What Would Constitute a "Meager Lifestyle"?

[Montegriffo]

One large flaw in your argument is the fact birthrates decrease as societies become more prosperous. When you have a high death rate amongst your children you have more to ensure that when you get old there is someone to look after you. This system worked all over the world until better healthcare and welfare systems made it less necessary.
Not all aid has to be food either. Food should only be the last resource when a famine is taking lives. If as a farmer you have to compete with free food this disincentives the production of food. What poorer countries need is infrastructure so food can get to the markets and equipment to make food production more efficient.
Intelligent aid will eventually lead to Africans being self sufficient and may even make them rich enough to buy Western product with their own money.
Keeping Africa poor and under fed is what perpetuates the type of corrupt mismanagement of their resources by the types of leaders they have had since de-colonisation.
Your nonsense about only two cultures being able to produce successful societies is just that...nonsense. Before the intervention of Europeans the continent didn't starve in their millions like it has since.

[Speaker to Animals]

One large flaw in your argument is the fact birthrates decrease as societies become more prosperous. When you have a high death rate amongst your children you have more to ensure that when you get old there is someone to look after you. This system worked all over the world until better healthcare and welfare systems made it less necessary.
Not all aid has to be food either. Food should only be the last resource when a famine is taking lives. If as a farmer you have to compete with free food this disincentives the production of food. What poorer countries need is infrastructure so food can get to the markets and equipment to make food production more efficient.
Intelligent aid will eventually lead to Africans being self sufficient and may even make them rich enough to buy Western product with their own money.
Keeping Africa poor and under fed is what perpetuates the type of corrupt mismanagement of their resources by the types of leaders they have had since de-colonisation.
Your nonsense about only two cultures being able to produce successful societies is just that...nonsense. Before the intervention of Europeans the continent didn't starve in their millions like it has since.

(1) I reject the premise that birthrates decrease because societies become more prosperous. You have to base that on the West, which underwent what is euphemistically called the "sexual revolution", but more accurately is described as degeneracy of our people (decadence and decline). That was a cultural shift that had little to do with economics. China was forced to impose a low fertility rate through state violence in order to curb their population growth even as they transitioned to a semi-developed economy. This is one of those leftist slogans constantly thrown around as fact without any real evidence or proof behind it.

(2) Africa is not more prosperous. That's exactly what I am telling you. All the billions of dollars in aid we send them has not only destroyed their ability to produce enough food for themselves, it has hindered any ability they may have had in developing. You don't make them prosperous by throwing money at them. I know that seems crazy to you with your left ideology, but that's what happened. We made it worse.

The US spent not nearly as much rebuilding Germany and Japan. Do you see them struggling like Africa? If you want to quibble with that, consider that it was the US that modernized Japan in the Meishi Reforms. They modernized just fine. It's not about just throwing money at people. The character of the people matter.

(3) So-called intelligent aid I doubt is practical when dealing with a tribal human population. I have explained why. I have shown how all our efforts were for naught. I am not against feeding people who are actually starving to death. I am not even against abolishing international patent law for drugs and other life-saving technologies in the developing world. But just throwing money at them is actually creating a terrible mess.

[Speaker to Animals]

If you really want to understand where I am coming from, read this older NYT piece:

https://www.relativitycalculator.com/ar ... _trap.html

[DrYouth]

StA is right in this case.

There have been a lot of strong arguments about wasted and counter productive aid.

Left ideology has very often gone wrong with aid to the developing world... probably more often than it has gone right. It is the classic paternalistic approach of the left that over and over again is humiliating and destructive to those it patronizes.

In these cases I concur with the critiques of the left.

This doesn't mean we should turn a blind eye to famines or disasters of course... but moving away from the culture of "aid" is a strong recommendation.

[Okeefenokee]

Come back to me when you're cooking your food on water buffalo shit.

Come back to me when you eat the meat you hunted on the tundra with spears made from stone points you knapped yourself.

Come back to me when you're a pre-hominid species eating nuts and roots.

