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I think that a good population control technique would make it a mandatory proceedure for, both males and females, to be sterilized after he or she has had one child. So if a man and a woman want two children, they can have two because they are both allowed one each. But if a man and a woman have two children, then divorce, since they will both be sterilized then they will not be able to reproduce again. I think this would be a very effective population control.
So, any criticisms?
Capitalism is the pimp that turned mother earth into a whore.
You're right, that would be very effective, but so many have and will always object to being controlled in such a way. What if the children of the sterilized couple die and they want to have more kids or they want a boy or a girl instead of two kids of the same sex? What's the point of population control anyway? It's not the population that's a problem, but the spending habits, lifestyles, and economic policies of a population.
<span style=\'color:red\'>"You can probably change more hearts and minds with one good film than with thousands of e-mail pamphlets...." - John Cusack</span>
Well the point of population control is to reduce consumption of the resources. And to your question about people who's children die, well then they can adopt. And as for the whole gender choice well i'm not against scientific proceedures that determine gender. And yes it is about lifestyle, but a reduced population in a society where everyone consumes would help reduce consumption.
Capitalism is the pimp that turned mother earth into a whore.
That can happen, but a reduced population to allow more resources to be consumed would be an excuse for the current population to consume even more. Like, "hey, it's now more available, let's get what we can and more!" It can also be an excuse for capitalism - an economy based on mass consumption of shit you don't need, lol. Land is a resource and house ownership is a form of mass consumption. I saw on 20/20 once that the entire population of the world can fit into Texas and it would still be less dense than NYC. However, suburbs and sprawl are destroying the USA and the world.
I wasn't planning to do this, but let's use my country, Puerto Rico, as an example. Eugenics and mass sterilization were the policies for generations. For decades Puerto Rico had the highest female sterilization rate in the world. Also, almost half of the population migrated from the island in the 1940s-1960s. However, has mass consumption decreased? Nope, it has increased since the 1940's. Now it's an island with consumption rates worthy of a wealthy USA state, lol. Less people doesn't always = less consumption of resources.
<span style=\'color:red\'>"You can probably change more hearts and minds with one good film than with thousands of e-mail pamphlets...." - John Cusack</span>
This is junk. If you are going to post in the science forum, you should make a scientific claim, or provide some sort of scientific basis for your claim. There should be more rules in here. This guy didn't even have any statistics, not that it would have helped his case any.
This is probably a political issue in the minds of many, but I'm not sure you need science to establish the fact there are too many folks. Just look around you!
Seriously though, I don't agree with forced sterilization. In the end, people must be free to make choices concerning their own lives, and such talk is frighteningly remindful of the Nazis.
I am going to venture that the man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life and its meaning, accepting the kinship of all creatures, and acknowledging unity with the universe of things, was infusing into his being the true essence of civilization.
Chief Luther Standing Bear
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more."
Illegitimi Non Carborundum
Well, according to my back of the envelope calculation, there are approximately 5.92 acres for every citizen of the world. This is roughly equivalent to 0.009 square miles, or 0.024 square kilometers. Not a very bad chunk of land. Of course this figure is definetely shrinking, and the world's carrying capacity must consider more factors than just land mass. This same calulation could also be used to compute the amount of the worlds grain per world citizen. Rest assured, when the world's population truly is a problem, a naturally occuring die off will balance the equation. Wars, famine, disease, and other natural disasters will take a tremendous toll. Hopefully, we can use good science to prevent a total crisis.
To arrive at the above figure, I simply took the mean radius of the earth, which is 6370 km, squared it and multiplied by 4 pi. That gives you the total surface area of the globe. This figure must be multiplied by 0.3, since 70% of the planet's surface is covered in water. This number is then multipleid by 247.104 acres as per the conversion from km^2 to acres. Divide by the total number of people on the planet, which was obtained from the Census Bureau's WorldPopClock to get a value of acres/person. This gives us some measure of how the world appear to be shrinking. I live in America. I'm sure if I were to look around in India the picture would appear far worse.
Jesus. I put it under science because it involved eugenics. I guess i could put it under politics or whatever but who really cares. I mean it's one post, if the admin doesnt like it then he can trash it for all i care. But i mean.....who cares? I don't get how something so little as one thread is enough to encite a man to make a post about how the thread is misplaced....honeslty....
Capitalism is the pimp that turned mother earth into a whore.
I think what we are all talking about here is the earth's human carrying capacity, which refers to the ability of an ecological system to sustain a population. The planet will have hit it's carry capacity when birth rates and death rates are equal to one another and the differential equation that governs the population growth is equal to zero. Thus, the slope will be zero and we will see no change in population density.
Some would suggest using eugenics to keep our numbers in check. This probably would slow the rate of growth. However, our population would continue to grow at an exponential rate regardless of such a limited approach. I think the effort would remain futile. People would find ways around the law. You can not stop life's driving force, which is procreation.
In biology, simplistic models work to predict population growth when populations are low, and new specimens can expand unhindered. As the numbers increase the model then becomes density dependent. We start to see a leveling off, even a decline, when such factors as pestilence, disease, and famine become more prevalent.
