its openness.

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.

We apparently have completely different definitions of economic development.

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.

The situation in India is improving every day. Besides, what of all of the masses of Chinese peasants still living in relative poverty?

I would hardly say that this issue is quite so simple or one sided as you are making it out to be.

You said that all up and coming "economic powerhouses" have "the fastest population growth rate".

No, I said that most of THE "up-and-coming economic powerhouses of the world (i.e. China and India)" are doing so inspite of massive population growth which should be crippling according to Kwas' model, not that ALL were.

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

Once again, I never denied this.

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 improving after the 1960s.

India has advocated a protectionist economic model for most of the 20th century. China actively sought to diversify its markets under Deng. This has made quite a difference in terms of development and economic growth.

[Lusankya]

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.

History does not indicate that it is the other way around. There is a difference between the way the countries developed first developed, and the way countries that are developing now developed: England, the US et al had a hundred years with which to do their developing. They could afford to have their growth rate remain high, because they did not have to give a particularly greater share of resources to an individual child born in a particular generation than they did before. Later developing countries MUST invest orders of magnitude in individual children than they did a generation ago. Turns out that it costs a lot more to train a 2010s engineer or scientist than a 1810s engineer or scientist, or even a 1910s engineer or scientist. Even farmers have vastly more education and training than they did in previous centuries. And poor countries, being, well, POOR, can't afford to train large amounts of babies, which results in ones that have large populations either having a small, educated elite, or simply having an uneducated population. Only a country with lower population growth can afford to have a universally educated population.

Oh yeah, and don't forget that the countries that developed first also had the advantage of being able to get extra money by basically raping the resources of the countries that are now a first world. Which countries exactly can China rape for resources now? They can't colonise Australia and take all of their readily accessible resources - England already did that; plus, the people who are in Australia now are better organised and with better weapons than the ones who were there in the 18th/19th centuries. They have fences too. Can't forget fences. They're an important sign of civilisation. They can't rape Africa, because Europe already did that. America has too many guns. Spain and Portugal took all of South America's gold. And Antarctica's underwater. Where is China going to steal the money from to support the babies from this high population growth? The moon?

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

How are you supposed to have an economically stable country if your poor have so many children that they can't afford to feed and educate themselves and their families?

[K. A. Pital]

No, I said that THE "up-and-coming economic powerhouses of the world (i.e. China and India)" are doing so inspite of massive population growth which should be crippling according to Kwas' model, not that ALL were.

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

I await proof or concession. On this board, you can't arbitrarily rewrite your statement. Think over your words carefully. They have meaning.

What you said now is different from what you said above. Preceding massive population growth has in many ways hindered India's and China's progress. So why would you deny it?

India has advocated a protectionist economic model for most of the 20th century.

This would be a great argument, but it hardly looks solid enough. The USSR was very isolated, trade-wise, during "most of the 20th century". It attained a life level much higher than either China or India. Even despite the collapse, the life level in the former USSR is higher than that of India or China.

Therefore, protectionism and autarky alone, especially when speaking about a nation which has natural resources, cannot alone explain India's welfare failure.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

One last post.

History does not indicate that it is the other way around. There is a difference between the way the countries developed first developed, and the way countries that are developing now developed: England, the US et al had a hundred years with which to do their developing. They could afford to have their growth rate remain high, because they did not have to give a particularly greater share of resources to an individual child born in a particular generation than they did before. Later developing countries MUST invest orders of magnitude in individual children than they did a generation ago.

You see, I can't help but think of this as being fallacious reasoning. Frankly, expecting the Third World to match the West any time soon and invest in its children and infrastructure accordingly is ludicrous. They have neither the right nor the privilege to expect the same kinds of luxuries we have after only having been industrialized for a small fraction of the time we have been.

As I said before, you have to have foundations before you can build a tower. You are putting the cart before the horse.

Which countries exactly can China rape for resources now?

The United States and Europe possibly?

Seriously though, we are getting reamed in terms of the benefit they get from us compared to the benefit we give to them.

The two are interdependent. Not "one causes the other", but interdependence. I hope the concept is not hard to grasp.

That is exactly what I have been saying this whole time! I simply happen to believe that more emphasis should be put on the one than the other.

[K. A. Pital]

That is exactly what I have been saying this whole time! I simply happen to believe that more emphasis should be put on the one than the other.

Population growth can be a hindrance to economic development. If economic development is de-facto stall, explosive population growth does not help it, but hinders it.

This is why it's important not only to provide the GOODS of industrialization, but also to install policies for birth-rate reduction in case if they are necessary. If industrialization is failing, and birth-rate is rising and even going into "explosive growth" territory, this has adverse consequences for the nation in question.

This is why population control can be an objective necessity for industrializing nations.

So if you agree with the fact that population growth and economic development are interdependent, perhaps you should tone down your first claim that MOST rising economic powerhouses have the fastest growth rate.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

I'll concede it because I never meant to make the argument.

Once again, I was primarily referring to China and India. It didn't even occur to me that someone might take the statement so literally.

