May 14, 2012

How to help the Third World

Bjorn Lomborg reiterates:
The expert panel’s findings reveal that, if spent smartly, $75 billion—just a 15 percent increase in current aid spending—could go a long way to solving many of the world’s challenges. 
Given the budget restraints, they found 16 investments worthy of investment (in descending order of desirability): 
1. Bundled interventions to reduce undernutrition in preschoolers (to fight hunger and improve education)

This includes iodine and iron fortification of staples to reduce cretinism and other IQ-sapping conditions. Lomborg and his panel of experts has been endorsing this since shortly after I took up the cause. The problem with advocating IQ-boosting environmental interventions in the Third World (such as Kiwanis International has been nobly doing for decades), of course, is that just mentioning the topic of IQ deficits in the Third World is a big no-no.
2. Expanding the subsidy for malaria combination treatment
3. Expanded childhood immunization coverage
4. Deworming of schoolchildren, to improve educational and health outcomes

The Rockefeller Foundation's war on hookworm in the American South in the first half of the 20th Century did a lot of good. Parasites sap energy, physical and mental.
5. Expanding tuberculosis treatment
6. R&D to increase yield enhancements, to decrease hunger, fight biodiversity destruction, and lessen the effects of climate change
7. Investing in effective early warning systems to protect populations against natural disaster
8. Strengthening surgical capacity
9. Hepatitis B immunization
10. Using low‐cost drugs in the case of acute heart attacks in poorer nations (these are already available in developed countries)
11. Salt reduction campaign to reduce chronic disease
12. Geoengineering R&D into the feasibility of solar radiation management
13. Conditional Cash Transfers for School Attendance
14. Accelerated HIV Vaccine R&D
15. Extended field trial of information campaigns on the benefits of schooling
16. Borehole and public hand-pump intervention

So, a pretty good list, but can you think of the obvious missing element?

Right, free contraception for the poor, especially long term contraception.

Last month, the New York Times published a rare article for the 21st Century, Nigeria Tested by Rapid Rise in Population, pointing out that population growth in black Africa is a big problem (especially, of course, for black Africans). Elisabeth Rosenthal wrote:
LAGOS, Nigeria — In a quarter-century, at the rate Nigeria is growing, 300 million people — a population about as big as that of the present-day United States — will live in a country roughly the size of Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada. In this commercial hub, where the area’s population has by some estimates nearly doubled over 15 years to 21 million, living standards for many are falling. 
Lifelong residents like Peju Taofika and her three granddaughters inhabit a room in a typical apartment block known as a “Face Me, Face You” because whole families squeeze into 7-by-11-foot rooms along a narrow corridor. Up to 50 people share a kitchen, toilet and sink — though the pipes in the neighborhood often no longer carry water. 
At Alapere Primary School, more than 100 students cram into most classrooms, two to a desk. 
As graduates pour out of high schools and universities, Nigeria’s unemployment rate is nearly 50 percent for people in urban areas ages 15 to 24 — driving crime and discontent. 
The growing upper-middle class also feels the squeeze, as commutes from even nearby suburbs can run two to three hours. 
Last October, the United Nations announced the global population had breached seven billion and would expand rapidly for decades, taxing natural resources if countries cannot better manage the growth. 
Nearly all of the increase is in sub-Saharan Africa, where the population rise far outstrips economic expansion. Of the roughly 20 countries where women average more than five children, almost all are in the region.

This is the kind of article that writes itself once you get up the courage to do it.

31 comments:

Anonymous said...

Most Third-World countries are in demographic trap.

The economy and state institutions can't keep up with the population growth.

Karen said...

Call the diet supplement programs "childhood nutrition," which is both more accurate and less insulting than "IQ boosting." The IQ stuff is the effect, but the actual work is providing necessary nutrients to kids. A little basic politeness goes a long way.

Anonymous said...

"So, a pretty good list, but can you think of the obvious missing element?
Right, free contraception for the poor, especially long term contraception."

