The Conspircacy Theory

[River]

Honestly, I think that if the shadowy figures invoked by conspiracy theorists existed and wanted to kill off the Third World, they'd do it by cutting the aid flow. As Anthy already pointed out, if you really want to reduce the population, you stop vaccinating. And you could make the whole thing go faster if you stopped antibiotics and sanitation measures as well.

Anth, the resurgence of whooping cough just makes my blood burn. Diseases don't just get less lethal because no one's seen them for a while.

[anthriel]

And in a particularly holier-than-thou statement (made from the top of a soapbox marked "herd immunity for life!"), I will breezily note that a fairly decent way to "thin out the world population" would be to outlaw vaccinations.

Maybe the conspiracy is to make people think vaccines are a conspiracy.

I think the conspiracy theory grows from the fear from certain groups that vaccines targeted at those groups are deliberately contaminated, such as the claim that the Hepatitis B trial vaccines in 1978 were contaminated with HIV and Herpes -8 virus (the virus that causes Kaposi's sarcoma), and that the US gay population was deliberately infected. This certainly appears to be the rationale behind mass vaccination refusals in Africa, for fear that "Western elites" are introducing pathogens into the Black African populace.

A really astute conspiracy theorist would focus on where those rumors are being generated. By creating a cultural resistance to vaccinations, those who propogate such rumors would be denying the protective effect of vaccinations to that target population. Only "western elites", then, would protected against the diseases that even now are wiping out those poor people who apparently need their numbers thinned.

I may just have to email Jesse with that one.



Edit: Oops, missed a River post! Yes, the whooping cough stuff makes me crazy, too. I kind of resent it, actually. I have to deal with the fact of that baby's preventable death. Poor little three week old baby girl!

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

If all you're concerned about is numbers, sure. But when people talk about reducing population, they really mean reducing total resource consumption (usually). Reducing the raw number of people doesn't make much difference if those people consume hardly any resources. A savvy population reducer would target rich people.

I think the main resource wars of the future will be water wars, and the division between rich and poor water consumption is nowhere near as wide as consumer goods, and that's on an individual to individual comparison. Make comparisons on a group vs group level, and water consumption of the poor vastly outstrips that of the rich, simply because of numbers.
Targetiing the poor, in this case, does "make sense".

Edit

River, the problem with that scenario is that it is simply too overt. Cutting aid on the instructions of shadowy figures would put their very "shadowiness" in danger.

Anthriel, dodgy vaccines, and the fear of dodgy vaccines, is a win-win for the Malthusian, no?

[Dave_LF]

I agree with you about water, except the nature of water is such that it needs to be consumed fairly close to wherever it happens to be. Rich Americans and Europeans don't compete for water with poor Africans.

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

I agree with you about water, except the nature of water is such that it needs to be consumed fairly close to wherever it happens to be. Rich Americans and Europeans don't compete for water with poor Africans.

Rich Americans and Europeans will profit from water intensive commodities that compete for water with poor Africans...

[Dave_LF]

Nowhere near as much as they'll have to compete with rich people who bathe daily, launder their clothes, water their lawns, and play golf. The only rationale for killing the poor as part of a population control program would be so they're not there to take over when you start killing the (other) rich in phase 2.

[anthriel]

Anthriel, dodgy vaccines, and the fear of dodgy vaccines, is a win-win for the Malthusian, no?

Vaccines are highly expensive to bring to the marketplace, and highly regulated. I'm not saying that it would be impossible to add in some sort of an infectious agent to target an "undesirable" population, (although the subterfuge required on that scale seems unlikely), but I *will* say that it sure would be cheaper just to start a rumor that vaccines contain such agents.

[Griffon64]

the division between rich and poor water consumption is nowhere near as wide as consumer goods, and that's on an individual to individual comparison. Make comparisons on a group vs group level, and water consumption of the poor vastly outstrips that of the rich, simply because of numbers.

I dunno, those consumer goods the rich consume almost all require pretty large amounts of water to produce. From mining to manufacturing, it all takes a lot of water, and often the water is polluted badly in the process. And a lot manufacturing and mining occurs in poorer countries nowadays ( the former more recently, the latter for a while now ).

That set aside, the rich consumes a lot of water. If you look at water consumption per capita ( for example, from here: http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=757 ) and you multiply by population counts, some interesting numbers emerge that makes me doubt the "vastly outstrips" claim you make. For instance, via some rough air math:

USA population 307 million, USA per capita daily water usage ~575L
Africa population 1 billion, average per capita daily water usage ~47L

USA uses 176,525,000,000L a day
Africa uses 47,000,000,000L a day

It looks like with a third of the population of Africa the USA by itself uses three and a quarter times the water Africa uses. Factoring in the rest of the world and deciding if they go on the rich or the poor side of the equation is left, as math textbooks like to say, as an exercise for the reader.