The USSR was very isolated, trade-wise, during "most of the 20th century". It attained a life level much higher than either China or India.

First off, Russia was more developed than China or India to begin with. Secondly, the Soviets pretty much had free reign to cannibalize Eastern Europe and most of Central Asia for economic capital following the end of WW2.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

NOW! Before I post anything else, OFF TO BED!

[K. A. Pital]

First off, Russia was more developed than China or India to begin with. ... Secondly, the Soviets pretty much had free reign to cannibalize Eastern Europe and most of Central Asia for economic capital following the end of WW2.

Central Asia was not industrialized in the first place; the USSR industrialized it. It could not have had any capital out of Central Asia, because there was none to begin with. The first phase of Soviet industrialization was finished before 1945, not after it.

As for Russia being more developed, Russia had more industry, but it had similar bad social-medical indicators (mortality, life expectancy, fertility). On the average, Russia had as much per capita industry and industrial production, as some nations of Latin America.

Like I said, some things can't be explained by economic growth alone. Latin America had lagging economic growth and SIMULTANEOUSLY a high birth rate. This COMPOUNDED the problem instead of solving it.

I'll concede it because I never meant to make the argument.

That is good. This means that this split has served it's purpose. People can decide which way it goes from here - discuss the peculiar examples of population control, et cetera, or not.

[Ypoknons]

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.

Actually Hong Kong is much closer to Singapore than China when it comes down to poverty management. The colonial British government copied the Singapore public housing system, however new public housing stopped post-handover in the Tung Chee Hwa administration. Trying to extrapolate mainland China from Hong Kong is not a good way to do things. They have developed separately in parallel for the last 60 years, with minimal convergence in the last 10. Hong Kong developed in the 60's and 70's, China is going through that stage now, with different policies. Furthermore Beijing, for example, faces radically different problems - the large illegal influx of poor migrant workers from the countryside, for example, is something that compartmentalized Hong Kong does not have to deal with.

[TheKwas]

History does not indicate that it is the other way around. There is a difference between the way the countries developed first developed, and the way countries that are developing now developed: England, the US et al had a hundred years with which to do their developing. They could afford to have their growth rate remain high, because they did not have to give a particularly greater share of resources to an individual child born in a particular generation than they did before.

Furthermore, as I pointed out a few times already, the western nations didn't have the outrageous population growth rates like currently developing countries do. They maxed out around 1%, while numerous developing countries have rates 3% and above.

That is exactly what I have been saying this whole time! I simply happen to believe that more emphasis should be put on the one than the other.

You've constantly denied the importance of the population aspect for no good reason, no one was saying that other concerns weren't important, but we were saying that population concerns were a central concern alongside investment and institutional stability.

The basic model is a simple Solow growth model: y-l = a(k-l)
Notice that the term k is just as much in the equation as l. How much emphasis should be put on one or the other depends on their relative values. If a country is accumulating capital at an astonding rate, then limiting l isn't as important since they can easily afford it during the development process. If the country is having trouble getting capital-involved industries up and going, then reducing l becomes a lot more important.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Do you care to elaborate on that?

Average fertility rate for the world, and india respectively, which was the topic I responded to.

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 an ecologist? Perhaps a climatologist, or a petroleum geologist? Maybe a demographer?

Upon what basis are you making such a prediction? Are you aware that we are the cause of a mass extinction? Are you aware that we are seeing a drop in per capita cereal crop production as we speak, which will translate to smaller per capita availability?



And that as populations reach at best estimate, 9-10 billion over the next 50 years, this will become worse?

Are you aware that we are depleting fish stocks?



Then there is carrying capacity, the best estimate of which is around 9 billion, which we will exceed by 2050, and that most estimates place us well below that?

If we have exceeded carrying capacity, we will be subject to boom and bust cycles as our population enters cycles of damped oscillations. Cyclic holocausts.

[K. A. Pital]

[Cleanup of Peter's debate threads has been completed]


I hope this continues as a nice and clean debate. When the debate re-starts (if it does), please try to avoid posting direct snip replies in case of many people debating. Explain your point concisely. Quote the post of another only in case when absolutely necessary.

[Lusankya]

They have neither the right nor the privilege to expect the same kinds of luxuries we have after only having been industrialized for a small fraction of the time we have been.

Are you another sockpuppet of Chocolate Kiwii or something? This is exactly the kind of bullshit that he used to say.

I think that when you get back online, you should either justify exactly why you think that some people deserve more luxuries and rights than other people just because of the circumstances of their birth in a satisfactory manner, retract this statement, or admit straight up that you are an extraordinary shithead.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

Hmmm...To touch with a ten foot pole, or not to touch with a ten foot pole? That is the question.

Ehh...Fuck it.


Don't put words in my mouth Lusankya. I said that it was unrealistic to expect the Third World to attain a level of development or industrialization rivaling the West any time soon, not that the Third World doesn't "deserve" luxuries. We have simply been industrialized for a Hell of a lot longer than they have, and our economies are a lot more stable and well entreched as a result of this.

