Now the thing that we're most aware of these days, of course is the vast suffering taking place in Africa. And you should know also that a great deal of donations. And what is called Aid have been forthcoming to Africa during the past 15 years some sixty billion dollars converted into other things, of course, so it isn't as though Africa's been ignored for the last 15 years, but the fact is that the giving has so far as we can tell not made much of a dent in the need now. This is all very sad because Africa was for many centuries a great source of food to the rest of the world and Julius Caesar's time. This is one of the bread baskets Northern Africa was a bread basket for Imperial Rome. But this all came to an end by 1967 since 1967. Africa has been an importing Nation rather than exporting when it comes to food and this should concern all of us and it looks as though what has been given to Africa and the last 15 years has not made much of a dent. And in fact things are considerably worse now than they were 15 years ago. Probably a fair share of you have given some money that was intended to go to Africa. I dare say most of you know, that there's been less than the sort of service given to the money. You've given then you would like fortunately the newspapers these days are fairly Frank and they've pointed out the wastage in the gift sent to Africa the food left rotting on the docks of food, not distributed because of lack of roads and trucks the food going to armies instead of starving people and so on and this does disturb us but I don't think this is the principal thing we should be disturbed about because this could all be labeled in efficiency and we all put up with a certain amount of inefficiency in the world. Of course, if it's 20 or 30 or 40 percent that's quite a lot of inefficiency and probably is at least of that order of magnitude. But okay, if some of the money gets wasted still some of it gets through and we think I can feel good about that gift. But the shocking position I want to present you is that the story is worse than that. And that is that what does the most harm is the money that does get through that does do what you intended to do because it doesn't do only that also does other things which you did not intend that in fact, the so-called Aid is counterproductive. Now, let me begin with a very general principle that I have to use to build my case on and this is the idea of scale effect. This is a very important principle in science and in engineering and I maintained in many other fields as well point is that size really makes a difference as you change the size of something you change the properties of it and some things that are true or work well enough at one size cannot possibly work at another and this is what we call the scale effect. This is why it is at the very limits of what a man can do what? Whew, man what very few men or women can do to propel themselves through the air by their own muscle power and they're not many people that can do that. Most of us could never make it. This is the very limits because of the scale effect. The fact that our power doesn't scale up as fast as our weight. Once you catch on to the fact that scale matters. You should always ask. Well is this principle that I'm dealing with does it scale up if it works at a small scale? Does it scale up to a large scale? And it's on this basis that I say that the sort of ethical principle people are trying to make use of now and helping Africa won't work. This is the gist of my one of the important points in my essay the tragedy of the commons the business of trying to run human Affairs on the basis of need the desire to do so as a very human desire and in a family it can work very well indeed family is small enough so that you can run it informally satisfying the needs of the various members from time to time repeatedly thousands of times over the centuries people have tried to create larger family size groups, which we usually call communes in which distribution is called as according. Need and in fact in the Bible Luke in Acts chapter 4 tells about such a commune in which he says and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need. Now how long this commune lasted? It doesn't say my guess is it didn't last very long. Most of them don't trying to distribute things in a group by a family like type mechanism according to need just has not worked and I think the best you might say experiment of this sort do not designed as a sociological experiment but the most telling experience has been that of the Hutterites because if anybody should have succeeded with this system distribution according to need the Hutterites should have because they are a highly who might homogeneous group. With the same religion and a religion that is strongly held that is an invariant portent part of their life. So this means that the chance of this working is maximal. But what are they found out they have found out they cannot make a communal distribution according to need when the community rises above about a hundred to a hundred and fifty. That's in that critical area. It breaks down because suddenly people some people may be only a minority of the group start taking more than is justified by the amount of work. They do they discover they have to go to town to get a part for the tractor and stay away all day doing whatever they do in town stead of working and they goof off they go brick and in spite of all of the strong emotional pressure that the Hutterites can put on pressure on their members. They cannot make a distribution according to need work if the family grows beyond a hundred to a hundred and fifty that's the end of it. The ideal of distribution according to need is found not only in the Bible. It's also found in communism Karl Marx in 1875 uttered this famous phrase saying that in the ideal World toward which we are working. He admitted we didn't have it and wouldn't soon but toward which were working. The distribution will be governed by the principle from each according to his ability to each according to his needs and this has been the ideal of Communism. I think it has also been the ideal of Christianity and I think both of these groups are wrong in this regard. This sort of distribution simply does not scale up to more than a hundred to a hundred and fifty people. I don't think we should say Global hunger. I think we should speak of The