I did some rough calculations on it and it left me a bit unsure about "vastly outstrips", though "vastly" can be defined in different ways.

[vison]

Excellent post, Griffon64.

I think we are all, even an old lady like me, going to see real water wars. Larger populations, a quick rise in the number of "rich" people in Asia, and less water due to global warming and things are looking scary.

[ToshoftheWuffingas]

Anthy wrote:

A really astute conspiracy theorist would focus on where those rumors are being generated.

Indeed. That is always a good policy.



(Anthy is also the name for a Linux language input system)

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

I think your statistical analysis is excellent, Griffon64, but requires a slight tweaking, namely that not all those 307million Americans can be declared "rich".

By a long way.

[River]

"Rich" is relative, but, for me, poverty was redefined forever after a trip to Tanzania.

Vaccines are highly expensive to bring to the marketplace, and highly regulated. I'm not saying that it would be impossible to add in some sort of an infectious agent to target an "undesirable" population, (although the subterfuge required on that scale seems unlikely), but I *will* say that it sure would be cheaper just to start a rumor that vaccines contain such agents.

That has some eerie echoes with Operation INFEKTION. And, for the record, my initial reaction to that was "Oh please, please, let this be fiction..."
Unfortunately, it looks like it's true. The world's gone mad, mad I tell you.

*sigh*

[Inanna]

[Griffon64]

Ghân-buri-Ghân - what River says is worth thinking about. It is possible, and even likely, to think that Americans can be "poor" on a scale calibrated against the world population ( and for conversation about global water consumption, that is a sensible calibration ), but that is likely to change once you have been to Africa. I spent the first 28 years of my life in a one of Africa's "rich" countries, South Africa, and there I have seen some of the poverty - the "higher level" poverty, even, that exists everywhere in a "rich" African country. I've never seen the poverty in a "poor" African country, because I have never been.

But in my opinion, Americans ( except for a very, very few, and most of those likely to be illegal immigrants in this country, I'd think, given the kind of social safety net that exist here for citizens ) are "rich" compared to Africa and the world, and to boot by "a long way". Mileage differs, and I don't claim to be particularly well-versed in this matter, but what comes off the top of my head does seem to go against what you are saying. America simply doesn't have the sea of people living in shacks, without running water*, sanitation, government support of any kind, etc, that Africa does.

[ By the way, chop whatever you consider "non-rich" Americans out of the total, and the per capita consumption of water "the rich" uses only goes up. ]

Oh, what the heck, how about some pictures:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Perce ... ld_map.png

( Between 10 & 20% of Americans may be below the American national poverty line, BUT that line is ~$10,000 a year for a single person household versus, for instance, ~$1,000 a year for a single person household in a "rich" African country like South Africa. $1,000 is not riches in South Africa, and that single person household has access to very few, if any, of the government aid and support that a single person household under the poverty line has access to in America. )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Perce ... y_2009.svg

Looks like we could maybe shave off 2% of the American population, at most ( we don't know if it really is 2% or if it is only 0.2% or any other number less than 2%, and I couldn't find quick numbers ) and do the math again. It still comes out a little different than "vastly outstrips", in my opinion.

An American living on welfare in a trailer out in the desert on the way to Las Vegas is still "rich" compared to a poor African.

* not "running water" as in, the recession put me in a tent city and I have to walk to a municipal tap to get water. Running water as in, this kind of thing is what you've got:

http://boerboel1.files.wordpress.com/20 ... 778275.jpg



Mahima - that xkcd appeals to my programmer self.

[JewelSong]

The more we have, the more we seem to "need."

MOST Americans - even those living well below the "poverty line" have it good when compared to some of the situations in Haiti, South Africa and similar.

This is not to say that we should think all is fine and dandy in the USA, because it isn't. But perspective is sometimes useful.

When I came back from the UK, I was lined up for a directorship position which I ultimately didn't get. I scrambled, finally found a part-time position and am now making a salary that is about one fifth of what I was making before. Although I am not "below the poverty line" I am certainly not well-off in any sense.

But it is amazing how much money you can save if you simply, like, don't buy stuff. If you eat less meat. If you opt for a cheap, bare-bones phone. If you buy day-old bread and dented canned goods. If you adjust a bit.


Poverty is relative....especially in the USA.

[River]

Griff, before I went to Tanzania, I'd been to Ecuador, Bolivia, and Costa Rica. I therefore thought I knew what to expect in a Third World country as far as poverty goes. I didn't.