It is like a kid who just got out of college expecting to get an ultra high paying job and a big house just like their parents have right off the bat, throwing a bitch fit when they don't get these things, and all the while conveniently forgetting the fact that their parents had to work for 20 or 30 years to be able to afford such luxuries. It is basically the culture of "Liberal entitlement" which absolutely infests the Western world being applied on a global scale.

Sure, some countries get lucky either politically or geographically (Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, etca) and are able to pull off such miraculous development, others are blessed in exceedingly valuable natural resources, such as Saudi Arabia and the "Globalizing Monarchies" of the Middle East, and still others, such as India and China, are blessed with stable enough political systems and enough sheer human capital to be able to turn these factors to their advantage. However, in most cases, blindly pursuing higher per capita income and modernization without first ensuring a stable economic base is disasterous.

You can't put the cart before the horse. Pursuing wishful "I want it and I want it NOW" thinking without first looking to political and economic stability is a good way to end up like Latin America throughout most of the 20th century, most of Sub Saharan Africa in the post-Cold War period, or Iran under the Shah. Furthermore, simply throwing shit loads of condoms and contraceptives at these countries isn't going to do jack to fix these problems.

While extraordinarily high population growth in poor countries certainly doesn't help matters, simply saying "we need less people" doesn't truly address the root of the problem.


The Kwas, you are still stubbornly refusing to see my point here.

http://www.deathreference.com/Nu-Pu/Pop ... rowth.html

Western mortality decline was relatively slow, paralleling socioeconomic development, and it occurred in a global context in which European population "surplus" (arising from gaps between lowering mortality and more slowly lowering fertility) was able to migrate to new areas (e.g., the United States, Canada, and Australia) that were very sparsely populated by Aboriginal peoples (whose numbers were reduced even more by contagious diseases brought by Europeans).

Mortality decline in less developed cou ... d of time. A classic example is Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where the death rate was halved in less than a decade, starting in the early 1950s. (In the West, a comparable reduction typically took around one century.) In these less developed countries, mortality decreases were not matched by fertility decreases, where they produce population growth rates much greater than those experienced in the West. So the demographic transition that took two centuries to unfold in the West occurred (or is occurring) within the span of a single life. Third, mortality decline did not parallel economic development. Rather, the impetus behind third world mortality reductions originated, for the most part, in factors external to the society.

Decreases in Western mortality occured over an extended time scale. Those in the Third World are taking place at an accelerated pace due to having Western medicine and technology dumped on them all at once. This isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself (though such developments are bound to induce at least some "growing pain"). In fact, after the Third World has managed to develop some semblence of economic and political stablity (which more often than not results in reduced birth rates anyway, even when not accounting for such measures as birth control), all of those extra people you are complaining about might very well prove to be an economic boon to the Third World (more workers, larger markets, ecta), rather than the albatross you are claiming them to be. This is already the case in China and India.

I don't see any reason to throw a spastastic alarmist hissy fit just because the Third World is doing exactly the same thing that the West did during the Industrial Revolution, only on an accelerated time scale. As I already pointed out (and you apparently saw fit to ignore), population growth in the Third World actually fairly closely parallels the growth seen in the West during the 19th century (albeit on a more substantial scale due to the technological advances made in agriculture and medicine since the 19th century). Your own graph shows this.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Denryle, I don't think that its time to throw in the towel just yet. I would take any "OMG THE WORLD IS ABOUT TO END, PANIC AND RUN AROUND IN CIRCLES! AHHHHHHHHHH!!!" argument with a grain of salt. 20 or 30 years down the line, they have a rather reliable tendency of looking silly in hindsight.

Global warmming may very well result in rising sea levels, and food supplies may dwindle, but we'll likely slog through like we always do. After all, a lot can change in a century. We might even see a new green revolution, or some other similar technological innovation which helps to alleviate at least some of these problems.

Besides, unless you intend on straight up nuking China, India, and Sub-Saharan Africa off the face of the Earth tomorrow, I don't really see what you intend to accomplish with a population control centric model of development in the Third World anyway. Is a slight reduction in birth rates really going to make that much of a difference? China and India are still going to have more than a billion people each, and all of the condoms and contraceptives in the world aren't going to stop these numbers from going up.

[Simon_Jester]

It is like a kid who just got out of college expecting to get an ultra high paying job and a big house just like their parents have right off the bat, throwing a bitch fit when they don't get these things, and all the while conveniently forgetting the fact that their parents had to work for 20 or 30 years to be able to afford such luxuries. It is basically the culture of "Liberal entitlement" which absolutely infests the Western world being applied on a global scale.

"Liberal entitlement," eh? Tell me more...

Seriously, what demographic groups does this culture appear in? Do they have anything in common? Is there a strong correlation between "liberal entitlement" culture and other indicators, such as per capita income, level of education, age, that sort of thing? How much of this has been documented? How do I tell whether a given person is a member of "liberal entitlement" culture?

