‘Feeding the World’s Hungry’

Hardin’s proposition that feeding the world’s hungry makes world hunger worse not only flies in the face of massive evidence to the contrary but is a shocking return to a thoroughly discredited social Darwinism, and a chilling evidence that people still parade their selfishness as a virtue. Charles Dickens’ Scrooge couldn’t have said it better: “Let them die and decrease the surplus population.”

Countless studies of population and hunger for half a century have demonstrated that fertility rates always increase where there is starvation; prosperous nations have the lowest birth figures. If Hardin and his ilk lack basic human compassion, let them at least adopt the pragmatic strategy. The best way to halt starvation, overpopulation, and the revolutions that always follow, is to find ways to feed the hungry and then educate them to economic independence.

ROBERT B. McLAREN

Fullerton