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Hello Steve,
Sustainability in the sense of population numbers to resources
isn't the only issue. In reading Mike Davis's "Planet of Slums" in the
past few days, I've encountered page after page of huge numbers of
people moving into large third world slums because it is impossible for them to
continue to live on their rural land base because of warfare, drought, resource
exploitation, the conversion of small farms into large mechanized plantations,
or whatever. Because the conditions in these slums range from poor to
disastrous, they will probably continue to grow more by accretion than
reproduction - i.e., they would not be great places to have kids and try to
raise them.
First world policies are also an issue. As one example, Mexico,
the mother of all corn, is importing corn from the United States because highly
subsidized American farmers can sell it more cheaply than Mexicans. Not
being able to sell their own corn, many Mexican farmers see themselves as having
little recourse but to migrate to the US. As another example, the
neo-liberal "Washington Consensus" policies being pursued by the World Bank and
the IMF have forced developing countries to cut expenditures in order to balance
their budgets, including expenditures that helped people remain in rural
areas.
Ed
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