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Comment by msie | Hacker News Reader

Just today I saw the news about famine in West Africa. Sigh...

We live in a bubble, I feel so out of touch with how people live in many of the other places in the world. Last October I visited Pakistan and what I saw there really made me think about the scale of globally inequality that’s just allowed to “exist”. Not just in food, but so many other places in our lives we take for granted.

Pakistan is a lot of human created issues though. They have the most fertile land in the subcontinent along the indus river. However they have had absolutely no population control measures unlike India and Bangladesh which are almost at replacement level fertility. Throw in a backward society, mismanagement, lack of democracy and you get this.

My point simply is that the hunger is not merely because of shortage of food.

For some people, stating that poor countries might be remotely responsible for their own problems is a highly controversial stance.

Yes and No, being from India myself i understand it is complicated. However western views are clouded. What the journalists and observers do not understand is that you cannot apply the same logic you applied to your own country and many good intentioned policies will turn out into tragedy of commons. This has been demonstrated time and again. This is why i have this unpopular opinion that what China did was simply unimaginable. Yes, they have their issues but a proper democracy where nothing moves (e.g. Sardar Sarovar dam on river Narmada was involved in litigation for over 50 years over increasing dam height which submerged some tribal villages, other side of the coin was it increased the irrigated land substantially ) compared to China where they executed more hydrological projects in 10-15 years than probably what the world did in entirety of 20th century. Surely some people were negatively impacted, but the outcome was net positive. We can argue about corruption, few people skimming the benefits but i think the Chinese society bargain with CCP is to ensure jobs, opportunities and development in exchange for no significant revolution. The misplaced idealism and token suggestions and projects that happen in Africa and India are useless. Only strong, difficult decisions that should've been taken decades ago would've made a difference. It is not possible to make everyone happy in one go.

There is no winning with population control measures. Hans Rosling did a great job to spell out the arguments and evidence in his book "Factfulness" which made the charts in most countries. Really recommended reading and incredible enlightening.

To give a very short version of his conclusions: the only factor reducing births is reduced child mortality. Better healthcare and generally better economic prospects and birth rates drop on their own - no need for central planning or interventions. The book lays the evidence out extremely well and if you're a person that likes to have his/her worldview challenged I warmly recommend it!

Why do you think these conditions exist in Pakistan? Hint, it mainly has to do with the actions of certain Pakistanis. The rest of us are not "allowing" anything, we are basically powerless and irrelevant aside from maybe our trade policies.

Powerless and irrelevant? Some keywords:

US nukes Pakistan Afghanistan India Taliban politics cold war history army

Just because you live in a more developed country, it doesn't make you responsible for well-being of people from less developed ones. We're adults who are capable of making our own decision decisions and being responsible for the consequences, and this modern leftist rebranding of white man's burden is a bit insulting, to be honest.

Then why is the white man in Iraq, Afghanistan ( bordering just Pakistan ), Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Syria - and those are just boots on the ground.

Even the "living space" that is North America, Australia didn't belong to the White Man.

Greed. Although, I feel a better term would be "Westerner".

It is not so easy with Africa. They already getting a lot of chicken wings and legs for very cheap from europe, because we in europe just like the bigger chicken breast. So legs and wings are send to africa for almost free, because nobody would like to eat it in europe. The result is, chicken from europe is so cheap in africa, no african farmer can compete with that price. So there are now no almost no chicken farms in africa because of this.

And chicken wings are about to get even cheaper. Americans used to eat them deep-fried at bars and restaurants, and they’re all closed.

These two things have nothing to do with each other.

I feel when people do this it devalues both issues.

It just adds a fog that costs lives.

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