In the long run, the enablers and the dysfunctional are equally guilty for destroying the overall society.
At some point, you have to expect members of a society to meet some minimum behavioral requirements in order to be allowed the benefits of that membership.
Search for: Former World Bank economist, Dambisa Moyo argues that the current approach isn't working. In her book, "Dead Aid", she says it has proved to be an "unmitigated political, economic and humanitarian disaster".
It seems for most people the answer is a firm yes. They can't think beyond the short run positive (e.g. free food keeps child alive) to see the overwhelming long run negative (e.g. millions die when free food can't be sustained). When you point out the long run negative you usually get a blank stare or a downvote.
It's funny that some people are fervent believers in Darwinian evolution and at the same time they think an organisms desire to propagate its genetic information is somehow dysfunctional. It's like they disavow the divine yet they can't let go of the idea of divine teleology. I'm not saying creationists are right, I'm just saying that they are ideologically more consistent than most Darwinian evolutionists.
Say what? How can 10% of the distribution be a "substantial portion"? Ten percent is ... ten percent. For a normal statistical distribution, 10% of the IQ distribution is normally 10% of the population as a whole. To see why, ask yourself what percentage of the population is at or below the 50% IQ level. Then, having pictured that, ask yourself how 10% of the population could represent "a substantial portion" without contradicting what's just been demonstrated.
Your remark reminds me of the special conditions in fictional Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average.
In India, healthcare workers have had trouble convincing villagers to accept free vaccines for diseases like polio because of rumors (with some loose history behind them) that the government is actually trying to sterilize the poor.
Culturally, discussing sex is a very big taboo.
Even in a "first world country" such as the United States, politicians regularly block the availability of contraception on shaky religious grounds.
In the city Mumbai alone, it's estimated that the number of people living in slums could be as high as several million.
People in slums may see having children as a way to increase their potential income (kids can work too), or intake from begging, or as a way to ensure that someone will take care of them in their old age.
Given these issues, how would you roll out a program to provide condoms to the slum dwellers in Mumbai alone, and how do you convince them that they should not have children?
I'm against giving aid that isn't part of a super holistic temporary (even if decades) solution that could conceivably work. Today's solutions have mostly failed; they've made the problems worse.
The Indian villagers may be justified in being wary of the vaccine, because the Indian gov't is highly corrupt. So the holistic solution should deal with the corruption too. If that's too hard to do it may be better to do nothing. The same is true with the larger cultural issues.
I do believe the problems are intractable in many countries. We don't have enough resources to solve them. (Esp. since the US is perhaps the poorest country when our national debt and unfunded liabilities is considered.) So, rather than make the problems worse with nonviable attempts, I think it's best to do nothing and let Nature sort it out.
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The point of humanity is to control our destiny and not be left to the vagaries of nature.
Do note : it was assumed that people were on the same page about certain things and they need not be discussed.
For example: so far this discussion has never considered the reasons which lead to the poverty in the first place.
Since you are in disagreement, with the soundness of humanitarian goals, the scope of the discussion changes, quite dramatically.
Does india get redressal for the food and raw materials stolen during British rule?
Do we get repatriation for people sold into slavery?
Can we launch counter attacks on countries which benefited from this? Do we have a claim on GDP output from the UK/France and Portugal?
Your theory of least misery is under the utilitarian school of jurisprudence. It's limits are the same. It fails for situations where actions are unjust but create beneficial outcomes for the majority.
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What you are inherently arguing for is using your comparative advantages and somehow letting a portion of people die of starvation, Intentionally.
That is heinous. It is not intellectually sound or risqué, it is "let them eat cake", just couched in other terms.
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You haven't consider the complexities on the ground and have in general hand waved them away. That's being rhetorically empty. Your last comment was that the problems are intractable.
No the problems are hard. Extremely extremely hard.
But thats what entrepreneurship is about - finding the solution to hard problems.
While this would be nice in an ideal world, your analysis severely underestimates just how strong the desire to have sex is, and vastly overestimates the ability of someone without education, money, or healthcare to access reliable means of birth control.