Or is the only trait that all members of "liberal entitlement" culture share something simpler? Say, that they disagree with you politically and all want something you don't want them to have?
_________

You can't put the cart before the horse. Pursuing wishful "I want it and I want it NOW" thinking without first looking to political and economic stability is a good way to end up like Latin America throughout most of the 20th century, most of Sub Saharan Africa in the post-Cold War period, or Iran under the Shah. Furthermore, simply throwing shit loads of condoms and contraceptives at these countries isn't going to do jack to fix these problems.

Are you... actually talking to Lusankya? Have you fact-checked your picture of what normal foreign aid programs involve? Or what normal economic development programs involve?

What does it mean to "look to economic stability," if not to try to develop the country, educate the population, and raise per capita income?
_________

Decreases in Western mortality occured over an extended time scale. Those in the Third World are taking place at an accelerated pace due to having Western medicine and technology dumped on them all at once. This isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself (though such developments are bound to induce at least some "growing pain"). In fact, after the Third World has managed to develop some semblence of economic and political stablity (which more often than not results in reduced birth rates anyway, even when not accounting for such measures as birth control), all of those extra people you are complaining about might very well prove to be an economic boon to the Third World (more workers, larger markets, ecta), rather than the albatross you are claiming them to be. This is already the case in China and India.

In China there are no "extra people" because they've been pursuing minimal population growth even compared to developed nations since 1977. In India, the massive population is not proving to be a great advantage, as you claim, as illustrated by their economic decline relative to China.

In many other countries where the birth rate is higher than in India, the economic situation is worse. You talk about the need to establish "stability;" rapid population growth is not a friend of stability. It makes it more difficult to invest resources in education, civil engineering, or industrialization, because those resources are vitally needed to take care of babies.

Why is this not a problem in your eyes? Why is the correlation so unimportant to you?

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

"Liberal entitlement," eh? Tell me more...

Seriously, what demographic groups does this culture appear in? Do they have anything in common? Is there a strong correlation between "liberal entitlement" culture and other indicators, such as per capita income, level of education, age, that sort of thing? How much of this has been documented? How do I tell whether a given person is a member of "liberal entitlement" culture?

Yeaah...Moving right along from the strawman tangent Simon Jester just tried to introduce...

The kind of "Liberal Entitlement" I am referring to was basically a core tenant of both Wilsonian and Leninist decolonialism. It is basically the idea that, "all we need to do is adopt BLANK, and BLANK, and we'll live just like all those rich white folks we see on TV/ establish the workers' paradise!" Generally, this doesn't work if approached too quickly, or undertaken without the necessary economic and political stability to make sure that such reforms don't simply blow up in the nation in question's face in the form of massive short term growth followed by a precipitous depression/ and or economic stagnation (i.e. Iran, most of Africa during the Cold War, Latin America during various periods, the Middle East during the 1950s and 1960s, etca), encourage political unrest (once again, Iran, the Middle East, Latin America), or some combination of both.

What does it mean to "look to economic stability," if not to try to develop the country, educate the population, and raise per capita income?

Education is all well and good. However, undertaking massive social reform without first establishing an economic base strong enough to suport it or a political structure stable enough to deal with the societal changes this is going to bring about, generally isn't a good idea.

In China there are no "extra people" because they've been pursuing minimal population growth even compared to developed nations since 1977.

You're wrong. Population growth in China is still massive simply by merit of the fact that China has so many people to begin with. Even with the average Chinese citizen only having one or two children, you are still faced with the fact that there are over a billion people in China having those one or two children.

In India, the massive population is not proving to be a great advantage, as you claim, as illustrated by their economic decline relative to China.

India is not in decline. It simply is not as growing as quickly as China. There is a difference.

Why is this not a problem in your eyes? Why is the correlation so unimportant to you?

Because economic development is a bigger problem? Once again, what part of this aren't you getting exactly?

[Simon_Jester]

"Liberal entitlement," eh? Tell me more...

Seriously, what demographic groups does this culture appear in? Do they have anything in common? Is there a strong correlation between "liberal entitlement" culture and other indicators, such as per capita income, level of education, age, that sort of thing? How much of this has been documented? How do I tell whether a given person is a member of "liberal entitlement" culture?

Yeaah...Moving right along from the strawman tangent Simon Jester just tried to introduce...

No, really, I'd really like to hear your definition of "liberal entitlement." Is it a term that should be used in sociology to describe something that really exists? Or is it a symbol without a referent that gets slapped on whatever behavior you don't like?

I can define all the terms I use. Can't you?

What does it mean to "look to economic stability," if not to try to develop the country, educate the population, and raise per capita income?

Education is all well and good. However, undertaking massive social reform without first establishing an economic base strong enough to suport it or a political structure stable enough to deal with the societal changes this is going to bring about, generally isn't a good idea.

Lovely. Now what does that mean? What, concretely, are steps that should be taken to raise a country out of poverty other than the obvious ones that everyone else is already advocating? What's so special about this observation of yours?