It's the sort of thing you have to witness to fully understand, but...think of a house the size of a storage shed, built of scrap material. Now imagine a few dozen of those, and maybe a couple built of mud or cinder blocks. There's no electricity. Maybe there's a well. If there is, awesome. Otherwise, it's a long walk...and water is heavy. And once you leave the city, that's what Tanzania looks like. Even in town, it's pretty dire. In the US, intersections that need stoplights tend to have them. In Tanzania, that's not the case and I encountered the worst traffic collapse I've ever been in in Arusha.

BTW, the poorest poor country I'd been in prior to that was Bolivia. Bolivia has stoplights. Bolivians don't necessarily pay the slightest bit of attention to them, but there are stoplights. And the houses were generally more solid and I didn't see anyone carrying water.

I'm not capturing this well with words. Pictures don't quite convey it either. You really do need to see with your own eyes to understand.

[vison]

I've never been to a really poor country, but I've been on a couple of Indian reserves in Northern Canada. Places worse than those do exist, I know. It's hard to believe.

Even poor Indians in Dene Village, Manitoba, are better off than poor Africans except for maybe one thing: in Africa you can't freeze to death in your own bedroom.

[Griffon64]

JewelSong - that's broadly the point that I'm driving at. Poverty is relative. All Americans are not well-off and comfortable just by virtue of being Americans, and that's a well understood truth. That said, Americans, even when poor for America, tend to be better off than third-world country citizens who are poor for their country. ( My bare-bones phone was bought in a clam shell at WalMart, by the way )

River - Yes, that level of poverty is present in South Africa, too. I've seen it; maybe 50, 60 percent of the population live that way. The houses made of scrap, corrugated iron maybe - barely the size of a garage. You cannot go any great distance in South Africa and not see them, not see the footpaths down to the river. The women walking slowly, balancing impossibly heavy containers of water on their heads. Or impossibly heavy sacks of maize meal, walking through the dirt in worn-out shoes.

In the cities, the concentration of wealth, you share the line in the supermarket with people - multiple people - buying a can of sardines, or maybe a couple of tomatoes. They squat outside over a small fire, off to the side somewhere under a tree, cooking the tomatoes in an old sardine can. Dinner. When you buy bread, it is also sold by the half-loaf. For those who cannot afford a whole loaf. And people are walking. Walking everywhere. Cars are an unaffordable luxury.

Where South Africa differs from other African countries, maybe, in terms of its "richness", is that there is often a basic poverty allowance - it is a few hundred rand a month as far as I know, so we're talking maybe $48 or so a month. I believe some other African countries do not have that, and therefore I believe that the lowest levels of poverty may well be more dire there.

You're right, though. Pictures doesn't convey it, nor does words.

in Africa you can't freeze to death in your own bedroom.

That's certainly true for most of Africa! Although most cold winters in South Africa brought scattered reports of the poor freezing to death. It gets a few degrees C below freezing at night in many areas during a cold winter. If you are malnourished and without adequate shelter, that is sufficient to be fatal. Especially since poor settlements tend to cluster around a stream of some sort - where else to get water - and we all know it is colder down by the water than away from it.

[yovargas]

Thanks for that post, Griffy. As someone who comes from a 3rd world country (Dominican Republic) I have found it very important to remember that only the very, very poorest of Americans is living at the kind of poverty much of the world is. And that I have spent time with people far poorer than those who would call themselves "poor" here who still lived contented, happy lives. It's a valuable thing to keep in mind.

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

Griffon, I'm quite familiar with South Africa (Jo'burg), and I understand the differences between absolute and relative poverty, and even how, perversely, absolute poverty can be more severe in one environment compared to another. In Kenya, there have been food riots, whilst at the same time, there is a burgeoning market in water intensive, land intensive cut flowers to supply a Western market. The poor are forced to pay higher prices for their grain because the land used for "cash crops" encroaches on arable land.
In places in India, wells are running dry because Coca Cola is sucking the land dry to feed its bottling plants.
In mexico, there have been "Tortilla riots", exacerbated by the implementation of biofuel production. The rich need fuel; the poor starve.
The poor are only a commodity when they are useful. Mechanisation has eliminated much of the need for an "unskilled" workforce, and so the logical next step is elimination of the unnecessary workforce. Illustrative of the "elite's" attitude to the masses is illustrated by the Liberal Party welfare reforms in the UK in the first decade of the 20th Century. These didn't arise from any sense of philanthropy, but from panic at the poor quality of recruits for the Boer War. The realisation amongst the ruling classes was that poverty had produced such malnourishment that these recruits were near useless for fighting; the cannon fodder wasn't up to muster.
The poor are a "drain" on the "rich", and the "rich" run the show. It is little wonder that the poor either are targeted, or fear targeting, in modern eugenics programmes. Certain demographics are deemed more expendable than others, as examples such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments show. With the knowledge that such events occur, it is small wonder that there are whispers about modern medical activities.