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A thought Iv'e been having for a while, and a stray comment or two in another thread inspired me to open a real discussion on it.
Too many people are alive today already. It is a rather obvious fact, I think. It is enough to be stuck in one traffic jam, staring at the endless river of cars ahead and realizing that the tail of the jam behind you is only getting longer. It is enough to walk through a busy street. Or read some basic statistics. I don't think anyone would argue that if, in most places in the world, population would keep rising, humankind could find itself in some serious trouble.
All of our infrastructures are already groaning audibly under the pressure. At least in my country I can attest that it is so. You can't expend roads quickly enough, provide enough housing for everyone to live with dignity. The ever increasing populace demands more and more from the official bureaucracy, which was never an efficient organization in the first place. Positive rates of child birth, coupled with the ever increasing life span of the older members in the society, creates a huge financial pressure on people in their prime to provide for them. I hear that some life insurance companies, when estimating the life span of someone born in recent years, estimate it to be around 120 years. That's huge news for the world, and I'm all for prolonging life as long as possible. However, there is a price attached to such a miracle.
We simply can't go on like we do now, either pretending there's no problem or figuring somebody else will have to deal with it in the future. Almost everywhere on earth, we would get a healthier society if we limit the amount of children a person is allowed to bring to this world. Technology has really reached a point where it could sustain a human society with great comfort, to the point of completely banishing the notion of hungry people too poor to care for themselves, provided that the society in question is of a reasonable size. Society today is, alas, not of reasonable size. We need to shrink it by restraining child birth because if we don't, the struggle for resources that are insufficient to provide for everyone could easily throw the world into numerous kinds of chaos - war being chief among them, but all other kinds of social disorders are possible.
There are of course many difficulties, and there will be a transitional phase where the world's populace will become older, due to old people living long and fewer young people being born. In that time, which could take many years to pass, our lives WILL become harder - for example, retirement age will have to be postponed for most people still capable of work despite their age.
But there difficulties sure as hell beat the alternative, which is a nightmare scenario in my opinion. An exponential growth rate means if we don't take action, and soon, world population really might just go completely out of hand and we would have missed the turning point by than.
Do I think there's a real chance any democratic government could pull off a baby cap per person? No, I really don't think so. Nobody would vote for someone who even tries. And that's bad news for the world, I fear.
Yep. One baby per couple for the next fifty years or so would make a better world for everyone in the long run.
Don't think it's going to happen though. As a result, we're probably all screwed!
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Also, the birth rate is not soaring across the globe and has already dropped below self-sustaining levels in some countries (Japan, Italy) . The best way to control birth rate is to modernise and enrich poor countries.
When someone starves it is usually because of poverty. When someone starves in a disaster zone it is usually because poor/damaged infrastructure and/or internal conflict stops aid from reaching them. We produce enough stuff, we just don't share.
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It's not really just urbanisation. To much pollution, too many people. I agree that we need to curb population. The only way it will happen however is by starvation, we as a species are not smart enough to do it on our own.
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western society is at least trending this way on its own. Europe has a negative growth rate, and so does the US without immigration and the children of immigrants.
Educating women and letting them have careers outside of the home so they have fewer kids and a social safety net so that 10 kids all chipping in isn't your retirement plan may be sufficient without going full on china on people.
Read a modest proposal, this idea comes around every so often for the past 200 years. Strange how Armageddon keeps being postponed.
We keep coming up with a new asspull. Iron plows, mechanized farming, chemical fertilizers, genetically modified foods... i suppose kelp farming would be next if we have to.
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Every nation should have a population target speed limit. It makes zero sense to allow rampant growth to smash current quality of life when a country cannot provide the necessary transport, jobs, food or necessary shelter for a population. We also need to accept that the more humans take, the less every other species on Earth has access to.
I don't think nations should limit child birth, but they should be aware of the population 'speed limit' and create economic sanctions and penalties for breeders who have an unsustainable approach to creating more of those pesky humans.
Read a modest proposal, this idea comes around every so often for the past 200 years. Strange how Armageddon keeps being postponed.
I too am still waiting for an apocalyptic vision or movement to be correct.
Waiting...
