feed starving man.
starving man survives to father 2 children in a region that obviously could not even support him.
we've just doubled suffering in our system.
when you pour money into a country and you see no increase in the standard of living because 1: the aid is siphoned off by corruption and used for further violence 2: the population increases up to the new maximal carrying capacity
This argument was originally due to Malthus, and was used by the English to justify not helping the Irish during the Irish Potato Famine. Shortly thereafter improvements in agriculture made it clear that Europe could sustain much, much larger populations.
The specter of mass famine from population growth was popular in the 60s. Predictions then focused on India. But improvements in agriculture resulted in calories/capita improving 23% from 1960 to 2000 despite a doubling in population.
Given historical precedent and ongoing improvements in agriculture (many of which have not taken hold in Africa yet), is it morally sound to repeat the failed argument today? Besides which, the biggest cause of famine today is political strife, not carrying capacity. To pick a random example, Ethiopia was a net exporter of food during the famous famines there in the 1980s. The famines occurred in a region called Eritrea that was undergoing a civil war, and were supported by the government as a way of weakening the resistance.
And finally around the world we are finding that population growth is faster among poor people than rich. So helping people attain a decent standard of living seems to be a more effective method of population control than encouraging them to starve themselves to death.
in india and china? no. in africa? yes. sending resources to places in contention is an easy way to cause further destabilization. see: cia in south america in the 60's.
if india and china's government's collapsed I would want to immediately cease aid to them as well.
an aside: this line of reasoning is my problem with libertarianism too. if historically under precondition X A caused B, it is quite silly to talk about A and B in a vacuum. see: nick szabo ranting about tort law :)
First, you have a point that to get out from under Malthus' strangulation, we have to get people's living standard up (and move them to cities, which really lowers the number of children).
I was in an argument on this subject a little bit ago. I went to Wikipedia and checked it up. From memory...
BTW, check Hans Rosling on TED.com, really informative.
About a billion in the world is hungry (mal-/undernourished).
About 37% were in India and China. Both will fix this inside a generation or two (and both will have good economies soon; btw, should USA borrow more money from China to pay for China's farmer's food...?)
Bangladesh had about 5% of the world's hungry -- but that is the acknowledged most corrupt country in the world, where the politicians lives on stealing aid money. To help the farmers you'd have to do a military invasion! (Which would kill lots of people.)
Of the remaining 60%, most hungry where (a) in countries with conflicts (Congo, Pakistan, Sudan, etc) or (b) dictatorships/corrupted countries (Arab world, North Korea and Zimbabwe). In both cases, you'd more or less have to topple the regime to save lives by feeding the hungry... Uh, no.
Then we have countries which will solve their own problems soon (e.g. Brazil).
But e.g. Ethiopia and Tanzania might be able to use even more aid. That is (a) a small minority of the world's hungry and (b) the only one I really know a bit about is Tanzania -- it seemed to be a milder variant of Bangladesh...
The good thing to do is to work for good governance. That might even be the only thing which will really improve the situation.
when you pour money into a country and you see no increase in the standard of living because 1: the aid is siphoned off by corruption and used for further violence 2: the population increases up to the new maximal carrying capacity
should you really continue aid?
see also: dead aid http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Aid-Working-Better-Africa/dp/0374...