Although the erradication of small pox was a human triumph, it was a demonstration of our ability to change human carrying capacity, which is one of the problems prevalent when trying to predict this number. Other problems include completely overlooking other factors, or the difficulty of modelling an extremely chaotic variable. In 2000, it was said that we were about to reach our carrying capacity. Our population continued to grow, demonstrating that the experts were wrong. This remains a good case in point, when it comes to the extremely difficult behavior we are trying to model.
Here is a good link: http://courses.washington.edu/anth457/popnecol.htm
If you bothered to do a bit of research, you would find that the population problem is a problem of poverty and patriarchy.
Why do poor people have so many children? Because they need to in order to survive. That is, in most of the world, there is no social security. One needs children to provide in one's old age. Also children can produce extra income to suplement the family income. Also, women in most of the world have very little control of their bodies...there is a lack of birth control and sexual education as well as a culture of male-domination.
The solution to overpopulation as shown in Cuba and parts of India, is socialism, education, and empowering women.
this land is our land
faschist treadh34r:
trash
The problem as I see it is both overpopulation of certain areas, but predominantly overconsumption of resources unecessarily. As other people have stated, there is MORE then enough food to feed the entire world, and feed them well I might add! The problem in feeding people is who it is that controls the fields. Nigeria for example has one of the highest ratios of arable land compared to population/population density; however people in the south of the country are at the end of their tether and are starving because the abundant food sources are owned by Moguls who sell the food on to the first world or anyone else with enough $$.
I believe that a fairer and equal distribution of the world's resources would in itself result in less of a need for an increase in population for those economic reasons stated above.
Comrade BNS
How can you take peoples rights to have children away, my perents had 4 kids does that make them some sort of retard. As long as you can support all your children you can have as many as you plese.
I do not have a problem with sterilization as long as it doesnt have any bad health effects on people.
I think if we are trying to have socialism, people need to be accounted for and it is not rational to keep making all these babies "cause you feel like it" when we are all trying our best as it is.
You tell Moses to make bricks without straw,
Now he tells you to make cities without bricks!
I think answers to these questions depend on what kind of planet do we want.
Do we want a planet where everyone lives a "western" life-style that is nevertheless sustainable indefinitely?
Then, perforce, the population must come down to one or two billion. It doesn't have to be done "all at once" but it does have to be done.
On the other hand, it one is willing to accept a very primitive life-style for everybody in the whole world -- vegetarianism, disease epidemics, polluted water and air, illiteracy, etc. -- then the planet might support 50 billion people or even more...understanding that between a quarter to a third of them at any given time are dying. From starvation, exposure, epidemic diseases, pollution, etc.
(The only "industry" in such a world would involve the production of pesticides and fertilizers...probably according to "holy ritual" as science would have become extinct.)
At the present rate of human reproduction, the population will reach 135,000,000,000,000 in just 300 years.
That's a "nominal" figure, of course...ecological collapse will intervene long before that figure is attained.
The most successful population-control technique discovered thus far is educational and occupational opportunities for women. Many studies have shown that the more education a woman receives, the fewer children she has...it seems to be nearly one of those "iron laws" of history.
Nevertheless, I think that more will have to be done. Rather than mass sterilization (which would arouse considerable opposition), I suggest contraceptive implants for both males and females -- perhaps with an additional chemical that would boost libido a bit.
People would have more sex...but no unwanted babies. I think they'd like that.
We need to get the overall increase down below two children per couple (in practice, that means per woman).
Then the population would start to shrink...and eventually (again over about three centuries) it would reach a manageable two billion or so.
Or...we can let nature do it, through mass starvation, epidemics, etc.
The Redstar2000 Papers
A site about communist ideas
This has nothing to do with the subject at hand, you dirty old pervert! =D
I also agree that this sterilization business is not a good idea. Education and the availability of contraceptives will eventually cure the problem. Both of these, however, can only reach the masses once socialism has been acquired. Please ignore China. =D Look at Latin America instead. All of those nations suffer terribly from over crowding, disease, starvation, etc. It all comes together. Package deal. Comes free with capitalism. Now look at Cuba. Lower infant mortality rate than US.
redstar nice idea, definately better than this one.
i dont remember the name of this economist back in the 19th century
who said the human population will always grow higher than the production who feed it
i'll go back in my book and put a link soon
population controle is something like if we can't share let's find a final solution
The Green Revolution disproved Malthus. However, people still starve because of inherent inequalities in our current economic system.
You sound like a Nazi.
The Human Progress Group
Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the boot-maker - Mikhail Bakunin
Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains - Karl Marx
Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value - R. Buckminster Fuller
The important thing is not to be human but to be humane - Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
Check out my speculative fiction project: NOVA MUNDI
I have done an incredible amount of thinking on this subject. Rather than allowing the population to have a certain maximum offspring, why not only allow those who benefit society reproduce? Instead of sterilizing people after they had a child, why not just make sure that it's going to be worth it for those people to have kids. If someone is extremely petulant, ingorent, and rather indigent, then why should that peson be allowed to have kids of that kind, anyways? My mom is a teacher, and she tells me about all the stupid kids she teaches and all the stupid parents they have (though she doesn't tell the kids this, of course, she's actually a really good teacher). What I think is that you should have to pass one of two tests in order to pass on your seed. You have to prove yourself smart enough to be beneficial, or be strong enough to be beneficial. I wouldn't kill anybody, just limit their seed. That, and I want to put ten bear traps baited with pies per square mile to take care of all the stupid people. "A little natural selection never hurt nobody."
