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Comment by lucb1e | Hacker News Reader

Now the devil's question: how are we going to feed all the people that survive because of this?

Really, don't get me wrong, it's fantastic that lives are being saved. The amount of grief being spared by this, by not losing a child for so many families, is unimaginable. I am just wondering if we are not creating an even bigger problem by solving this problem before the other.

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Not sure if it is ignorance that is making you to utter such words about Africa. Do you seriously think all African people are dying of hunger and waiting for food aid from your governments? Have you ever been to any African country? Majority of countries with food and hunger problems are those who are at war. Rest of us, citizens pf this wonderful and arable continent, can feed ourselves and don't need any food aid.

The only aid we need is for Western countries who sponsor African wars to stay away from Africa. I have been living in Africa since birth(35 years old). I have never seen anyone dying of hunger.

All of Africa is not starving, sure, but hopefully you can understand how people can reasonably believe that there are issues with food supplies in much of Africa[1][2], and that a large number of people are suffering as a consequence. It is a tagline that has been thrown about in the Western world for decades and can be remedied with counterpoints - I was frankly having trouble finding any good stats re food supply in Africa.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/world/africa/famine-somal...

[2] http://mgafrica.com/article/2016-02-12-africa-food-crisis-20...

Then why must Africa receive millions in aid from the West every single year? Why can't they help themselves?

http://www.chronicle.co.zw/one-million-receive-food-aid

In 2015, the U.S. provided more than $8 billion in assistance to 47 sub-Saharan countries; and USAID maintains 27 regional and bilateral missions in Africa.

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/foreign-policy/323198-...

USAID "assistance" to Africa and other countries is more of a gimme to the US big agriculture lobby than to Africa. The US pays big agriculture to send food and agriculture equipment to Africa and other countries. The temporary food abundance often destroys the country's ability to build up its agriculture. Also, it comes with strings attached where the country has to use patented seeds in order to get the aid, making the local farmers dependent on sending money to Monsanto every year - this happened in Haiti and Monsanto is doing it in Africa as well.

Also, USAID is infamous for spreading money around in order to destabilize governments who do not follow the US's dictates.

This notion that USAID is some benevolent aid program is ridiculous. It is a brutal instrument of US foreign policy and big business, cloaked in a very thin veil of liberalism/charity/humanitarianism.

Majority is truly just that, benevolent aid. You want to spin some tall tales conspiracy then let's see some citation on the matter.

http://www.care.org/our-impact/usaid-technical-project-brief...

Sure American companies benefit, sure there's some fraud, sure some of it is a foreign policy decision in the US best interests. But a lot of good is done.

Because West is stealing gazillion times more from Africa in return. When you refuse, war and/or sanctions follow to cripple your country. Then they can loot in peace. You seriously think USA is just helping out of their good hearts?

Alas, if only it was even a zero-sum game were eg Africa only loses what the USA steals from them.

The reality is far bleaker---but also more hopeful: rich countries don't benefit from (causing) bad conditions in poor countries, at least nearly not as much as the bad conditions cost the poor countries.

Instability is profitable to rich countries. That's a well-known fact. Those bad conditions were artificially craeted by colonisers. Colonisers who still refuse to exit Africa because the only way they know how to make money is through exploiting African countries.

'The best time to buy is when there is blood on the streets' - Baron Rothschild.

I don't know, lots more companies are investigating in stable China than they ever did when Mao's reigned with open terror. And also more than in less stable countries.

India also got more investments since the liberalisation in the 90s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalisation_in_Ind...).

(I know less about Africa---but I suspect relatively stable and rich South Africa gets the lion's share of investments?)

Which instabilities are profitable to rich countries?

China isn't a profitable country to the US. China fate is in their hands. That's why they are even able to kick out big US companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and Uber.

South Africa is very a profitable country to the West, not the other way round. It was even more profitable during the dark days of apartheid. That's why USA was sponsoring apartheid government with intelligence and arms. Google about Mandela arrest and CIA's involvement. They even listed Nelson Mandela as a terrorist. Even when he was President, he was still listed as a terrorist. US only removed him from the terrorist list few years ago.

I live in South Africa.

Wait til you hear how much Israel gets alone. Aid isn't a no-strings attached handout, it's policy in dollar units.

To Israel it's military spending.

https://explorer.usaid.gov/cd/ISR

It's not a secret.

I am not an expert, but I believe malaria is most common in humid areas, where crop failures are rare.

edit: not completely disjoint but the overlap is small

http://www.traveldoctor.co.uk/images/MalariaMap.jpg

http://vf-tropi.com/vf-kfamn.gif

Improving women's education and children's health is probably the best way to reduce uncontrolled population growth. Wanted, healthy children are more likely to grow up to be productive adults.

RIP hans rosling, I still see his bubble charts and excited babbling in my head any time this comes up. Seems like a very reasonable explanation.

A bigger problem than the children being dead? For whom is this a problem? Why won't the people who didn't die of malaria be capable of feeding themselves? And given that the there are seven billion people in the world, the 0.03% increase in world food supply efficiency seems both possible and worth doing, does it not?