Hunger if there are 200 Nations and that's about the number the hunger of it most 200 Nations and the solution to hunger has to be determined Nation by Nation. The hunger is determined within the boundaries of each nation. And that's where the solution must be found for any group to be reasonably happy the supply and demand should be in Balance there shouldn't be too much demand for the supply of available. What happens if the demand exceeds the supply? How do we treat that? Well, we might say there's an over population but we very seldom do this is quite an unpopular term to speak of country being overpopulated or we might say that the country has gone beyond the carrying capacity of its land but this also is unpopular instead. We usually say there is a shortage of food. There is a shortage of food Whenever there is this imbalance of this sort logically, there are two possibilities we could say there's a shortage of people or there's a shortage of food or we could say there's a long edge of people one would be as true as the other but it's looking at a different aspect but the word long Edge doesn't even exist in the dictionary shortage was coined about 1860 on the grain markets in Chicago. And it's been used ever since long age. If you want to know was coined by me 10 years ago, and nobody uses it. It's just too uncomfortable because you can see the moment you say there's a long as your people as a you. Some of them should be shot who's going to be shot who's going to do it who's supposed to die? Well, just to get to the end of the story. If you say there's a long edge of people you don't have to be demanding any more than this namely that the net rate of reproduction should fall below the death rate. So in other words, you don't have to increase the death rate, but if you'll decrease the birth rate, eventually you'll bring these two back into balance. So saying there's a long as of people is not a demand for mass murder. But we continue to speak of a shortage of supply and wonder why we're in trouble when they're say to take an extreme example, Mauritania small country west of Africa sort of in the middle and Mauritania a poll showed that the average mauritanian woman wants mind you she wants to have nine children. Oh good lord. How long can there be enough food under those conditions Mauritania, by the way, as a lousy piece of real estate. They can't grow much food there. So if each woman wants nine children and if half of those children see half being Women Want Nine children to you know, if you increase that rate each Generation Y soon there. There's going to be an awful lot of mauritanians and the mauritanians are living just to put it in terms of statistics. We can get a hold of their per capita GNP not a perfect measure but it tells us something their per capita GNP is only 3% of the per capita GNP of people the United States only 3% Well, they have no business wanting nine children when they're operating from that low level, but they do and so just to get to a very pointed question. Why should we or indeed any other wealthy people support them in this desire? If they want nine children, then they if they make their bed in that way they should lie in it and because we can't possibly keep up with the demand created at that rate. So my position would be this at the end this I might say is has been the position of communist China since 1948 though thinking only of itself not of the rest of the world 1948 mouth see tongue said the position of China would its goal would be to become self-reliant now notice he did not say self. Sufficient and the distinctions is important. No modern country can be self-sufficient. There's no modern country that has everything within its own borders that it needs and to take our situation. We have to get chromium from Africa. We have to get platinum from South Africa or from Russia and so on and so on and we get oil from other parts of the world as you know, so it's unreasonable to expect a modern industrial country to be self-sufficient, but it is reasonable to expect all countries industrial or not to be self-reliant. In other words. Either to have the resources themselves to make the resources themselves or to sell something they can make And use that money to buy the things they don't need and that's what we do. What our most important export is grain and we use that money to buy the oil and the chromium and the platinum and the bauxite and all the other things that we get from other countries. We buy it. We are self-reliant. We're not self-sufficient but we are self-reliant and this is what all countries should be. Well suppose a country isn't self-reliant. Should we take care of this for them? Should we send them food? For example, which is the thing that touches our heart most we want to of course, but I think this is one of those cases in which we would do well to go back and read the Bible a part of the Bible. I'm afraid to seldom read these days and that is the Book of Ecclesiastes these sayings of wise preacher in the fifth chapter of Ecclesiastes. It says when goods are increased. They are increased that eat them when goods are increased. They are increased that eat them. In other words. You cannot solve a shortage by increasing the supply. By increasing the supply you solve the shortage temporarily but then you increase the demand next year because now they're more people making the same demand. For example, Ethiopia has a growth rate of 2.1 percent per year with Ethiopia's population. That means that if we saved all the lives that otherwise might die this year in Ethiopia from starvation the next year that would be seven hundred and fifty six thousand more Ethiopians and since their situations essentially the same then if we save again all the lives there the following year. They would be instead of seven hundred fifty six thousand would be seven hundred seventy two thousand and the following year it grew up again to seven hundred eighty eight thousand and so on see populations if unhindered grow by grow as bank accounts grow by compound interest so it gets worse and worse and worse. And if the country has a shortage of food as we say because there are too many people for the country and they're beating it to death their farming land that shouldn't be farmed in ways. That should not be used. Then by keeping all those people alive. We are helping them to destroy their land so that their children