Africa and Malthus
In fifteen years, one out of every six people will be murdered. Of those who are left, 25% will be thrown into poverty. Millions more will commit suicide rather than face what will suddenly become a dreadful present. Marauding gangs lead by drug addled youths will harass what remains of civilization, as life descends into a Hobbesian war of man against man.
That sounds pretty awful, I bet. But, a world that suddenly has only enough food to nourish 70% of its people would quickly descend into violence and mayhem. How the mayhem would play-out would depend upon the people. When the French ran out of food, they perfected the use of the guillotine. In Africa, it has meant widespread famines where millions starved to death.
Africa is a net importer of food and it has a stratospheric fertility rate. I don’t think you have to be Raj Chetty to figure out that this will lead to some problems far more serious than income mobility or the lack of self-actualizing jobs. Africa is a low-IQ world with high disease rates and massive public corruption. Add in a staggering murder rate and it is not had to think the description in the first paragraphs is the best case scenario for Africa. The exodus that is on tap will make the current flood look like a trickle.
That, of course, is the specter haunting Europe. There are roughly a million Africans trying to get across the Mediterranean at this very moment. They are not starving or fleeing war. They are, most probably, members of what passes for a middle class in their home countries. They have the means to pay smugglers to get them north. They also have relatives, who made the trip before them, so they can have a cushion in their new home in France.
People on the Dissident Right like to talk about how the Euroweenies have no idea what’s coming their way. The implication is that the coming great exodus from Africa will wipe out the European just as Homo Sap wiped out the Neanderthals. That, I think, is very wrong. The Europeans know exactly what’s brewing south of them.
The sheer numbers are staggering. Sub-Saharan Africa has about a billion people. The EU countries have about 500 million people. If 20% of Africa heads north the EU suddenly resembles Baltimore in many places.
Or worse. Most of these immigrants will head to urban areas so imagine dozens of Detroits dotting the map of Europe. Throw in an equal number of Arab Muslims and , well, you have the diversity paradise our betters have been dreaming of for so long.
That’s never going to happen and the evidence is right in front of us. The Europeans are finding ways to turn back the boat people. If that fails they will start repatriating them in mass. Additionally, they will pay the Berbers and Arabs in the Maghreb to hold the line and turn a blind eye to the tactics they use to do it. The politicians in Europe are not going to commit suicide over the plight of Africa.
It’s not that they would not like to sellout their own people. It’s that they have bigger problems. The Russians are creeping in from the east. America is disengaging from the Continent. Most member states are effectively bankrupt, held up with currency games. The EU is too unstable to do anything other than take a hardline on African immigrants.
If the Africans can’t head north and they can’t stop breeding, then the choice is follow the old route out of Africa and head into Turkey and the Near East. While that would be hilarious for a number of reasons, it is unlikely. That leaves famine and war as tribes fight over the limited food supplies.
Yemen is probably a good example to hold in mind. The Saudis and GCC have been subsidizing them for years as the population far outstripped the country’s capacity to feed its people. It was a loser bargain. The Saudis wanted to keep the Yemenis in Yemen so they sent them food. Free food set the Malthusian event horizon further and further out, allowing the population to mushroom.
What not one thought about is how a population explosion would impact the other social infrastructure. Yemen was a land with cultural and civil infrastructure for about 2 million people. Now they have 20 million and the whole thing has collapsed into anarchy. I’ll just note that everyone has turned a blind eye to Yemen, letting the Saudis do what must be done to keep the Yemenis in Yemen.
That’s the likely outcome of the African population boom. Eventually, the Finnish model will be adopted by the EU, not the Swedish model. The Finnish model is to send food and reject refugees, arguing that food aid does more good for more people than importing refugees. The Swedish model is the opposite. Sweden is trying to turn their country into Syria with snow drifts.
Europe has too many other problems to try and pass that by their voters so they will adopt the Finnish approach. Inevitably, the French will lecture the rest of us for not sending more food and medicine to Africa and the US will be there to ship tons of food to the needy Africans. That, of course, will literally feed the population boom.
There’s an assumption that the West will not let the Africans starve and the blockade will be lifted, letting tens of millions of Africans to enter the West. History says other wise. The two big East African famines carried on with little more than hand-wringing by the West. The Rwandan massacres were allowed to go on without any in the West even mentioning it. Bill Clinton simply shrugged and went back to raping interns.
It’s common in the West to read about how we are post-Malthus. We are now in a post-scarcity world in which there’s more than enough of the essentials. The poor are fat and lay around all day in comfortable homes watching television. Machines will soon be doing all our work, leaving us free to live like Eloi.
In the coming decades, Africa is going to demonstrate that the Malthusian limit is still there. As we saw with the Ebola breakout, modernity means Africa’s problems can quickly become our problem. The nightmare future of Africa will be no exception. Our world will be a vastly different place in 20 years as a billion Africans figure out how to live on enough food for half a billion Africans.
To keep Z Man's voice alive for future generations, we’ve archived his writings from the original site at thezman.com. We’ve edited out ancillary links, advertisements, and donation requests to focus on his written content.
Comments (Historical)
The comments below were originally posted to thezman.com.
6 Comments