You have argued coherently. But in an attempt to delineate population growth rate from poverty levels, you have constructed a convoluted thread that is self-contradictory and inimical to your otherwise well argued points, especially on net productivity. While you correctly point out that our population growth rate has surpassed productivity, you do not see how this is an hindrance to your proposed solutions: building more and better schools, building better roads, and subsidizing basic education heavily.
Needless to say, the capital investments and welfare solutions that you are proposing can only be derived from surplus in net productivity. The productivity of a polity is the sum of the productivities of individuals and entities that make up that polity. In a situation where families are big, no matter how productive the heads of those families are, they will have no surplus productivity. This means no real incomes to enjoy leisure, purchase goods and services, improve their housing or pay for good education. You can extrapolate this to a nation state.
Germany taxes highly because the citizens earn a lot. You don’t over tax poor people. And Europeans over tax for their welfare systems which are too much. The government should be investing in the production capacity of it’s people with what it has.
And Lol. Kids don’t “dilute” the quality of education. It’s the school facilities. You can see education is not in the big 4 plan. The key reason people have less kids is because they are going to school and starting careers, so average age of marriage goes up. Nobody counts how they will save money off kids, the people who have 2 kids as you say spend more per kid but they make enough money to offset the cost.
IQ is a meme. There is no objective way to measure intelligence because humans have depth and breadth in how they adapt to their environment. And there is an issue of value system, like nomads in the Sahara don’t shower daily because water is scarce to them.
The only reason you and I don’t have 5 kids is because we spend our youth in school then settling in a job. But it’s still a biological urge that people end up meeting anyway. Poor people are stuck in a cycle of Poverty. That’s why it seems irrational to you that they can’t escape it. They are not stupid, they just don’t have your perspective that has come from the privilege of better education and technology. Which is why rich kids end up rich, middle income kids end up in the middle income and poor kids end up poor even with social mobility considered
What you need to understand about wealth is that if you can’t access resources cheaply and conveniently you must expend more effort to succeed. For instance, Africa couldn’t be cultivated to support a big population until we had 20th Century farming technology. We also struggled hard to maintain livestock and keep diseases at Bay like malaria until healthcare was advanced enough.
You cannot single out population because until recently, Africa’s population was extremely low and it was still very behind in terms of Development as we define it. And what you’ll find funny is that this moment is Africa’s most successful period ever and it’s population is bigger than it has ever been. Back then we had low production that supported only a small population. But when it improved population grew as well.
You also need to notice where the talk of Africa being over populated is coming from. And if anything overpopulation cannot happen because nature rectifies these imbalances. That kind of Population pressure leads to a rapid decline and there is no extrapolation showing this happening. In fact what is known is that as more women get educated the fertility rates drops. Because then you have 24 year old women thinking about school and careers instead of rearing kids.
You put girls in school not sterilize them to affect population growth. Education is an issue of human productivity.
We don’t have surplus production because we have not invested in the tools that boost that. It’s that simple really. Our agricultural production is testament to that. Our neglect of manufacturing is testament to that.
This would have been a nice rejoinder had you not started throwing cheap jabs and at the same time making outrageous statements.
Anyway, let me start by stating that you make an interesting point about productivity and I have to admit that productivity is just one of the many things that breed cyclical poverty.
I also support you 100% on the idea of business incubators in counties.
However, at the same time, don’t be blinded by the belief that poverty is caused by a singular thing. In many cases, and you can research about this, there are multiple factors involved which include but are not limited to unsustainable population growth, productivity, lack of food security, corruption and bad policies.
Unfortunately, I do not agree with the idea that the population question is a western idea. No it’s not. It is as good for Africans as it is for the white people, Latinos and Asians. The only reason why it has been pushed under the carpet for too long is because it is a sensitive issue, particularly for politicians. Only few African politicians have the courage to talk openly about this subject.
Population is not necessarily a bad thing, only the western negative perspective of it has been amplified, our production efficiency may be lower than what is required to sustain a population growth like ours. I believe we can improve on this and suddenly our population can be looked at as a market and not a burden and may be then we can reap better profits from economies of scale.