You see, the problem I have with your take on this issue is that it seems so vague that you can blame any failure, anywhere, on failure to "establish a base." A country isn't sending its children to school? It must not have established an economic base! A country's economy is in the toilet? It must not have established a political base!

At no point does the problem get blamed on anything that might be embarassing, such as, say, "there are nearly as many dependent minors in this country as there are working adults." Or "every person in the country must work around the clock just to feed themselves and their children, with no surplus labor to build roads and schools and irrigation networks that would ultimately increase farm output."

Why is this not a problem in your eyes? Why is the correlation so unimportant to you?

Because economic development is a bigger problem? Once again, what part of this aren't you getting exactly?

The part where you view population growth rates as being unrelated to economic development.

That's the part I don't get, because to be blunt, it makes no damn sense. Raising children is expensive, not cheap, and a country which is doing a lot of it will have trouble affording to do other things. I do not understand why you consider this to be a non-issue... but you clearly do, because you breezily dismiss overpopulation as a myth created by racists, and as a red herring to distract attention from the real problem of... "economic development."

Without any clear signs of what you think economic development is, or how to do it. What form does this take? Huge construction projects to build highways? Tiny construction projects to build cleaner water supplies for villages? Massive loans to industrial firms to build factories? Microloans to peasant women in villages to start businesses?
___________

Minor notes:

You're wrong. Population growth in China is still massive simply by merit of the fact that China has so many people to begin with. Even with the average Chinese citizen only having one or two children, you are still faced with the fact that there are over a billion people in China having those one or two children.

Rates are measured in percentages, not absolutes, remember? Does China have a higher population growth rate because of its large population? That would be retarded, and I'm beginning to think you're trying to hide the fact that you're smart enough to know this.

In India, the massive population is not proving to be a great advantage, as you claim, as illustrated by their economic decline relative to China.

India is not in decline. It simply is not as growing as quickly as China. There is a difference.

economic decline relative to China

You know that word "relative?" Yeah. It was important.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

No, really, I'd really like to hear your definition of "liberal entitlement."

The ridiculous sentiment held by many fat and spoiled Westerners which seems to posit that they are "owed" goods and services from the world, life, and government...well, because they fucking say they should be.

Keep in mind that I mean "Liberal" here in the more general sense of "Liberal Democracy," not necessarily the American sense of the word. This problem isn't really isn't particular to either side of the politcial spectrum.

Such attitudes aren't particularly troublesome in a First World nation which actually has the money and opportunities to cater to such attitudes. In the rest of the world, however;...not so much.

What, concretely, are steps that should be taken to raise a country out of poverty other than the obvious ones that everyone else is already advocating? What's so special about this observation of yours?

Opening markets, avoiding putting populist nut jobs in power whose entire view of government basically revolves around hiding economic and social problems behind flowery rhetoric and emotionally charged saber rattling while promoting short term economic fixes tailored more towards PR than practicality which are almost certain to fail (looking at you here Chavez and Mugabe), maximizing the potential benefit that can be derived from your particular nation's available natural resources (agriculture, oil, even tourism...you get the idea), avoiding pointless civil wars and political coups, maximizing exports if and only if it is profitable to do so, staying out of debt by only running social programs which you can afford (a more developed economy can handle more of such programs anyway), ecta, etca...

This is pretty simple stuff here.

At no point does the problem get blamed on anything that might be embarassing

What, like Robert Mugabe utterly destroying Zimbabwe's comparatively prosperous agricultural industry for what basically amounted to faux socialist "shits and giggles," or some Latin American nations going through as many as two or three "Liberalizing" fascist dictators a year during the early parts of the 20th century? I would say that all of these things are pretty "embarrassing."

The part where you view population growth rates as being unrelated to economic development.

Name a single case in which overpopulation has been the single, or even major cause for the creation of a failed state in the Third World. I'm betting that you can't find a single case where some hair brained revolution, grossly incompetent ruler, or half baked civil war based on ethnic or politcial tensions which could have been easily resolved using diplomacy wasn't at least partially to blame.

The only country where you could say that this is the case is India, and India isn't even doing that poorly!

Once again, I'm not saying that overpopulation in a desperately poor country isn't problematic. However, claiming "this country is only poor because its people are having too many children" would seem to be something of a non sequitur, particularly when there are so many other problems in these nations which should be addressed beforehand.

Frankly, raising children in the Third World style isn't that expensive. This is precisely why poor families have so many of them to begin with!

The part where you view population growth rates as being unrelated to economic development.

In absolute terms, China produces as many children a year as the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa. By any standard, that's a Hell of a lot of people.

[KrauserKrauser]

Exactly what is your point with China making lots of babies? As someone that has shown themselves to be against birth control implementation and against abortion, infanticide and forced sterilization, what exactly are trying to say?

There are alot of people in China? People make babies? The sky is blue?

Your arguments are getting increasingly infantile and nonsensical.

[Samuel]

The ridiculous sentiment held by many fat and spoiled Westerners which seems to posit that they are "owed" goods and services from the world, life, and government...well, because they fucking say they should be.

