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From: wall@ucbvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: re starving people
Message-ID: <348@ucbvax.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 19-Nov-83 20:44:44 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.348
Posted: Sat Nov 19 20:44:44 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 22-Nov-83 03:09:35 EST
References: <1467@hplabsc.UUCP>
Organization: U.C. Berkeley
Lines: 49

I find it a bit hard to accept the statement that the starving people
of the world "don't know any better" when they continue to have more
and more babies. If it's a matter of educating theses people, I have to
ask why this hasn't been done yet. Why hasn't a world power like the
US taken the initiative and coordinate such educational programs so
that these people can start to solve their own problems? Could it be that
it really is not to the advantage of the US to initiate such a program
since educated people are more apt to demand a bigger share of the
world's wealth? Since much of the West's wealth comes at the expense of
third world countries, the education of these people might be cut the 
West's own throat. 

Also, it is worth looking at *why* these people continue to have families
of 6-12 when they have such a hard time feeding all those mouths. It 
must be kept in mind that for many of these people large families are
an economic resource (the more people available for work, the better chance
the family has of improving their standard of living). Of course, it
is pretty clear that these families *prefer* sons to daughters (no
offense to the women out there) because sons are able to perform jobs 
that bring more income to the family. Now this is not meant to be a
general theory for the entire world, but in several underdeveloped
countries this is the rational used at the family level to justify
having large families. Simply educating these people that it is to
their advantage to use birth control and avoid large families is not
going to solve the problem of overpopulation/hunger; if people see large
families as assets, they are sure to continue to have large families.
If any program is ever going to be successful, it must provide an
environment (both economic and social) in which these it *is* to
these people's advantage to have small families. Until then, no
relief/education program is going to *really* solve the problem.

As people living in the richest nation in the world, we cannot assume
that the people of the Third World think just like us, because they
live under vastly different conditions, which leads to a different 
rational thought process. Only when we are able to understand these 
differences will we be able to start to help solve the problems facing
these people. Unfortunately, the leaders of our country don't seem to
really want to learn these differences, and work with these differences,
but rather they seek to spread Americanism throughout the world as
the Divine Word. Of course, it takes a fairly complex mind to understand
these things, something that our current president *certainly* doesn't 
have.

Just some thoughts on the world we live in. (a crazy one no doubt)


Steve Wall
wall@ucbarpa
ucbarpa!wall