will have still less to live on and this is the count of productivity that worries me greatly when I hear people rising to this call for sending food Aid to Ethiopia or any other country like it now I should at this point mentioned that there is a very widespread Superstition. I can only call it that that if you make people thoroughly comfortable then they'll stop reading so much we say, well they have so many children because life is so precarious to have to have a lot of children in order to be sure of surviving at all. This is based on I think a very spiria sort of reasoning it's based on the association the correlation between Wealth National wealth and low fertility the Richer Nation the Lord's fertility the poor of the nation the higher its fertility by and large. This is a correlation. But of course you can always read correlation either way as far as colonized causations concern maybe the reason the poor nations are so poor is because of fertility is high. So the causal relationship is the other well, undoubtedly, there's circular causation here and not a thing one can easily disentangle but the question is what happens if we try to break into the circle by sending more food. Will they promptly lure their fertility and the experience of many many countries is that they will not maybe eventually they will maybe after a generation. This was Angelique olds conclusion after surveying the field that maybe after a generation or so, they might lure the fertility but not promptly seen in the meantime. The number added to the population increases every year and the situation gets rapidly worse starting from a very bad situation to begin with. So that the ecologically minded biologists would say that if we were ever to put out an E, coli ecological decalogue the first commandment in that ecological decalogue would be thou shalt not transcend the carrying capacity. And this is the most important law of all to observe and international relationships not to transcend the carrying capacity not to be a party to encouraging others to transcend the carrying capacity of their land. The Ethiopians to stick to the fashionable example, these Ethiopian people pores. They are need food. They need land soil to grow the food on they need Forest to produce fuel so that they can cook their food. They need land area to pasture their catalog when we send them food and nothing else thus facilitating their increase in numbers. We ensure that the next year there will be less soil less land per Ethiopian to producing food and since they're already. Farming too much of the land that they shouldn't be. We ensure that there will be more soil erosion and more soil that loss and less suitable land for farming next year. We ensure that there will be less land for their cattle to pasture on because they already have too many cattle for the land and their overgrazing it and we ensure that they will cut the trees farther up the Mountainside thus causing even more soil erosion and the destruction of even more land so that the food we send them this year makes them less self-reliant next year and I maintain though. This is done in all innocence. This is a cruel thing to do to any other people. I'm speaking of Ethiopia that I could equally well be speaking of something like 30 to 40 other nations in the world that have variants stories, but all with much the same end result. so that if we want to Help people. What can we do help people who are starving you have as we say a shortage of food send food certainly not because we will thereby be a party to the transgression of the carrying capacity development help them with development by all means if we know what to do, but we should be very humble about what we know the agricultural knowledge that we have is agricultural knowledge gained over a long period of time and applying for the most part just to temperate zone agriculture tropical Zone agriculture is quite a different Agriculture and we have had very little experience there and we don't know what they should do. We should be willing to help them find out but that's a long term thing. It won't help tomorrow. It'll help 20 years down the road but not tomorrow. What other information well certainly information about the importance of carrying capacity though? The surprising thing is that many of these people have a traditional knowledge of this. It's just that they're caught in various social binds social pressures that pressure them to having babies that they don't need and many cases. They almost they see what they're doing in a way, but they don't know how to stop it. So, I don't know if we can help them there or not. So I'm not preaching. A doctrine of no action at all. But I am saying that we should be guided by what has been a prime guide to the medical profession for 2,000 years and more Premium no, no siree. First of all Do no harm? four all but the last hundred years at most for all but the last hundred years. This was the best advice to give any doctor because until about a hundred years ago. Most of the things that a doctor did did no good many of them did positive harm bleeding for example, which is popular for a century after Century after Century killed many people and the doctors who did the most good were the ones who stood idly by and did nothing the ones who the do-nothings were the most successful doctors until about a hundred hundred fifty years ago at most it's only been and particularly in the last 50 years. The doctor has been able to intervene and increase the chances of the patient's life. Well, my view is that in international relations. We are for the most part not to far distant from the position of medicine up to the are 1850 say that most of the things we want to do that we removed to do in fact do harm. We often kill the patient or help kill the patient mostly we should will be better off doing nothing at all. The principal thing we can give other people is a free sharing of information the this we should do we can do whether they use that information or not. We don't know but if we treat them as responsible agents, I think there is a maximum chance that they may that some of them may like China catch on and realize that they have to be responsible for their own fate. Whereas if we treat them as irresponsible children who have to be saved constantly from their own mistakes, they will never grow up and take care of their own future. Thank you.