We need to think about Africa
There are no guarantees that there will be a disaster when Africa's share of the world's population increases. That is not a reason not to care.
First of all: Apple Pie, who writes Things to Read, is running a survey about romantic preferences. In the name of science, please take his survey! (It is also quite fun, actually). In particular it would be great if more women/people attracted to men want to take the survey, since there is currently a lack of answers from that side of the human race.
Link to survey for people attracted to women
Link to survey for people attracted to men
Now to Africa:
There is a debate going on among people who are good at statistics about the future of the human race. On the one side is Lyman Stone, who argues that in general, less intelligent people do not have more children (for example here). Even though IQ tests indicate that the comparatively very fertile Africans are less intelligent than the world average that is probably not true, he argues. And in any case, we Westerners don't need to care about what happens in Africa, because we don't need to admit immigrants from Africa if we don't want to. On the other side is Emil Kierkegaard who claims that dysgenic fertility is a thing, especially on a global scale, and Cremieux Recueil, who makes the case that the current inability of Africans to write IQ tests is indeed a sign that Africans have lower inherent ability to process information.
In this debate, I only intend to make a case against one point: Lyman Stone's idea that Westerners don't need to care about what happens in Africa. Lyman expresses this standpoint very clearly:
“Provided that within-country dysgenesis isn’t an issue, we would have a brief episode where humanity gets dumber, then by 2100 or 2150 everything will go back to normal. In the meantime, Africa will be much bigger, but the Congo isn’t about to build a navy capable of making an amphibious landing in Portugal or something (especially if Emil is right that the average African IQ is 70— you’re not gonna build ballistic missiles at that IQ). Literally the only way the growth of a supposedly low-IQ African population is a problem is if the wider world chooses to make it one. Even if their average IQ is 70, there will be many geniuses among them, talent the West can recruit to its own advantage. Even if there are billions of Africans, again, there’s just no way they are going to go and conquer Korea or something, unless Korea chooses to invite them in as immigrants. Emil is probably very opposed to letting in lots of African refugees, but the key point is:
A large number of allegedly low-IQ Africans are only a problem to the extent the wider world chooses to make it OUR problem.”
I believe that this perspective is deeply wrong, on both a practical and moral plan. I have no reason to speculate over IQ levels since other people are doing that better than me, but I'm convinced of one thing: Africa is important and the sooner we come to terms with that, the better.
Africa today holds about 20 percent of the global population. In 80 years the UN forecasts that it will constitute almost 40 percent. And the other 60 percent will be much older than today. And that is based on the UN’s forecast, which predicts that, for some reason, fertility will converge toward 2 all over the world in 2100 (numbers from Wikipedia's page on World population projections). It is easy to imagine other scenarios. For example, fertility might remain between 0.7 and 1.5 in Europe and East Asia and remain around 4 in Africa. If that remains the case, our world will rapidly become African.
As things are, Africa doesn't grow all of its own food. Although 40-70 percent of the population of the continent work in agriculture (estimates vary), Africa is a big net-importer of food. Also, foreign aid is a big source of income. Poor Sub-Saharan African countries get as much as ten percent of their GDP from foreign aid (PDF link). Africa started out extremely sparsely populated: In 1900 it only had about a tenth of its population today. A densely populated Africa is an entirely new situation. A long time ago Anders wrote about the Congo Wars, where not very many Congolese died combat related deaths and up to five million Congolese died because aid workers were unable to get food and medicine to them. As Africa gets more densely populated, it is not difficult to imagine a steep increase in such situations.
Under current conditions there is enough to eat in most of Africa and there are no major wars going on. But what will happen if, or when, there are many more Africans and fewer workers in the rich world who can feed Africa? There are a number of scenarios. Some are prettier, some are uglier.
Prison or fortress?
The scenario where nothing of importance changes is one of the uglier: Europe, America and East Asia continue breeding on a 1-1.6 children per woman level. Africa continues breeding on a 4 children per woman level and remains relatively poor and low-tech.
Africa will then sooner or later reach a Malthusian situation, in which small disturbances like bad weather will cause starvation. And when humans reach Mathusian situations, they start killing each other. Wars will create streams of refugees, intruding on Europe.
What will Europe do about that? At first, European governments will probably try to do more of the same: More development aid, intervene militarily to stave off the killing. But the tide will work against them. Europe is getting older and smaller. Africa is young and growing. So Europeans will see themselves as obliged to do more of the same in another area too: Using violence to keep Africans out. If the push factors of Africa increase, the push-back from Europe must increase as well, if inflow is to be kept at the same level.
What happens if Africa becomes a classical Malthusian hellhole, the same way as all over-populated, low-tech areas have been throughout history? Then the continent will be filled with millions or even billions of desperate people, prepared to do their utmost to escape. Because a great portion of them will die if they stay in Africa.
