This thread is a spin-off from my Mars Rover Landing thread, as it was getting side-tracked on a discussion of whether the ~$1 billion dollars spent on the project would have been better spent on food for the "poorest countries" (btw, why is it always space exploration which gets charged with this crime? What about the $1 trillion+ war budget in America?)

Anyway, even though I still hold out hope (despite my basically cynical nature) that we will one day indeed be able to feed the world, I don't believe it will happen through spending more money trying to do it, nor through scientific advancement of crop efficiencies, etc. The fundamental problem with this approach is that if you keep buying or producing more food, the world's population will keep increasing, generating a Catch 22 situation until the world's finite resources are exhausted.

I think that if a solution to world hunger is possible, it will come from some radical shifting of global political priorities. It will also take some economic based incentives to decrease motivation to have multiple child families, such as they have done with China's one child policy. Through much of the world, the only means of a family improving there economic lot in life is to have more children (likely to work for slave level wages producing inexpensive clothing for our own children here in "first" world). We will really need to look at our own policies of global exploitation before we can hope to impose our dream of feeding the world.

(Same goes for those commercials for "Save the Children", etc. - they may help you personally relieve your guilt for a while, but you have to ask yourself whether this approach is really helping the "needy", and whether you're creating this need in the first place through your consumer lifestyle...)

I have quoted the related comments from the other thread below to get started:

Originally posted by plumlucky How many people especially in the poorer countrys could have been helped with the over 1 billions dollars that was spent on the mars landing. I think we should forget space travel until we solve the worlds problems. That mars landing alone came at the cost of tens of thousands of lives because that is the number of people who died from that money not being spent on vacinations, medicine food and education for the poorest countries. It you take into account all the other billions of dollars spent over the years in the space industry and the number of people especially vulnerable children who have died because we chose to spend money on "toys" instead of people it is really sad. I can barely look at the pictures knowing what they cost. Just my 2 cents worth.

Originally posted by Common Cents Aside from being a rather short-sighted view of exploration and scientific research (what about the billions spent on "toys" like medical research?), if we really did spend $1 billion or even 100's of billions of dollars on vaccinations, food, medicine, and education for the "poorest countries", we would ultimately only compound their problems by fostering an increase in their population. The world has a limited capacity for our despoiling species. Throwing money at our problems will not save us. If anything, we need to get our own house in order first. Although I'm sure you have the noblest of intentions, it will require a much more profound analysis of global policies to make headway in rebalancing global equity. And without looking to the future through projects such as the Mars missions, humanity will be doomed anyway, to spiral into violent chaos in our petty bickerings over diminishing resources...

Originally posted by dewcat You are making it sound like the money spent on scientific missions was taken out of foreign aid budgets. This is not true. If there were no space programs the money that was spent on these would probably have been used in the defense budget instead. If all space exploration was stopped today no one in the third world would be one cent better off than they are now. If your argument is valid then it is also valid to claim that the steak you had for supper deprived a poor child elsewhere from eating today. I believe that scientific research and the pursuit of knowledge always pay off in the long run, often in ways you can't foresee now. Money spent finding out how the solar system developed and how the earth was formed may someday lead directly to advances in knowledge that may help us develop new ways to grow crops, prevent erosion or deal with droughts so that we can more easily feed the world.

I didn't really plan on getting into a big discussion but you seemed to have only picked up the food part of what I was saying. I think it is the "whole" package that has to be offered to the poorer country. Give them food and you feed them for a day teach them to get food you feed them for life. So as I said earlier the money could have been spent on health care, education, and food. I should probably of also added social programs such as help setting up pension funds so they wouldn't feel the need to have so many children to support them in old age, access to information and birthcontrol supplies etc.

I totally disagree with commom cents who said let them die because there are too many of them anyways. I don't think anyone especially a child should be denied an education, food or medicine because the world would be better off if they died. How would you feel if someone told you your kid wasn't allowed to get vaccinated or medical attention because the world is too crowded and some of the children must be allowed to die.

I also wasn't saying space exploration was the only way we waste money that would be better off helping people it is just one of many ways.

Well that's all I have time for.

Take care

I think the majority of these problems with food shortages etc are not caused by a lack of food or even a lack of aid to the poor countries, but more because of poor or corrupt leadership. Zimbabwe is a perfect example, by driving off all the (white) farmers they are setting themselves up for huge shortages of food and possible famine.

You can see the pattern repeated all over africa where the withdrawl of colonial powers resulted in some very questionable governments taking over.

I guess my main point is all the aid money in the world could get poured into these countries and it would mostly get siphoned off by the warlords, dictators-for-life and corrupt government officials before it would make a dent in the quality of living of the average person. This makes things much more tricky for bodies such as the UN, who want to help the citizens but won't go in and just effect a regime change. Tough to decide what to do in these causes, economic sanctions just cause the average person to suffer more, and don't really affect those in power.

Perhaps the UN should buy out some island tropical paradise, rename it "isle of despots" and buy out the dictators to go live there in tropical splendor!

When I was growing up, there was an old lady who lived down the street from us. She absolutely loved cats and never turned away a stray. She fed and cared for each one with her limited pension income. She reportedly never had them spayed and loved kittens. She carried on like this for years with little contact with her neighbours in our community - I only remember seeing her outside when she was coming home from the store with her bundle buggy full of cat food. Then one day after not being seen for some time, she was found dead in her home. Police discovered her home was overrun with cats, all living in their own filth. Most were undernourished, flea-ridden and some seemingly had been attacked, maimed, and crippled by others. In the end they all had to be put down.

Her love for all cats didn't turn out to be the best policy for these particular cats she was caring for. By providing them with an essentially unlimited supply of food, they ended up overwhelming her limited financial resources. Sometimes you need to be cruel to be kind ("but in the right measure...").

Originally posted by othdawg I think the majority of these problems with food shortages etc are not caused by a lack of food or even a lack of aid to the poor countries, but more because of poor or corrupt leadership. Zimbabwe is a perfect example, -Snip- Perhaps the UN should buy out some island tropical paradise, rename it "isle of despots" and buy out the dictators to go live there in tropical splendor!

Exactly right. The UN was never able to met it's targets for getting food into Afganistan until the Taliban fell. Turns out all you have to do is get rid of the idiot governments, not try to guilt westerners into ponying up more and more money for celeberty spokespeople and Saddam's gold-plated toilets.


And as for the second part of the argument, overpopulation, that's a 3rd world problem that will leave us as the third world joins the 1st world.

1st world countries have declining population. As another thread pointed out a couple of weeks ago, Italy's fertility rate is 1.5. Canada's is 1.6. Anything less than 2.1 means a declining population. It's a problem that will take care of itself, the real long-long-long-term problem is underpopulation.

Yeah, yeah! I know - it's rather futile to recommend books in this age of spoon-fed media, but I suppose that it's my fate to live up to my screen name...

Both of these titles will give you a completely new overview of the state of the planet (including whether we can indeed feed the world). I have recommended both books before, and will likely do so again - they quite literally are the best and most mind-opening non-fiction books I have read in the past 10 years:

Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight by Thom Hartmann.

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.



(Note: They're both available at your local library, but are so popular that you may have to put a reserve on them. Do it today and enlighten your future... )