I should point out for the last one that they are owed goods and services from the government- that is why you pay taxes.

looking at you here Chavez and Mugabe

Er, Chavez's schemes aren't sustainable, but I believe they have improved quality of life- they aren't just flowery rhetoric.

maximizing the potential benefit that can be derived from your particular nation's available natural resources

That doesn't help you industrialize.

avoiding pointless civil wars and political coups,

This directly conflicts with your first goal- keeping populists out of power.

staying out of debt by only running social programs which you can afford

Hey, they are merely following in the image of the US

Name a single case in which overpopulation has been the single, or even major cause for the creation of a failed state in the Third World. I'm betting that you can't find a single case where some hair brained revolution, grossly incompetent ruler, or half baked civil war based on ethnic or politcial tensions which could have been easily resolved using diplomacy wasn't at least partially to blame.

The bolded parts are blatantly contradictory.

Frankly, raising children in the Third World style isn't that expensive. This is precisely why poor families have so many of them to begin with!

It might not cost money, but it does cost resources. For example Haiti is a mess because they keep clearing land for more farming and firewood- this is directly driven by the countries high population density.

In absolute terms, China produces as many children a year as the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa. By any standard, that's a Hell of a lot of people.

He is mocking you for not knowing the difference between absolute and relative terms. And not understanding why they are important as you just shoved your foot in your mouth again. Haiti can be overpopulated even though it has as many people as NYC.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

I should point out for the last one that they are owed goods and services from the government- that is why you pay taxes.

Granted, however; the exact extent to which this is the case is debatable. Additionally, there is the fact that some Middle Eastern monarchies take the opposite approach. They give their people all of the social benefits they could ever need out of the national oil surplus and charge them no taxes whatsoever, but demand absolute obedience with little to no popular representation in return.

but I believe they have improved quality of life- they aren't just flowery rhetoric.

And if Venezuela's economy goes down the tubes because of these policies, all of those advances in quality of life will be negated.

That doesn't help you industrialize.

Sure it does, if you consider money to be a form of capital. How do you think most of the Middle East managed to industrialize?

This directly conflicts with your first goal- keeping populists out of power.

Care to explain that? Half the time, the populists are the ones who start these civil wars to begin with.

Hey, they are merely following in the image of the US

Do as we say, not as we do.

The bolded parts are blatantly contradictory.

Not really. Its a poor use of hyperbolic qualifiers maybe, but it doesn't negate the general bent of the idea I was trying to get across.

He is mocking you for not knowing the difference between absolute and relative terms.

Who the Hell said that I didn't understand them? I was quoting absolute figures for a reason.

Even if population growth by percentage isn't that high in China, the fact of the matter remains that the absolute population growth is still massive.

[Simon_Jester]

Exactly what is your point with China making lots of babies? As someone that has shown themselves to be against birth control implementation and against abortion, infanticide and forced sterilization, what exactly are trying to say?
There are alot of people in China? People make babies? The sky is blue?
Your arguments are getting increasingly infantile and nonsensical.

Perhaps more to the point, he's lying:

In absolute terms, China produces as many children a year as the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa. By any standard, that's a Hell of a lot of people.

Did you just outright make that up?

The CIA World Factbook on China lists their 2009 birth rate as 14 births per 1000 people, and their 2009 population as 1.339 billion, giving a total of around 18.7 million births.

Meanwhile, the UN, here reports the crude birth rate for sub-Saharan Africa in 2007 as 39 births per 1000 people, and here projects the population of the region circa 2010 at 863 million. This gives a total of 32.7 million.

Now, we might tweak that second total up or down by a few hundred thousand either way, because I'm comparing a 2007 birth rate to a 2010 population, which could possibly make a few percent's worth of difference. But that's not enough to save you, because...

Thirty is more than eighteen, not less.
________

Anyway...

No, really, I'd really like to hear your definition of "liberal entitlement."

The ridiculous sentiment held by many fat and spoiled Westerners which seems to posit that they are "owed" goods and services from the world, life, and government...well, because they fucking say they should be.

All right. Could you detail this? What does "owed?" mean? Are there other explanations for why someone might think that a government should provide various goods and services, explanations that have nothing to do with a sense of entitlement?

Do the goods and services in question include such necessities as irrigation water for one's crops? What about clean air? Military protection?

Opening markets, avoiding putting populist nut jobs in power whose entire view of government basically revolves around hiding economic and social problems behind flowery rhetoric and emotionally charged saber rattling while promoting short term economic fixes tailored more towards PR than practicality which are almost certain to fail (looking at you here Chavez and Mugabe), maximizing the potential benefit that can be derived from your particular nation's available natural resources (agriculture, oil, even tourism...you get the idea), avoiding pointless civil wars and political coups, maximizing exports if and only if it is profitable to do so, staying out of debt by only running social programs which you can afford (a more developed economy can handle more of such programs anyway), ecta, etca...

This is pretty simple stuff here.

Yes, and none of it is new. It's not like people haven't been advising countries to avoid all these pitfalls for years. No one advises countries to minimize the potential benefit they can get from natural resources, or to fight unnecessary civil wars. No one tells leaders that they should ignore their country's problems and do foolish things that will make the problems worse.

