Has anyone noticed that aid has been pouring into various countries for 60 or more years and they are still impoverished?
I was hesitant to make any comment about the actual state of the world as a way of answering LR's question about whether countries such as the list of 34 might do well do institute a child-limitation rule. Primarily I really just wanted to know where he was coming from before venturing off on my own, but I also wanted to keep the discussion in the realm he intended, which I thought might have been the abstract (i.e. moral philosophy).
But having looked at the 34 countries in question, if we were really going to discuss them, I am truly confounded as to why a 1 or 2-child rule would be the first idea to come to mind to assuage the lack they experience. I mean, to take a blunt analogy, if you go to someone's house and kick their ass, take their stuff, knock the roof off the house, set fire to their barn, tell them they owe you damages for the bruises on your fist, and repeat the process every now and again, I would find it galling to then ask whether it would be helpful to forbid this poor schmuck to have kids because clearly he's in no position to raise very many of them. I mean, really? Surely there might be, oh, I don't know, a thousand issues that should come up prior to that as ways to address the real issues. I mean, look at #1 on the list: Afghanistan. Holy moly...so after all this we are going to suggest to them to have a 2-child rule to deal with their food importation issues? I know, the OP is more to ask whether if
they chose such an option, it might be justified. Well, I don't personally find it terribly compelling to consider itemizing the actions of the Taliban to see whether each measure they enact is morally justified or not. I kind of don't care in a way. It seems to be beside the point.
Going down the list: Africa, Africa, yada yada...Iraq. Well, we can lump that in there with Afghanistan as far as I'm concerned. Then more Africa, Africa, Africa...and then
North Korea. I am really even less interested in rating Kim Jong-Un's managerial strategy than I am in the Taliban's. Hey, at least the Taliban talks to people. Blah, blah, blah...Syria. Another recent target of CIA destruction - sorry, I meant civil war. And finally Africa.
So all the countries on the list are ones the U.S. has pulverized, or Africa, which EVERYONE has pulverized. I saved Africa for last because that continents has been the outhouse for all the major powers to take a dump on since colonialism. They can't get their s*** together? Well what a surprise, they have been used as a wealth factory for every interest but their own. How long it will ever take them to recover I don't know. The rumor was that Ghaddafi was trying to unify Africa for mutual benefit with its own currency...before he was removed. We can put aside that rabbit hole for the moment (although leaked primary docs revealed many shocking things), and ask instead what it would actually take to get everyone off their lawn and actually do something to help them get out of the cycle of violence and poverty. Seriati's question above is entirely relevant, and prior to asking questions about birthrate, I would ask questions about usurious large-scale loans, about the use of African countries for foreign purposes (I recently read this whole thing just about Liberia and Sierra Leone and power politicians using them as pawns), about propping up monsters because they supported the right major powers; the list goes on. I don't see how I could even speak intelligibly about the morality of very particular schemes like limiting birthrate, when the cancer goes so deep.
I didn't really want to get into all that stuff, and in a way I still don't, because it's an endless rabbit hole. But all this to say, if this list is meant to be a good example of countries that might find it justified to limit child births, I just don't know what to say. I guess worse things have gone on there, and no one cared anyhow. So even if it's not moral...would it matter to us anyhow?