Well, we have excess on one side and scarcity on the other side. Not that this can't be solved, it has never been a priority and probably will never be a priority to solve this problem. Please dont equate human life with philosophies of wealth distribution. God forbid, you may never know you may be poor in your country and your life may no longer be worth the medical treatment and maybe captitalism will win in that.

So please dont say they can have children cause they dont have money and people were interested more in looting this continents resources and destabilizing it than uplifting it.

Dare someone say something to this effect on black Americans and they will be crucified. Because these guys are from poor nations you can contemplate its a good idea millions not be born.

I know that malaria significantly impacts the ability of a family to be productive, perhaps with decreased malaria rates families will not be knocked out and with decreased child mortality families will shrink in the long term because more children will survive?

> Really, don't get me wrong

You're offering a most disingenuous argument.

Would a pediatric hospital in a relatively poorer town in the US ask the same question while treating a child?

Moving food to a poor town in the US from somewhere else is a trivial task. Africa has its own set of problems.

> Moving food to a poor town in the US from somewhere else is a trivial task.

You're missing the point, but long as we are trivializing complex social issues, let's ask why there are 13 million hungry kids in the US. https://www.nokidhungry.org/problem/hunger-facts

No need to ask: lack of nutritional education and income inequality.

Please help me understand. Why would Africans need unhealthy, pesticide-infested food from America? Unless it is a country ravaged with wars, sponsored by the same, America? We can grow our own food.

I imagine they'll feed themselves, like you do. In fact a lot of people in the developing world grow and raise their own food.

I don't think you can possibly mean what the black-letter words of your comment say, which is that people should be allowed to die of treatable diseases until such time as the West is convinced of the stability of their food supply.

What's with the downvotes? The question is asked in good faith and it produced an interesting discussion. Would y'all prefer for the author to remain silent with his thoughts, and for the opposing arguments to remain untold?

If I had enough clout to downvote, I was going to do so. I was going to do so because the comment is totally ignorant. I don't know who is feeding people around the world this misinformation that African people are all dying of hunger and waiting for food aid.

To remove ignorance you need to have a discussion.

> I don't know who is feeding people around the world this misinformation that African people are all dying of hunger and waiting for food aid.

I guess the "Donate money" for African kids with a pictures/videos of malnourished kids in the background.

They are probably the ones responsible. If those charity organisations can change the message to stop sponsoring wars in Africa, there won't be a need to donate to African kids in less than 5 years. Then again they won't have a job because majority of that money ends up in their pockets.

I don't know who is either, but how is ignorance going to be fixed if we punish people who ask questions?

The bigger problem isn't ignorance here. Lack of emphathy is the main problem. Parent comment, which people are down-voting, is basically suggesting that those African children which were saved are better off dead.

You are right about questions asked in good faith. Media has gotten us used to assertions and allegations made from behind a question: Is Obama and American citizen ? Is your mother a whore ? etc etc

It's pretty uninvestigated, as are many responses, I'm not sure what was gained by asking whether people who intend to have children can feed them in a coy manner. I read the first bit as feigning a doubt as to whether expecting parents would be better off with dead children (even with the following disclaimer)

It was an extremely poorly-worded question that produced a nightmare of a thread.

(I'll ignore the fact that we currently produce more food than the world needs, and much of that food is destroyed. http://www1.wfp.org/zero-hunger )

Children who survive can farm the land.

Children who die cannot farm the land.

Also, because so many of your children will die you have more children.

If more of your children survive you'll have fewer children.

http://www.irinnews.org/report/94947/lesotho-weather-extreme...

> In a country where nearly 60 percent of the population live below the poverty line, and some 40 percent live in extreme poverty, such weather extremes are pushing the coping mechanisms of families already devastated by the effects of HIV and AIDS to breaking point. Lesotho has one of the highest prevalences of HIV in the world. The epidemic has created a shortage of farm labour and left 130,000 children orphaned, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

> Malebohang Makhoathi, a 68-year-old widow, has over four hectares of land in Ha Makhoathi, just outside the capital, Maseru - more than enough for her to grow all the food she needs to feed the four grandchildren in her care, but she has not ploughed the fields for the last six years since her son, the family's main breadwinner, passed away. She has neither the money nor the manpower to cultivate the land and is contemplating selling it for short-term relief.

> “The money will make some difference in my family, even if it’s for a short period of time,” said Makhoathi, who will have to wait another two years before she qualifies for a government pension

We are going to feed them with part of the work of two million children who will grow up to be farmers, artisans, cooks, bakers, school teachers, doctors, etc.

Humans are (on average) a net plus to society. Feeding them is not an issue, we already have the technology.

the bulk of starvation in many countries is purely political. no personal rights and just as important no private property rights. the latter means you cannot build wealth and improve your position, your families, and your community. nations that don't respect all these rights tend to stagnate or those having lost them spiral down as they burn through accumulated wealth.

we one farm a third of the arable land available, so if we want to feed all these people in the world we need to find a carrot to offer their political class, this could even mean buying them off to eventually leave. it can also eventually mean taking the hardest choice and removing those in power but this is not a tenable solution in many cases and should only be last resort.

i would prefer to pull up surrounding countries that will play ball and hopefully convert neighboring countries that way.

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