Does Saving Starving People Cause More Pain?

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I watched videos about all those people who are undergoing a famine in Somalia. In an area that is so historically arid, I don't understand how so many people could have survived. When I saw aid workers distribute food to these people and a disturbing thought came to me. Many of these people have seven to eight children. Feeding them all so they will survive will only cause a larger growth in population for the future. So when another famine comes along later, even more people will starve than in the first place. The suffering might increase long term even though we stopped it short term. At the time of another famine, we ourselves might not have the resources to help.

Would it be wrong to pass out condoms and contraception alongside the food?

I am not saying we shouldn't be feeding starving people. I am a big humanitarian., and I think it is necessary to stop unrest from spreading to more affluent countries. What I am saying is if we do help them out should we be doing more to ensure it doesn't happen again?

Depends how you save them. Is foreign food aid also bankrupting any local farmers that might exist?

They may have a lot of kids, but maybe 2 or 3 at most will live to have kids of their own. Most will die of disease and some preventable causes if they had medial care, but Somalia also has one of the highest unnatural death rates in the world as well. Pesonally I don't think the US should aid the UN or intervene in the famine in Somalia, or in the famine anywhere else unless it is needed to prevent militant Islam from gaining popularity.

No,

But "saving" them does not mean giving food away and flooding their markets with it.

If you asked the people of Somalia, I'm sure they'd tell you that feeding them certainly isn't causing more pain.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

The rest of the world has been trying to feed Africa for longer than I've been alive.
I think it's time to evacuate Africa instead.
Operation "Out Of Africa".

There's another side to this though. A lot of the foreign aide money doesn't go to starving people but to multi-national corporations who "develop" the land there. This often entails disturbing the way of life of indigenous people by forcing them off lands they've lived on for thousands of years, imposing monoculture on them, flooding valleys that people live in, monopolizing basic resources, and giving them no other option but to work as wage slaves that are dependent on imported goods. The industrial farming operations often times use up the land till all the top soil is depleted, then they leave. Then the local populations are left with less arable land than they had before, which they end up fighting tribal wars over.

These Humanitarian organizations will donate grain to starving people to look good in front of the cameras and to salve the consciences of bourgeois liberals, but it really doesn't do anything. The problem is really with neo-colonialism and globalization.

the original poster is 100% correct.

though letting the first generation of poor people die out is not a palatable idea, even though it results in less poverty than the alternative.