If this is what you mean by "economic development," then I have to ask: why is population control not a significant part of the program? Most other people who advocate the things you advocate also advocate population control, if they perceive that a country has an overpopulation problem.

At no point does the problem get blamed on anything that might be embarassing

What, like Robert Mugabe utterly destroying Zimbabwe's comparatively prosperous agricultural industry for what basically amounted to faux socialist "shits and giggles," or some Latin American nations going through as many as two or three "Liberalizing" fascist dictators a year during the early parts of the 20th century? I would say that all of these things are pretty "embarrassing."

Ah, but they're not embarassing to you.

They're not to me, either; I can call Robert Mugabe an idiot because I have no stake in his policies. So can Stas Bush, and he's (ominious drum roll) a socialist! And he and I can do this because we have no entrenched positions to protect, no sacred cows that must not be harmed in the effort to build poor countries into rich ones.

Whereas it seems to me that you have exactly such a position to protect on the issue of population control. No country's trouble can ever be blamed on overpopulation, even in part, because that would imply that population control might (gasp!) be good policy in Third World countries.

Name a single case in which overpopulation has been the single, or even major cause for the creation of a failed state in the Third World. I'm betting that you can't find a single case where some hair brained revolution, grossly incompetent ruler, or half baked civil war based on ethnic or politcial tensions which could have been easily resolved using diplomacy wasn't at least partially to blame.

You do realize that "overpopulation is a major cause for the creation of this failed state" does not contradict "this failed state had an incompetent ruler" or "this failed state had ethnic tensions," right?

Real disaster areas seldom happen for one and only one reason. You will always be able to find other factors present, and if you pretend that "other factors were present" means "Problem X wasn't really a problem!" then you will always be able to dismiss any problem.

For example, imagine that I choose to dismiss "ethnic tensions" as the source of possible problems in a country. I can then go on to dismiss the example of the Nigerian Civil War because the Nigerian government was corrupt and unstable. And to dismiss the genocide in Rwanda because the country was overpopulated, which makes as much sense as doing it the other way around and ignoring overpopulation because there were ethnic tensions. And to dismiss the long-term demographic crisis faced by China as it emerged from Mao's rule as being all the fault of Mao's screwy agricultural policies... and you never did explain to Lusankya exactly what those villagers in Anhei would have done without the One Child Policy, now that I think about it.

To summarize: I can ignore ANY issue by demanding that my opponents show evidence that it acts as the sole cause of trouble. That proves nothing, unless I do a statistical analysis, look at dozens of cases where the issue comes up, and prove that there is no correlation between the issue and actual problems. That's a much stronger statement, because it means something in real life. For example, I can probably prove that there is no correlation between the number of vowels in a country's name and the likelihood that it will be rich or poor, because those two things have nothing to do with each other.

So. Anyway. Are you claiming that there is no correlation between rapid population growth and national poverty? Or are you claiming something else?

Once again, I'm not saying that overpopulation in a desperately poor country isn't problematic. However, claiming "this country is only poor because its people are having too many children" would seem to be something of a non sequitur, particularly when there are so many other problems in these nations which should be addressed beforehand.

But is it realistic to maintain that these problems can be fixed in a country where the population doubles every few decades? And where such a large fraction of the population are nonproductive minors? Minors who, if the country is to thrive, must be schooled at great expense (by Third World standards)?

At some point, the challenge of keeping everyone fed and housed will be so draining that anyone trying to build up the country will be too busy fighting the alligators to drain the swamp.

Or do you deny this?

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

Perhaps more to the point, he's lying:

My mistake, I was misremembering a quote from this source.

Each year India adds more
people to the world’s population
than any other country. In
1997, there were almost as
many babies born in India
(about 25 million) as in all of
Sub-Saharan Africa and more
than in China (21 million).

India produces almost as much to more people a year than all of Sub-Saharan Africa. However, you can hardly deny that China's absolute population growth is still massive.

Do the goods and services in question include such necessities as irrigation water for one's crops? What about clean air? Military protection?

Hardly. Minus "clean air," these are the only reasons for even having government from a Hobbesian perspective.

I was referring to things more along the lines of "I DEMAND A DECENT JOB," or "I DEMAND FREE COLLEGE." Whether or not such things should be "rights" in a First World nation is debatable. However, in a nation which can hardly even pay for electricity, let alone universal healthcare, the answer is a resounding NO.

If this is what you mean by "economic development," then I have to ask: why is population control not a significant part of the program?

My point is that it is too significant a part of the UN's program. If we halved or quartered the amount of money we spend on condoms and contraceptives, and put it towards economic development, trade, and preventable diseases in the Third World instead, progress would likely be a lot more noticable.

No country's trouble can ever be blamed on overpopulation, even in part, because that would imply that population control might (gasp!) be good policy in Third World countries.

