ABSTRACT
The humanitarian cause is perennially popular. Compassion is a call to action. An urge to do good prompts us to take more and more of the world's homeless and destitute. And if taking the world's poor really helped, the opportunity to do good would be nearly limitless. Worldwide population growth is accelerating because of the increasing number of reproductive-age women and the frustratingly slow decline in their average fertility. The ever-larger base contributes to the mathematical result that the rate of growth appears to be slowing. The harm is probably proportional to how much our policies lead the third world to discount signs of economic, social, or environmental limits. Immigration in a too-crowded world is a zero-sum game. The controversy over celebration of Columbus's discoveries in the New World makes the point. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, various UN agencies, and national governments share the explicit goal of increasing consumption worldwide.
