2014-08-07, 03:01 PM
[MENTION=2088]Flonne[/MENTION]; I don't think that kind of isolationism policy has been viable since WWII. If the financial crisis and our recent attempts to sanction Russia have taught us anything, it's that the global economy is so interwoven that it's impossible to the point of suicide to withdraw from it. You can't pretend that ceasing to give foreign aid won't have negative economic impacts at home. Aid is a tiny portion of our national budget and cutting it off would largely represent a drop in the bucket to our problems. Meanwhile those couple million dollars are all that's propping up some countries. This doesn't even count any moral responsibilities we may have.
You're "let them all starve" plan is equally suicidal. Overpopulation is certainly a problem, but not in the poor rural countries. It's primarily a problem in reasonably developed nations where urbanization promotes population growth without matching food production. Short of going to war or a global plague or forced sterilization, there's really nothing to be done about it. I think the Dan Brown's Inferno covered the problem reasonably well for a work of fiction.
If we tried any kind of enforced population control through removing food subsidies, we'd just get sky rocketing crime rate and a possible armed insurrection. That's assuming we ever managed to get the political willpower to do it anyway.
Frankly, the only viable solution to overpopulation is a well coordinated world wide government conspiracy to sterilize a heavy percentage of the world's population through something like vaccines. Unfortunately, our governments are so inept this would likely fail anyway. We can only hope that a plague arises soon.
I've gone kind of far afield with this reply...
You're "let them all starve" plan is equally suicidal. Overpopulation is certainly a problem, but not in the poor rural countries. It's primarily a problem in reasonably developed nations where urbanization promotes population growth without matching food production. Short of going to war or a global plague or forced sterilization, there's really nothing to be done about it. I think the Dan Brown's Inferno covered the problem reasonably well for a work of fiction.
If we tried any kind of enforced population control through removing food subsidies, we'd just get sky rocketing crime rate and a possible armed insurrection. That's assuming we ever managed to get the political willpower to do it anyway.
Frankly, the only viable solution to overpopulation is a well coordinated world wide government conspiracy to sterilize a heavy percentage of the world's population through something like vaccines. Unfortunately, our governments are so inept this would likely fail anyway. We can only hope that a plague arises soon.
I've gone kind of far afield with this reply...