With the possible exception of China (which is ultimately debatable, but I simply don't have the time to do the research required to debate the subject in depth right now), I have yet to see a case where population control should be anything more than a secondary or tertiary concern in Third World nations.

Real disaster areas seldom happen for one and only one reason. You will always be able to find other factors present, and if you pretend that "other factors were present" means "Problem X wasn't really a problem!" then you will always be able to dismiss any problem.

Once again, I'm not saying that population control isn't a problem. I'm simply saying that its not quite so pressing a problem as the others which have been mentioned.

Third World nations will have plenty of time to address population control (as India and China are doing now in ways which I both agree and disagree with to various degrees) once they have gotten their "ducks in a row" where their economies and governments are concerned.

No one is "ignoring" any issue here.

And where such a large fraction of the population are nonproductive minors?

Non-productive minors grow into, at the very least, potentially productive adults. If they can be gainfully organized and employed, a nation's lot in the world can be improved. If not, then yes, overpopulation in said nation is a problem.

Once again, however; unless you plan on nuking the overpopulated sections of the Third World off the face of the Earth tomorrow, the fact that these nations are overpopulated isn't going change. As this fact isn't going to change, it would be infinitely more productive to address the economic concerns these nations have outside of overpopulation (which generally tend to result in a decrease of overpopulation pressures anyway), rather than dumping funds into a futile money pit simply because contemporary environmental ideology demands it.

[KrauserKrauser]

India produces almost as much to more people a year than all of Sub-Saharan Africa. However, you can hardly deny that China's absolute population growth is still massive.

Again, I ask, so fucking what? Sure, tons of babies, but their growth rate is much lower than it was in the past and if they adhere to even a relatively strong one child policy they could really impact their total number within a few generations.

Hardly. Minus "clean air," these are the only reasons for even having government from a Hobbesian perspective.

I was referring to things more along the lines of "I DEMAND A DECENT JOB," or "I DEMAND FREE COLLEGE." Whether or not such things should be "rights" in a First World nation is debatable. However, in a nation which can hardly even pay for electricity, let alone universal healthcare, the answer is a resounding NO.

Wow, I'm going to open a tire burning business next door to you, maybe you'll rethink that "clean air" not being a responsibility of government.

What third world countries are making these demands you are so desperately against, exactly? Mostly, I hear things like, I DEMAND TO NOT DIE FROM STARVATION or I DEMAND TO NOT DIE FROM EASILY TREATABLE DISEASES.

My point is that it is too significant a part of the UN's program. If we halved or quartered the amount of money we spend on condoms and contraceptives, and put it towards economic development, trade, and preventable diseases in the Third World instead, progress would likely be a lot more noticable.

Ok, figures for the amount of money the UN spends on population control vs. economic development, trade and preventable diseases please. Also account for the use of condoms and prevention of STDs please in your figures to justify your BS.

Also please provide the amount of money you would gain and the percent increase in these other budgetatry concerns that you would put at a higher priority please.

Once again, I'm not saying that population control isn't a problem. I'm simply saying that its not quite so pressing a problem as the others which have been mentioned.

Third World nations will have plenty of time to address population control (as India and China are doing now in ways which I both agree and disagree with to various degrees) once they have gotten their "ducks in a row" where their economies and governments are concerned.

No one is "ignoring" any issue here.

Condoms and sexual education are so relatively fucking cheap compared to managing political winds to keep the dreaded populists and Mugabe's out of power that it should be done first. Why? Because it is so fucking simple and hey, it helps so many things at the same time. Want lower crime, higher per capita income, increased resources for education, reduced load on adults vs. children, bring on the condoms and birth control. You could probably pave a small African country in condoms for the amount of money spent to try and depose a random African dictator.

Non-productive minors grow into, at the very least, potentially productive adults. If they can be gainfully organized and employed, a nation's lot in the world can be improved. If not, then yes, overpopulation in said nation is a problem.

Sure, they grow into adults, after 13-18 fucking years of being unproductive leeches on the productivity of the adults. It takes resources to make children productive and the more children, the more resources are required. When you are talking about people that have barely enough resources for their own survival, having even more kids isn't helping anyone.

The more children, the less education is available per kid and the less likely the country is to be gainfully organized and employeed because....there are so many fucking kids and only a fixed amount of resources.

Do you not see that the higher population growth will feed into a lower likelihood of this gainfully organized and employeed nation that you require for improvement?

Once again, however; unless you plan on nuking the overpopulated sections of the Third World off the face of the Earth tomorrow, the fact that these nations are overpopulated isn't going change. As this fact isn't going to change, it would be infinitely more productive to address the economic concerns these nations have outside of overpopulation (which generally tend to result in a decrease of overpopulation pressures anyway), rather than dumping funds into a futile money pit simply because contemporary environmental ideology demands it.

Let's not think long term! Short term solutions only!

Please provide evidence of overpopulation decreasing overpopulation pressures. I could easily see overpopulation causing additional internal pressure that will manifest in these tinpot dictators and populism that you so abhor. More people, same amount of resources, higher likelihood of populist government. Sounds about right to me.