In order to keep such problems outside its borders, Europeans will have to use extraordinary levels of force. Either they will have to create a ring of lethal force around Africa, transforming it to a giant outdoor prison. Or they will have to create a ring of lethal force around Europe, creating a giant fortress. There simply is no other way that people who are fleeing for their lives can be kept out.
What we owe the future
If we leave the world in this kind of condition to our grandchildren, I think it is a problem. There is not a lot we can do about it, other than having more children who share the burdens of the future and to work for development and lower fertility in Africa, to the degree that is possible. Still, I think it is morally wrong to ignore this potential disaster just because there is a fair chance that it will not take place.
Lyman Stone is right that Africans can most probably be kept out of the West by means of violence if the populations of the West want that. But in general, it does matter for us Westerners to see ourselves as good people and to perceive ourselves as a force for good in the world. If we start killing people who are fleeing for their lives on a large scale, our self-image will have to change: From a leading majority culture that everyone else is “developing” into to a weak, threatened minority culture that needs to fight viciously for its survival. That is kind of a decline.
I think that leaving such a possible future for our grandchildren without even trying to prepare, if nothing else on a psychological level, is not at all the moral thing to do. Again, I can in no way promise that this will happen. Demography might change. Africa might change and become prosperous. Europe and America might happily absorb the excess population of Africa in order to make up for their own population deficits. As always with the future, there are several possibilities. That is not a reason to only prepare for the pleasant possibilities and ignore the unpleasant ones.
And forget about IQ
I'm saying this regardless of the arguments in the IQ debate. After all, the only purpose of IQ tests is to predict a person's ability to process information in the real world. If Africa's population could be proven to have the same or superior inherent genetic capacity for information processing as Western or East Asian populations, that would be an indication that eventually, Africa will develop in the same direction as Europe and East Asia. But only an indication: Low IQ is far from the only obstacle to prosperity.
IQ analyses are only one tool for prediction. History is another very powerful tool for prediction: The longer x fails to happen, the lower the probability that x will happen, regardless of why x fails to happen. The longer and more detailed history becomes, the more predictive value it assembles, compared to psychological tests. If someone in, say, 1950, could have used IQ tests to predict the potential for development in Africa, India, China, South Korea, Indonesia and other by-then very undeveloped regions, the value of such predictions would have been huge (that is, if someone believed in them). In 2025, when development and non-development has already happened, observations of the recent past seriously rival IQ tests as a tool to predict its future.
There is nothing wrong in debating the reasons for Africa’s backwardness. But we should also leave some attention for preparing for what seems likely to happen before it actually happens. Instead of only debating how much of a problem there is in Africa, it is high time to start discussing mitigation of the problems that exist and are likely to increase. When the world shifts its epicenter, we shouldn't stand completely unprepared. Although the contours are still vague, we see it coming.
I agree Tove. I especially think the idea that Europe could just refuse to admit masses of desperate Africans is extremely misguided.
I think there are two issues here: (1) people struggle to comprehend what a population of a million is; and (2) people underestimate human ingenuity in the face of desperate necessity (even very low-IQ individuals).
For example, the drug-abusing population of America hardly represents “elite human capital” but think how much their demand for drugs is able to circumvent borders, bribe judges and set up sophisticated logistics networks etc to supply their need. Or consider a typical prison, where the inmates are locked-down, mail searched, visitors frisked etc and yet still these places are often awash in drugs. Never underestimate human ingenuity.
The ultimate example is perhaps the 2 million supposedly low-IQ Palestinians in Gaza and the famously high-IQ Jews of Israel. Yet despite the city being walled-off and bombed to rubble, as far as I’m aware, Hamas were able to keep manufacturing makeshift rockets to fire at the IDF right up until the end of this war—even while ordinary Palestinians didn’t have enough food to eat.
1. This is one of the reasons that my catch-phrase is now "this is the Century of Consequences".
2. History is indeed a guide to the future. For example, look how ably our global political elite is forestalling climate change, which they (now) claim to be a huge threat.
First we will have decades of Lyman Stone's attitude, that Africa is not a problem, and then eventually the admission that well, maybe it is, but it's easy to fix. Just a matter of adjusting some market regulations.
3. IQ is indeed only a part of the problem in Africa. Culture is the majority of it, and culture takes many, many decades to change.
Africa (certainly the Bantu-peopled parts of it, which is most of sub-Saharan Africa) suffers from a family system that is incompatible with industrial civilisation: very clan focused, often polygynous, oppressive of women and neglectful of children.
Things like property rights, the rule of law, and due process are rather silly notions to most Africans as well. Disputes get settled by force of arms. Again, these institutional issues would take multiple decades to fix, even if Africa wanted to.
Any resources that Europeans provide will just be diverted to the clans of the people in charge. Again, history is a guide for this.