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A thought Iv'e been having for a while, and a stray comment or two in another thread inspired me to open a real discussion on it.
Too many people are alive today already. It is a rather obvious fact, I think. It is enough to be stuck in one traffic jam, staring at the endless river of cars ahead and realizing that the tail of the jam behind you is only getting longer. It is enough to walk through a busy street. Or read some basic statistics. I don't think anyone would argue that if, in most places in the world, population would keep rising, humankind could find itself in some serious trouble.
All of our infrastructures are already groaning audibly under the pressure. At least in my country I can attest that it is so. You can't expend roads quickly enough, provide enough housing for everyone to live with dignity. The ever increasing populace demands more and more from the official bureaucracy, which was never an efficient organization in the first place. Positive rates of child birth, coupled with the ever increasing life span of the older members in the society, creates a huge financial pressure on people in their prime to provide for them. I hear that some life insurance companies, when estimating the life span of someone born in recent years, estimate it to be around 120 years. That's huge news for the world, and I'm all for prolonging life as long as possible. However, there is a price attached to such a miracle.
We simply can't go on like we do now, either pretending there's no problem or figuring somebody else will have to deal with it in the future. Almost everywhere on earth, we would get a healthier society if we limit the amount of children a person is allowed to bring to this world. Technology has really reached a point where it could sustain a human society with great comfort, to the point of completely banishing the notion of hungry people too poor to care for themselves, provided that the society in question is of a reasonable size. Society today is, alas, not of reasonable size. We...
Persuasive and insistent. Can I use your post as a resource for my students? (a language analysis exercise).
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China's tried that. It hasn't worked out so great for them. As affluence increases in a society, its birth rates plummet. People in the developing world tend to have a lot of kids because of high child mortality - having a passel of kids ensures enough survive to take care of you in your old age. Nations like Japan and much of Europe are actually not reproducing enough to meet the replacement rate. If you want to fight overpopulation, fight poverty.
Always go after the root cause, don't try to slap bandaids on problems. Unless you're comfortable being the guy with a gun who drags off over-reproducers and kill them/their offspring, attack the root economic problem.
solution two: colonize space!
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Yes, the huge numbers of Chinese men that will never find a wife.
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Considering the fact that there is no way to enforce something like this without becoming a police state I think its a bad idea. You would literally have to either kill innocent children who are born to people who have already reached the limit or do invasive surgery against people's will to those who reach the limit. Both are very bad ideas and I for one would fight against them. You also have to take into consideration the amount of people who can't have children and would want to adopt. Add to that the fact that the meaning of life is to reproduce, and you have a number of vrey effective arguments against this.
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I think culling pinkskin babies is a wonderful idea and you all should get on it posthaste.
Down with pinkskins!
Make way for the gobbos!
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I totally agree! People are having too many babies! In my hometown, the population has increased by almost 2,000 blokes in the last 24 years! If only the State would step in and stop letting so many people have babies!
Except for me, that is. My wife I and, I mean to say. We have three kids...but we're different! I make a bunch of money and I'm really highly educated! I went to an Ivy League school; I drive a Jeep, fully kitted (buy American!...made in Canada from parts fabricated in Mexico...), and my wife drives a BMW--Christ, it has a holographic heads-up and shows pedestrians at night; the car's a f+@$ing Schwarzenegger-hunting Predator! I live in a huge 5-bedroom house and I drink lattes from Starbucks every day--every day! So...you know...I get a bye. You do, too...right?
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Rather than preventing births deemed unnecessary, we could instead cull the obnoxiously opinionated and overbearing.
Not sure who would be left here to post, but ...
Just the two of us, man...just the two of us...
I really don't care if you start with the people in the rich countries or the people in the poor countries, just get off our planet, pinkskins, and leave us your video games and frozen pizzas.
Gobbos 4-eva!
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Soylent Green, dear Mammoth, Soylent Green!
Besides, who cares?! When the First World dies off from depopulation, there'll be plenty of space for the Third World to spread out and f@$# things up all over again. But hey--it'll take 'em years to figure out how to use our tech, and by then the ants will have conquered the planet!