...or drug resistant bubonic plague from India. That way the people don't need to be proactive.

stari_momak said...

"Borehole and public hand-pump intervention"

Think I saw that in an old Swedish Erotica vid.

Anonymous said...

With all the money Nigeria is making by selling oil, why not make the leaders spend the money on their own people?

anony-mouse said...

The UN population fund

www.unfpa.org

hands out billions (yes billions) of free condoms every year (including female condoms)

www.unfpa.org/public/home/news/pid/10270

Not sure what else can be done without force.

Seth Day said...

Breeding programs...

DYork said...

...pointing out that population growth in black Africa is a big problem (especially, of course, for black Africans).

They wont be staying in Africa, they are headed straight for where the old White folks are.

And there is no shortage of White women who want to adopt their kids, especially the boys. (Girls from China please!)

The UN and global White elite is thrilled with the future mass introduction of blacks into any "dying" White lands. They think it's necessary morally and economically.

Anonymous said...

So what happened to the so-called AIDS epidemic which was going to de-populate the continent? Maybe Duesberg really was right.

James said...

Actually, Steve, I can 1up 'free contraceptives'. Why not just stop all the Aid altogether? The problem would kind of take care of itself... at a savings to us....

DYork said...

Off to Japan, yea Nigerians.

Anonymous said...

"will live in a country roughly the size of Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada."

Of course they won't, the elites will be glad to give them your land. Exploding population is just one more good argument for vigorous Nationalism.

Felix said...

I second the suggestion that the most effective aid is the cessation of aid. Given infinite nutrients, a bacteria culture will multiply until it is the size of the earth and beyond, in a relatively short time. We are basically giving Africa infinite resources. Take away the infinite resources and the problem solves itself.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous James said...

Actually, Steve, I can 1up 'free contraceptives'. Why not just stop all the Aid altogether? The problem would kind of take care of itself... at a savings to us...."

Here, here. Cut it all off. The only thing aid to Africa has produced is more Africans.

We should also stop paying women in this country to have children.

Anonymous said...

Why try to "help" the Third World? The entire notion is the epitome of white folly.

Chinese have the proper attitude to administrate the Third World. Simply put them to work or move them out of the way.

Chinese know how to crack the whip. Whites are finished as world leaders. Whites are weak and very sick now. They shouldn't be trying to "help" anyone.

Anonymous said...

"So, a pretty good list, but can you think of the obvious missing element?"

Depriving them of self determination and running their country for them. Of course, screw that, we're not in this to actually help them, this is about status seeking.

Vilko said...

Felix wrote:
Given infinite nutrients, a bacteria culture will multiply until it is the size of the earth and beyond, in a relatively short time. We are basically giving Africa infinite resources. Take away the infinite resources and the problem solves itself.
I'm afraid that aid to Africa will stop almost overnight when Western economies collapse for good, and then the adjustment of African population to African resources will be brutal.

Maya said...

""And there is no shortage of White women who want to adopt their kids, especially the boys. (Girls from China please!)"


- Actually that's not true- its mostly middle upper and upper class liberal white women, who are a minority."

And out of that already small number of women, very, very few actually adopt African babies.

Anonymous said...

What Maya said. We are talking about a tiny minority of well-off status seekers, who, like Madonna often have their own kids already. Or, like Angelina, have a whole absurd raft of races in their family.

There is a vanishingly small supply of white babies for adoption and there is no shortage of white mothers to adopt them.

Whereas I suspect there is a near inexhaustible supply of black babies around the world available most of whom are not going to be adopted by white women and thus not by anyone.

Londoner said...

i'd agree with cutting off aid and letting things resolve themselves, but this would almost certainly lead to a) an unprecented tsunami of (attempted) African migration to the first/second world and b) the killing of all African wildlife and the complete destruction of its ecology. These are potential extinction-level events for Africa's majestic fauna certainly and for human civilisation possibly. Diverting a few billion to the specific end of raising SSH IQ and reducing fertility - and nothing else - might prove to be a very wise move for all concerned.

