That's my primary complaint.
Too much capita.
You see, "capita" starts out as evil incarnate itself; a child.
These things, as we all know, not only consume resources that should be spent upon yourself, but they also bring in disease, famine and plague and scream a lot in public.
Sarcastic a tone as I may be striking, sadly, children and too much capita is quite literally at the heart of the problem in Africa.
An excellent article in The Economist details all the problems currently plaguing the Horn of Africa, but if you have not the time, just allow me to quote one quip;
"Then there are the destitute Somalis. Some 6,000 of them live in one slum the size of a football pitch. The number could grow to 10,000 within a year. If fighting breaks out in southern Somalia, it will be even more. It is a typical Horn of Africa slum. Only the air is free. Several families split the rent on a cardboard shack. Fires sometimes break out, fanned by sea breezes, often burning people alive. Wells are private: filthy water is a commodity for sale. There are few jobs for the men. Women venture out to sift through the rubbish that blooms and shines like armour in seemingly every open space in Bossaso. Islamists pass through the slums, looking for likely recruits. Disease is a bigger worry. A local doctor reckons that a new epidemic could easily break out: polio and typhoid are already on the prowl. "
And then further allow me to point out how all the problems seem to be too many people crammed into not enough space.
It's not that difficult people. It's simple division. If you have $100,000, typically, TYPICALLY, you are considered rich. But if you're the average Somali or Ethiopian and have 6 kids (and assuming the father is still around) you have family of 8, and your income per capita, despite the rare and unlikely salary of $100,000, is only $12,500, a smidge better than your average 2nd world country.
So throw all the aid to Africa in the world you want. Until this changes;
Nothing will.
6 comments:
Don't we need some children, for the future, since those of us who are already adults can't really be expected to sustain the economy forever? I'd like to retire someday and still see some businesses left so that I can enjoy my retirement, rather than having to revert to subsistence farming.
So, shouldn't you at least admit that you're happy some people are having children?
Cap'n,
The kids are not the problem, but are a result of the problem. NGOs have been throwing condoms at Africa for years, but it doesn't make a difference because, this may surprise you, kids are an asset rather than a liability in many developing countries.
In America, they're little brats screaming in the supermarket all whilst draining their parent's bank account. One of the benefits of capitalism is that people realize this and have less of them. But in the 3rd world, they are little workers and scavengers who help look for food and the such.
Basically, there's an inverse relationship between how capitalistic a society is and the number of children it produces.
There is a bit of irony here, in that this one really may be, for once, the West's fault. Oh, completely through the best of intentions, of course, but we all know what road that paves.
We went ahead and nobly cured Nature's checks on the African population (or at least most of them) and then, because we couldn't bear to see dying kids, we gave away free food and medicine, thus allowing them to survive. As recently as two generations ago, this simply wasn't the case; a family with a dozen kids was extremely lucky to have three reach adulthood simply from disease and various unpleasant local fauna (without the added dangers of internecine conflict).
Now, though...
Of course, this won't stop us fromn trying to Save The Children. Because we have to Do Something. Various celebrities say so.
My comment was general. He seems to generally dislike children. And while I understand him not wanting any of his own, it seems he would have to concede other people having kids is ultimately in his best interest.
I admit, I want people in the US to have LOT's AND LOT'S OF CHILDREN!
I need somebody to pay for my social security!
As far as Americans having kids: It is well established that when a nation fails to make replacement numbers, the economy suffers by having a smaller work force and a larger number of retirees eating up resources. Not to mention that, at the current rate, those lovely little neighbors to the south will soon have us Aryans overrun if we keep favoring abortion over actually having the kids we created.
As for Africa, the problem isn't kids, it's corruption in the government - or lack thereof. Let's face it, Africa is little more than a conglomoration of disposable countries with little or no centralized government among most of its nations. I sincerely doubt that any Western efforts will be able to pull MOST of the continent out of the 3rd century.
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