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The problem is not how to survive the projected ten billion people we will reach. The problem is dealing with the sharp projected drop that comes after. Give it a rest, Malthusians. The day will come... pretty soon... when every country will clamour for immigrants.
The beef-eating, SUV-driving, plane-flying, coffee-drinking American's ecological footprint is impressive... but so is the dirt poor guy's with ten children, whose children will also have ten children, compared to the American's one or two.
Consider: If a country gets richer, childbirth falls. What happens if a rich country's social support network fails critically? So that this country's population suddenly need to get ten children to support them if they should survive to pension age? *shudders*
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...A thought Iv'e been having for a while, and a stray comment or two in another thread inspired me to open a real discussion on it.
Too many people are alive today already. It is a rather obvious fact, I think. It is enough to be stuck in one traffic jam, staring at the endless river of cars ahead and realizing that the tail of the jam behind you is only getting longer. It is enough to walk through a busy street. Or read some basic statistics. I don't think anyone would argue that if, in most places in the world, population would keep rising, humankind could find itself in some serious trouble.
All of our infrastructures are already groaning audibly under the pressure. At least in my country I can attest that it is so. You can't expend roads quickly enough, provide enough housing for everyone to live with dignity. The ever increasing populace demands more and more from the official bureaucracy, which was never an efficient organization in the first place. Positive rates of child birth, coupled with the ever increasing life span of the older members in the society, creates a huge financial pressure on people in their prime to provide for them. I hear that some life insurance companies, when estimating the life span of someone born in recent years, estimate it to be around 120 years. That's huge news for the world, and I'm all for prolonging life as long as possible. However, there is a price attached to such a miracle.
We simply can't go on like we do now, either pretending there's no problem or figuring somebody else will have to deal with it in the future. Almost everywhere on earth, we would get a healthier society if we limit the amount of children a person is allowed to bring to this world. Technology has really reached a point where it could sustain a human society with great comfort, to the point of completely banishing the notion of hungry people too poor to care for themselves, provided that the society in question is of a reasonable size. Society today is, alas,
Sure :)
Read a modest proposal, this idea comes around every so often for the past 200 years. Strange how Armageddon keeps being postponed.We keep coming up with a new asspull. Iron plows, mechanized farming, chemical fertilizers, genetically modified foods... i suppose kelp farming would be next if we have to.
We here DHMI (Doodlebug Hughes Medical Institute) have just developed a new GMO kelp crop that should prove quite suitable for biofuel. The latest batch now contains spliced DNA from C. indica, which once combusted and exhausted from the auto has the bonus of helping reduce road rage.
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huh........ some sort of dingo usually shows up by now with a petition. Must be running late.
oh and nsfw,
Exhibit B: Clevon Jr just doesn't care either.
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Heh. Sadly, I'm not sure I'd make the cut.Just the two of us, man...just the two of us...Rather than preventing births deemed unnecessary, we could instead cull the obnoxiously opinionated and overbearing.
Not sure who would be left here to post, but ...
If only we were engaged in a constant life and death struggle against giant ants, then the breeders would be safe from criticism.
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A thought Iv'e been having for a while, and a stray comment or two in another thread inspired me to open a real discussion on it.
Too many people are alive today already. It is a rather obvious fact, I think. It is enough to be stuck in one traffic jam, staring at the endless river of cars ahead and realizing that the tail of the jam behind you is only getting longer. It is enough to walk through a busy street. Or read some basic statistics. I don't think anyone would argue that if, in most places in the world, population would keep rising, humankind could find itself in some serious trouble.
All of our infrastructures are already groaning audibly under the pressure. At least in my country I can attest that it is so. You can't expend roads quickly enough, provide enough housing for everyone to live with dignity. The ever increasing populace demands more and more from the official bureaucracy, which was never an efficient organization in the first place. Positive rates of child birth, coupled with the ever increasing life span of the older members in the society, creates a huge financial pressure on people in their prime to provide for them. I hear that some life insurance companies, when estimating the life span of someone born in recent years, estimate it to be around 120 years. That's huge news for the world, and I'm all for prolonging life as long as possible. However, there is a price attached to such a miracle.
