where are the WMD?

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I am permitted to form an opinion about you based on how you spend your money.

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First off, I'm as horrified by the following thought as any of you will be, but I'm having trouble denying the basic truth of it.Daniel Quinn, author of Ishmael, pointed out that we are denying a basic truth of nature when we supply food to Africa. The truth is: populations increase in accordance with food supply and will always outgrow the food supply. We have been sending food to Africa for fifty years, and starvation has continued for fifty years. Only now the population is greater, so the numbers starving are greater.Yes, without the food many would have died who didn't die. Instead, their children suffer and die, and there are more of the children. Quinn's argument is that our food has increased starvation and death in Africa, not decreased it.Just a thought, gruesome as its implications might be.The one way out of that is to import birth control with food, but apparently we've not been too successful at that.

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There are many actions that would help (debt relief, aggricultural assistnace, etc), unfortunately most of these take time to have a possitive effect and aren't always going to do any long term good.

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Ummm, you lost me. You said they take time to have a positive effect, but they aren't going to do long term good? Am I missing something?

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This is, unfortunately true, but until the countries in question are able larely support themselves then the only other alternative is letting the people starve. Unless you would rather kill them outright and at least save them the suffering.

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I'm not really suggesting anything, just thinking out loud. This is an evolution/creation debate board, so the ecological idea that populations outgrow the food supply, die off, recoup now that the food supply is better, etc., seems to apply to this one.I attach some significance to human life, and I'm not really satisfied to leave humans to the whims of nature. However, just trying to increase the food supply, and doing nothing else, is only increasing the starvation, so we're not doing any short term or long term good. It seems like something different than just sending food has to be done.It was Daniel Quinn's point, not mine, but it seems an awful good one.

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Does that make it clearer.

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That makes it lots clearer. Thanks.I've seen your posts, and you're obviously quite intelligent, but there were three typos or misspelled words in your sentence, so I wondered if you were drunk when you wrote the post. It was very confusing to get a sentence I couldn't understand with misspelled words from compmage, of all people.Thanks.

My brother is qualified for Mensa (based on his SAT score), though not a Mensa member, and his spelling is atrocious (sp?).Well, it was atrocious. It's had to get better since he started doing a lot of programming, because computers are completely befuddled by misspelled words.No offense taken in all that, I hope.