A) While it is true that the maitenance of the Earth's biosphere is everyone's problem, trade isn't a way to make me care about people in other countries. It is a reason to co-operate but only to the extent that my co-operation would allow me to gain in some way, and thus help my country. Thus alliaviating the suffering of people in my country, aswell to the Earth's biosphere. What you are giving are reasons why I should engage with other groups, not reasons to care about them.
You do not understand trade. Trade is not solely for the benefit of one side. If you are attempting to trade with that mindset you'll never make a deal. Humans trade with other humans with the goal of mutual benefit. It is possible that one side may benefit more than the other, or that one might face backlash from the deal, but those are usually unintended consequences of chance, not bringing intentional harm to one side so that the other may benefit.
Engaging with other groups is closer to caring about them than you might think. Humans are more often than not empathetic towards other humans, sometimes even if they mean not to be. Social connections can form without any party intending to form them.
Yes hence, why trade would alleviate the suffering of poeple in my country and give me a reason to care about Africans. I never said the gain wasn't mutual, just that there would be gain and that would provide an impetus to trade with them.
Deep down humans don't care. They don't care if those people are outside of the 150 they can actually empathize with. The amount of care they feel is much less than if they knew the Africans.
Also trade and global warming as a reason for helping Africa are bad reasons. I don't need to care about them, because I hardly trade with them, and thier deaths would result in less carbon emmissions than if they had been allowed to live, so I might as well let them die.
You might not trade with them directly, but the corporations whom you buy your products from probably do.
You may be a psychopath if you really want to let them die to reduce carbon emissions. These are people we are talking about here. What if it were you?
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I don't think starving Africans, the people we are discusing after all, do much trade. Of course corporations buy from Africans, just the ones that are not dying of starvation.
I never said I wanted them to die to reduce carbon emmissions, that was never one of my reasons. I was responding to you saying that I should care about the global community because of global warming. Hence I said that if I wanted to stop global warming, I should let starving die so they don't generate carbon emmissions, and since helping them would generate carbon emmissions, I should just not help them.
B)Short term solution only. It is true that as Africa developed it's birth rate would likley decrease. That would merely result in the situation we ssee in Europe and America, where many groups with differing cultural values have differing birth rates. For example, white people in America have a birth rate bellow 2.1, which is the rate needed to maintain a population at it's current numbers. Whereas have Hispanics have a much higher birth rate (can't find it right now, was around 3-5), so in the long run they will begin to make up more and more of the population. In Europe birth rates are also bellow the replacement rate (2.1), so the same thing will happen there, with whatever groups having a brith rate higher than 2.1 will inceasingly make up more and more of the population.
Annnnddd.....what? Is that a problem? Do you not like Hispanics? Hell, if you want to prevent different cultures from "overrunning" yours you should be begging to help them develop since it'll crash their birth rate.
No, this was an example to illustrate the next point.
In short, birth control only prevents pregnancies occuring by accident, you can still decide to get pregnant. What you will see is groups that decide to get pregnant will make up more and more of the population, and those groups will eventually be selected, naturally selected, until they have a birth rate higher than their environment can sustian. Although the ultimate return to an exponential birth rate will take a long time, groups will continually be selected for increased fertility rates.
You do not understand population growth. All humans once had the kind of birth rates that we see today in places like Central Africa. It isn't a genetic thing to not have a dozen children, it's a cultural and economic one. That's part of the change that industrialization brought to the world.
A group of people will, for the most part, only have lots of children if it's beneficial, which it isn't once the area they live in is modernized.
I never said that birth rates were genetic (although it is very likley there are genes that increase the affection you feel towards children and your general desire for children, which would affect the birth rate.) . In referance to the above example, Hispanics have a culture that encourages child birth. Birth control limits the amount of accidental child births. What I saw saying is that due to natural selection, which still works in modern society, groups would come about that make the conscious decision to have children more and more often. They would have lots of children regardless of the amount of birth control available to them, since those children would not be accidents. These groups would be naturally selected for, and eventually begin to make up the majority of the population. The decrease in birth rates because of the introduction of birth control is at best temporary.
I dunno; what man doesn't like exotic women?
It's not exactly wrong to have a racial preference in whom one is attracted to so long as it doesn't extend beyond that, although personally I don't quite get why anyone would.
Well statistically you are more likely to prefer woman of your own race and culture. However, naturally you are more likely to prefer people with genes that are diffrent from yours (accomplised via a series of pheromones). So it could go either way, you could end up prefering your own race or a race that is genetically diffrent form you.
If the latter was the case however, the chinese workers would have choosen African prostitutes, because Black-Africans are the most diverse race and hence would be most likely to have genes diffrent from the Chinsese workers. That would naturally make them like the African prostitutes, which means they have some cultural aversion towards Africans. Basically, like Red King said, they are racist.
Oh and by the way if any one feels like making a diffrence for any reason, check out
Kiva. It is as non-profit designed to help you help poor people around the world. Basically, you register an account, and then you can lend money to people whoose causes you believe in. Helping a guy build his house, buy inventory for his book store, buy equipment and ferilizer for his farm. All of these loans are sponsered by charities, so all of them are reputable and respectable causes. If it works out you get your money back, every single penny. That is not always guaranteed, but some of the loans are backed by the charities, so even if it goes bad you still get every single penny back. Also the loans have a time limit, if your guy does not raise all of his money in time you still get your money back. If you have any extra money sitting in the bank, and would rather be safe in the knowledge that you made someone's day (or possibly their entire life) than earn 1% interest on it, this is the charity for you. Also while you are listening, if the bank is only paying you 1% interest, since inflation ussually runs 2-3%, you are losing 1-2% of your money every year. So actually if you just kept donating out your money, through loans that are guaranteed by charities, you would have a higher rate of return than if it was just in your banking account.
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