We simply can't go on like we do now, either pretending there's no problem or figuring somebody else will have to deal with it in the future. Almost everywhere on earth, we would get a healthier society if we limit the amount of children a person is allowed to bring to this world. Technology has really reached a point where it could sustain a human society with great comfort, to the point of completely banishing the notion of hungry people too poor to care for themselves, provided that the society in question is of a reasonable size. Society today is, alas, not of reasonable size. We...
They only told that crap to the Chinese so America would not be up against two billion Chinese. Any State capable of doing right by its citizens is required to employ its citizens in that process of growth. it means that your populace must be required to serve not in the military but in construction and medical and educational areas.
Jenny Agutter! {sighs happily}
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They only told that crap to the Chinese so America would not be up against two billion Chinese. Any State capable of doing right by its citizens is required to employ its citizens in that process of growth. it means that your populace must be required to serve not in the military but in construction and medical and educational areas.
My viewpoint on the issue is less American. It's mostly me looking at how things are going where I live (far away from the U.S) and thinking that since in most of the world things are similar to here, the global situation is bad and getting worse. I'm not saying china and india should get a hold of themselves, I'm saying everyone should.
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They only told that crap to the Chinese so America would not be up against two billion Chinese. Any State capable of doing right by its citizens is required to employ its citizens in that process of growth. it means that your populace must be required to serve not in the military but in construction and medical and educational areas.My viewpoint on the issue is less American. It's mostly me looking at how things are going where I live (far away from the U.S) and thinking that since in most of the world things are similar to here, the global situation is bad and getting worse. I'm not saying china and india should get a hold of themselves, I'm saying everyone should.
A Socially responsible government is required to sustain human equality and dignity. There seems to be a shortfall...
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A Socially responsible government is required to sustain human equality and dignity. There seems to be a shortfall...They only told that crap to the Chinese so America would not be up against two billion Chinese. Any State capable of doing right by its citizens is required to employ its citizens in that process of growth. it means that your populace must be required to serve not in the military but in construction and medical and educational areas.My viewpoint on the issue is less American. It's mostly me looking at how things are going where I live (far away from the U.S) and thinking that since in most of the world things are similar to here, the global situation is bad and getting worse. I'm not saying china and india should get a hold of themselves, I'm saying everyone should.
I.... don't see how that has to do with anything, honestly.
They only told that crap to the Chinese so America would not be up against two billion Chinese. Any State capable of doing right by its citizens is required to employ its citizens in that process of growth. it means that your populace must be required to serve not in the military but in construction and medical and educational areas.
Uh....huh? Wait, who told whom what? Somebody? Anybody? Mangoes?
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The mango locals told the Chinese that the Americans were taking all their women, to live in huge, self-sufficient container parks powered by wind energy, paid by having all the world's population buy 500$ tickets in a lottery. I think.
The mango locals told the Chinese that the Americans were taking all their women, to live in huge, self-sufficient container parks powered by wind energy, paid by having all the world's population buy 500$ tickets in a lottery. I think.
Oh, okay. That makes perfect sense. I thought the Chinese dodo mangoes had told the American triceratops mangoes that all of their dire wolf passion fruit children had been marched away to become carambola wereturtles, so they could live happily ever after in the tops of the Tibetan tree-fern forests. Whew! I thought I was seeing things. Thanks, Sissyl.
No... that is also a valid interpretation. I think.
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Must. Find. Scotch.
I.... don't see how that has to do with anything, honestly.A Socially responsible government is required to sustain human equality and dignity. There seems to be a shortfall...They only told that crap to the Chinese so America would not be up against two billion Chinese. Any State capable of doing right by its citizens is required to employ its citizens in that process of growth. it means that your populace must be required to serve not in the military but in construction and medical and educational areas.My viewpoint on the issue is less American. It's mostly me looking at how things are going where I live (far away from the U.S) and thinking that since in most of the world things are similar to here, the global situation is bad and getting worse. I'm not saying china and india should get a hold of themselves, I'm saying everyone should.
It does, but not in the way that yellowdingo means it.
If the population was "in balance" more resources would be available for every person. Enough for society to "sustain human equality and dignity."
Or, more simply:
The "losers" in that competition will be unable to maintain a decent quality of life.