[Montegriffo]

One large flaw in your argument is the fact birthrates decrease as societies become more prosperous. When you have a high death rate amongst your children you have more to ensure that when you get old there is someone to look after you. This system worked all over the world until better healthcare and welfare systems made it less necessary.
Not all aid has to be food either. Food should only be the last resource when a famine is taking lives. If as a farmer you have to compete with free food this disincentives the production of food. What poorer countries need is infrastructure so food can get to the markets and equipment to make food production more efficient.
Intelligent aid will eventually lead to Africans being self sufficient and may even make them rich enough to buy Western product with their own money.
Keeping Africa poor and under fed is what perpetuates the type of corrupt mismanagement of their resources by the types of leaders they have had since de-colonisation.
Your nonsense about only two cultures being able to produce successful societies is just that...nonsense. Before the intervention of Europeans the continent didn't starve in their millions like it has since.

(1) I reject the premise that birthrates decrease because societies become more prosperous. You have to base that on the West, which underwent what is euphemistically called the "sexual revolution", but more accurately is described as degeneracy of our people (decadence and decline). That was a cultural shift that had little to do with economics. China was forced to impose a low fertility rate through state violence in order to curb their population growth even as they transitioned to a semi-developed economy. This is one of those leftist slogans constantly thrown around as fact without any real evidence or proof behind it.

Birth rates in he West started declining long before the sexual revolution. There are multiple reasons for this which are related to a nations progress, better health services reducing infant mortality reduces the need for having a lot of children to ensure survival to adulthood.As a nation becomes more prosperous the cost of raising children rises due to the rising costs of education, food and housing. Where as in underdeveloped nations children are seen as extra workforce who don't get expensive education or healthcare so are not a burden but a benefit.

(2) Africa is not more prosperous. That's exactly what I am telling you. All the billions of dollars in aid we send them has not only destroyed their ability to produce enough food for themselves, it has hindered any ability they may have had in developing. You don't make them prosperous by throwing money at them. I know that seems crazy to you with your left ideology, but that's what happened. We made it worse.

The US spent not nearly as much rebuilding Germany and Japan. Do you see them struggling like Africa? If you want to quibble with that, consider that it was the US that modernized Japan in the Meishi Reforms. They modernized just fine.It's not about just throwing money at people. The character of the people matter.

Like I said, aid is not just in the form of free food but also increasing infrastructure, healthcare and education. All these improvements have made Africa more prosperous than it was but they are handicapped by poor leadership and tribal rivalries. Comparisons between Africa and highly developed countries such as Japan and Germany are at best misleading. This is not a level playing field as Africa never had the educated populations and infrastructure of the countries helped by the Marshall plan.Japan was already a modern country at the outset of WWII so it was a matter of rebuilding not starting from scratch. No country in Africa was capable of Pearl harbour in 1941 and bringing the character of the people into it is just your personal agender.

(3) So-called intelligent aid I doubt is practical when dealing with a tribal human population. I have explained why. I have shown how all our efforts were for naught. I am not against feeding people who are actually starving to death. I am not even against abolishing international patent law for drugs and other life-saving technologies in the developing world. But just throwing money at them is actually creating a terrible mess.

The efforts have not been for naught, many factors make the lives of Africans better now than they were. Child mortality rates have declined and vaccination programs have saved countless lives and led to lower birthrates and a stabilising of population growth. The money spent on aid is put to much better use now than it was in the past and stopping the flow of aid will just put us back to square one.

[Montegriffo]

StA is right in this case.

There have been a lot of strong arguments about wasted and counter productive aid.

Left ideology has very often gone wrong with aid to the developing world... probably more often than it has gone right. It is the classic paternalistic approach of the left that over and over again is humiliating and destructive to those it patronizes.

In these cases I concur with the critiques of the left.

This doesn't mean we should turn a blind eye to famines or disasters of course... but moving away from the culture of "aid" is a strong recommendation.

All this is an argument against poorly thought out aid not an argument against future aid. I agree that just throwing money at a problem without thinking through the consequences is a bad idea but that does not mean we should just give up. You could make the same arguments against welfare but if you stop welfare spending you just increase the costs of crime and other antisocial activities. Stopping the flow of aid to Africa will just lead to more wars over limited resources and starvation as a result.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Come back to me when you're cooking your food on water buffalo shit.

Come back to me when you eat the meat you hunted on the tundra with spears made from stone points you knapped yourself.

Come back to me when you're a pre-hominid species eating nuts and roots.

Come back to me when your whole existence is absorbing sunlight and splitting in half over and over again.

[Okeefenokee]

Splitting in half over and over again sounds like a hell of a ride.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Ah, the halcyon days of photoplanktonic yesteryear...

Everything really started to go downhill after that.