Many Filipino “thought leaders” continue to carry on about food security, rising prices, the peso exchange rate and bad infrastructure like baying dogs in the middle of a quiet night. What they seem to have lost sight of is the root of ALL Filipino poverty: overpopulation. This little fact about the Philippines is important because it takes us back to the only truly encompassing definition of poverty:
Poverty is a habitual entering into commitments one is inherently unable to honour.
The trouble with Filipinos is they spent much of their “independent” history multiplying like rabbits with nary a though put to developing an inherent capability to sustain the now enormous numbers that weigh down their society. Seen from that light, it becomes quite evident that, on the average, every Filipino born is a liability to his or her society.
A society saddled with an enormous population is a society that entered into a commitment it cannot honour. It lacked domestic technological traditions to support this commitment and instead adopted a blanket policy of reliance on foreign capital to sustain these numbers.
That is why the Philippines is poor, and all roads in any discussion about poverty lead to it.