Anonymous said...

As long as we keep helping them, they will never find a way to help themselves. The more we keep helping them, the worse their problems become. Haven't we learned anything about nature in the last 100 hundred years? Or does every new euro-generation have to relearn the laws of nature because our MSM, the education system and government keep brainwashing them? We have our own Nigeria problem in almost all of our major cities.

Anonymous said...

David Reiff talks all the time about the need to boost third-world IQs. Reiff, the son of liberal secular saint, Susan Sontag, would probably be a household name on the merits of his own excellent prose and analysis if it weren't for the fact that touching third rails is his favorite sport. His mother used to preach about the glory of boldly breaking cultural taboos. Her real gift was in figuring out which taboos were on their way out anyway with the PC crowd, and flagrantly flouting those ones.

Her act often consisted in saying: "Here is something that is sure to offend you, but I don't care. It is.... [titillating thing that would horrify her admirers' parents]." Rieff likes to pretend to take up the mantle of his mother, when he is really playing a practical joke on her followers: "And now, I will present something that is sure to offend you: it is [right-wing cause he agrees with that would actually offend his mother's admirers]."
--White Male Diversity Consultant

NOTA said...

My understanding is that when women get some schooling and get a little richer, they almost always drop their fertility rate a great deal. However, I am deeply skeptical of the ability of well-intentioned westerners from a continent away to do a lot to help poor Africans. My guess is that simple interventions with measurable outcomes (usually unsexy stuff like DDT-treated mosquito nets) are the best bet to actually do some good.

Long term, poor countries need a functional government and legal system and some way to make money, so they can get on the wealth-nutrition-health-IQ positive feedback loop. Oil and diamonds don't seem to work for that--there is no need for a functional government when all you have to do to keep the money flowing in is to put guards on the mines / wells / pipelines. You can imagine a government taking oil wealth and using it to make a better country, and there are probably examples, but it's also clearly easy to use the oil or diamond or gold wealth to hire even bigger and meaner armed goons to keep your faction in power.

rob said...

nth way to help:

Stop the ability and brain drain of emigration to the first world. Zaire's doctors for Zaire. US aid programs spend a fair amount of money sending American kids to dig wells and lay pipe (not a euphemism) in undeveloped countries. That's the sort of unskilled labor the natives can do. If they won't dig wells, then they probably don't want wells. If they will, then they'll have an investment in the improvements.

DYork: almost no one wants to adopt africans. The oversupply of baby blacks for adoption relative to the demand is extreme.

Anonymous said...

These do-gooders are living in the past. The West itself is fast running out of money. When will these people catch on?

Also, much of what used to be the "third world" has amassed a hoard of IOUs from the West - and those need to be paid by the West. About time these Scandinavian fools understood the new facts and focused their energies on fixing their own countries that are on the road to ruin.

Anonymous said...

How about we just send all the Democrats to Africa? Let libs engineer the African societies up close and personal. l

Anonymous said...

The parallels between Sailer and Adam Carolla grow by the day. Carolla is a cruder Steve Sailer. Two above average height white guys from the San Fernando valley and about the same age...

Anonymous said...

Steve should do an AMA on Reddit. Carolla did one today and it is still on the front page, and Steve's would be much more interesting.
--White Male Diversity Consultant

Anonymous said...

"The UN population fund
www.unfpa.org

hands out billions (yes billions) of free condoms every year (including female condoms)

www.unfpa.org/public/home/news/pid/10270

Not sure what else can be done without force."

I agree - for once Steve is just plain wrong and confused here. They may not like to talk about it in a blunt way, but the elites do love to fund Third World contraception. Doesn't Warren Buffett intend to leave his entire fortune to population control? Ted Turner has also given millions to the cause.

Observito said...

What they need is private property: simple and cheap property and contract laws and registries, honest courts and police, simple and clear commercial regulations.

Oh dear, the USA needs those too.

IHTG said...

They wont be staying in Africa, they are headed straight for where the old White folks are.

They are headed straight for Israel. :/