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From: gam@amdahl.UUCP (Gordon A. Moffett)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Re: poor starving people
Message-ID: <611@amdahl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 28-Nov-84 22:24:57 EST
Article-I.D.: amdahl.611
Posted: Wed Nov 28 22:24:57 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 30-Nov-84 19:10:18 EST
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> =  Greg Kuperberg harvard!talcott!gjk

> From Frank Dibbell:
> > I don't know if the famine is temporary or not, but starvation is one
> > of nature's ways of population control:  if humans will not maintain
> > their numbers at a level sustainable by the land, nature will do it
> > for them.
> > 
> > ....
> > If we continue to play God, continuing to tamper with nature, and are
> > somehow able to keep all these people alive, what will we do for the
> > next famine?  And the one after that?  Ultimately it will strain even
> > our own country's ability to feed itself, resulting in a massive
> > global famine.  Then what?
> > 
> > No one ever said that life would be fair.
> 
> This is really ridiculous.  Ever since the invention of the plow we have
> been "playing God."  The whole point of human civilization is to alter
> nature.  U.S. aid is precisely an attempt to "maintain our numbers at a
> level sustainable by the land," and nature doing it for us is exactly what
> we're trying to avoid.
> 
> Furthermore, the plight of Ethiopia is hardly due to nature alone.  Japan
> is far more crowded, and yet so much better off.  It would also help if
> farmers in Ethiopia used rotational grazing.  It would also help if the
> Cubans left.

The difference is that Japan is economically stable and can *afford*
(financially, anyway) such density of population.  Ethiopia, clearly,
cannot.

Human beings reproduce "by nature" as any other animals do, and as
Frank pointed out, there is a penalty for overdoing it when
the environment (or the local government, in this case) does not
encourage self-sufficiency.  Whence comes Phil's original proposal.

As for "the whole point of human civilization is to alter nature",
let's just say we have a philosophical difference there.
-- 
Gordon A. Moffett		...!{ihnp4,hplabs,amd,sun}!amdahl!gam

37 22'50" N / 122 59'12" W	[ This is just me talking. ]