Fear Of A Black Planet

John writes:

So, it looks like the usual suspects are out telling black Africans that they should stop having so many children. Interestingly, nobody seems worried about French and Swedish schemes to increase national fertility. Perhaps that is because they are wealthy white countries? I also find it interesting that Jeffrey "Shock Therapy" Sachs is the UN official pushing for limiting the number of children Nigerians should have, given his history as one of the architects of the devastation of the former communist nations of Eastern Europe, although I guess that does qualify him as an expert on depopulation.

While I recognize that poverty is a large problem in countries such as Nigeria, the answer to such poverty is development not depopulation. You don't eliminate poverty by eliminating the poor, unless perhaps you are a devotee of the wicked ideology of eugenics. We have gone a long way from the days of the post-war consensus, with its support for industrial development and the material and cultural uplifting of the poor.

The current neoliberal consensus is a Neo-Malthusian brew that seeks to turn places like Africa into permanently poor extraction economies that exist to serve the consumer needs of First World peoples while also serving as theme parks for the very rich, hence the constant attempt to convince Third World countries to invest in low-productivity ecotourism as opposed to heavy industry. The rich nations, through their control of international institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, also force policy straitjackets on the poor nations to prevent them from using the same state-led models of development that were used by practically all of today's wealthy nations when they were developing.

Much of the Left, especially the execrable Green Movement, has foolishly fallen for much of this claptrap, despite the fact that Neo-Malthusian policies primarily target the poor, the very people that the Left is supposed to represent and defend. Given these facts, it is not surprising that so many people in the developing world are attracted to violent ideologies that view the West as a malevolent force bent on oppressing the rest of the world. As heinous as these ideologies are, Western actions help to fan the flames of anger and resentment. Africans have already suffered enough from the depredations of foreign meddlers and they don't need ghouls like Jeffrey Sachs to "help" them have fewer children.