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Comment by freitzkriesler | Hacker News Reader

The unfortunate reality: When NGOs, the UN, and other do gooders stop providing aid to Africa, the population problem will (unfortunately) solve itself. This scenario may happen sooner rather than later if a world war breaks out or further shocks to the good supply occur.

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This is not in any way supported with the evidence, which is that dropping fertility rates correlates strongly to increased development, and with the fact that fertility rates across Africa has been dropping pretty consistently for the last 3-4 decades depending on country.

Indeed true, Africa's fertility rate, while slowly dropping, is still whopping 32 births per 1000 people. Increased development helps but food aid is what supports a large number of sub Saharan Africans who are bolstering those numbers. Famine and food prices are still a strong dictator of fertility in Africa.

The data does not in any way support that improving food safety "bolsters those numbers" if by that you mean they're keeping fertility rates up.

I think this is a bad take. It assumes that Africa is at a carrying capacity and this capacity is being artificially increased by aid.

Im not sure either of those is actually true.

Africa isn't at all at carrying capacity. There's more than enough arable farm land to support the current population and more.

See Kenya, once the bread basket of Africa and now no longer because their leadership kicked out white farmers, gave the land to local Kenyans, and unfortunately those locals even after all these years haven't figured out how to get the yields that the old owners did.

The problem comes down to the locals who are either unwilling or unable to farm effectively at yields that support the population. Then the food aid comes in which is where we're at now.

Maybe I completely missed the point of your post. I thought you were saying NGO aid is counterproductive at reducing population growth. That is to say, it makes it worse.

What were you saying instead?

If we let Russia take over Ukraine the problem will resolve itself. If we just let China eliminate all the Uighyurs the problem will resolve itself. If the Nazis were allowed to carry out the final solution to completion the problem will resolve itself. If we didn’t have vaccinations for any diseases the problem will resolve itself.

There is a clearly defined path around population control that has worked pretty much everywhere and very effectively. Don’t know why you’re recommending soft genocide instead.

> Don’t know why you’re recommending soft genocide instead.

I didn't recommend that at all. It's the cold reality and if it's too much for you to stomach that's your problem.

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