Does the world need a single child policy?

[Drifterwood]

Wait till you are 90, or 70, or even 60. Remember old people have paid taxes and national insurance all their lives so have earned their keep. The NHS in the UK was set up in 1948 on the labours of the population who are now in their 90s. Are they suddenly to be cut off from the health service they set up and funded? Fuck that. And if your argument is about quality of life, why not choose to let babies die, all they do is mewl and puke. At least 90 year olds have paid their way.

Just on a point of fact, 85% of people in the UK are nett beneficiaries of State services. That is, the value of services they receive is greater than the value of all the taxes they have paid.

 

[185248]

Probably the upside to a "One Child Policy" is that a country would be less likely to send it's young off to war. Maybe the reason why China abstains from sending troops to hot zones, is that if they did they would face reprisals from a population only permitted one child and an heir or heiress for a families hard work. Probably also that they have recently adjusted their stance to their policy. Maybe their is a change in the breeze, an answer to their expansion of their naval forces.

One thing China tries to do is think ahead. Keep the citizens happy at home, China faces more threat from within than from external problems. I think Chinas change with regard to the one child policy is they expect looming trouble ahead. Maybe Confucius say something along those lines.

Meanwhile the West, Europe the Middle East have been breeding like flies. Well in recent times the West and Europe have fallen behind on the cannon fodder scale.

Maybe a change to a one child policy is due, but it would not be wise I suppose due to the others changing theirs away from a one child policy. I think we would find ourselves in deep shit if we did...unless it was a universal change...and there is not much hope of that happening anytime soon.

We can still practice breeding...

Personally, in the future I don't think we will have to worry about humankind keeping things even.

 

[185248]

Nature and the universe is a beautiful thing. Yet when it becomes unsettled it is unpredictable, it does not discriminate. Humans do that, and are usually very predictable and as yet have no defence. Well most

We have done well on the bacterial scale.....yet if we were ever thrown a curve ball, half of us could be gone before we knew it. The way the world is so small these days.

 

[328982]

Just on a point of fact, 85% of people in the UK are nett beneficiaries of State services. That is, the value of services they receive is greater than the value of all the taxes they have paid.

OK, but then let's value the ones who've contributed over a lifetime. 100% of kids have paid nothing towards the state services they receive. I suppose the point is that if we had a responsible birth control policy and weren't reproducing like some crazy rat colony, then we wouldn't need to make the stark choice of survival between the dependent extremes of age.

 

[185248]

OK, but then let's value the ones who've contributed over a lifetime. 100% of kids have paid nothing towards the state services they receive. I suppose the point is that if we had a responsible birth control policy and weren't reproducing like some crazy rat colony, then we wouldn't need to make the stark choice of survival between the dependent extremes of age.

Yeah, the Rats are still here.

 

[328982]

It's because their native workforce is poorly educated and globally non-competitive.

What evidence do you base that on? The OECD PISA international tests put the UK around 25th in the world in reading/maths education, a bit behind Germany and ahead of USA. www.bbc.co.uk: Pisa tests: Top 40 for maths and reading - BBC News

 

[328982]

Yeah, the Rats are still here.

Mmm, maybe we'll go the way of Calhoun's rats into the 'behavioral sink'?

 

[185248]

It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt...

 

[jaap_stam]

What evidence do you base that on? The OECD PISA international tests put the UK around 25th in the world in reading/maths education, a bit behind Germany and ahead of USA. www.bbc.co.uk: Pisa tests: Top 40 for maths and reading - BBC News

There are 34 OECD countries. As a "developed" nation with some of the best educational infrastructure in the world, UK should be comparing itself to them, not to the likes of DR Congo. Placing 25th out of 34 is bottom 50th percentile. Not competitive.

 

[328982]

There are 34 OECD countries. As a "developed" nation with some of the best educational infrastructure in the world, UK should be comparing itself to them, not to the likes of DR Congo. Placing 25th out of 34 is bottom 50th percentile. Not competitive.

65 countries took part in the last PISA tests, not just the 34 OECD countries. Congo wasn't among them

According to OECD, "the tests are designed to assess to what extent students at the end of compulsory education, can apply their knowledge to real-life situations and be equipped for full participation in society... countries and economies participating in successive surveys can compare their students' performance over time and assess the impact of education policy decisions."

UK performance in the tests is average for the 34 OECD countries in reading and maths, above average in Science. Certainly you can argue it should be higher, given that UK spends more per head on education than the average across OECD countries. On the other hand, since the USA performs significantly worse than UK - by your logic that would make the USA even more 'uncompetitive'. Seems a bit facile and maybe evidence isn't your strong suit.

 

[bwhip1011]

When I was born there were about 1 billion people on the planet, now I believe it's more than 6 billion plus in just 50 years. Wow! I'm not a rocket scientist, but yes, measures need to be examined and steps put in place.

Good thing my back-ordered uterus from Sears & Roebuck never arrived. By this point I'd have more kids than an NYC based orphanage.

 

[pronatalist]

If we were still in the food chain, the population size could be considered natural. Due to technological advances, we as a species do not need to worry about predators eating our young driving us to extinction. Medical advances have almost eliminated the attrition rate in child births. Without GMO's (how much more unnatural do you want?) we would not be able to feed as many people as we do and there are still huge areas where starvation is still a problem. If your population is falling it's due to a conscious effort to not have children. Our growing population is due to unnatural factors in our society designed specifically to counter natural processes that would have otherwise limited our population size.

Simply limiting birthrates maybe unnatural, but it hardly goes against human life. There is a finite amount of resources (drinkable water/food/living space/ etc) that can be used to support the human race. If the population exceeds that limit then you are talking about euthanizing people just to maintain the rest of the population.

Please come up with an argument that doesn't involve the equivalent of "be fruitful and multiply".

"If we were still in the food chain," is an evolution theory reference. That theory is wrong. Just because infant mortality (not counting abortion) is lower, does not mean that we have to use the unnatural awful birth control. Huge numbers of people have objections to birth control. As a pro-lifer, I have no expectation that people hinder the natural growth and spread of human life.

Since when has GMO done much to feed people? I would be in favor of GMO if it was of much use to feed a growing world population, but it seems what GMO is mostly used for, is to allow greedy corporations to get around the restriction that stood until the 1980s, that patents were not allowed upon seed, because only God can "own" life. But now we can see that the courts and the corrupt government have become quite corrupt, and so now GMO is used to bully farmers to buy GMO seed, that is designed to terminate, so that every year, the farmers have to buy more seed. Farmers have long thought they had the God-given right to save seed, and yet greedy corporations such as Monsanto accuse even farmers who have not signed their contracts, of stealing patented seed without paying for it? Greedy corporations should not be allowed to monopolize global food security, even as the world has more hungry mouths to feed than ever.

You concede that limiting births is unnatural, but I am also concerned that the number of women of childbearing age, is now higher than ever, estimated to have risen to current around 2 billion, and so babies are starting to come out of more and more baby holes, and additional growing numbers of younger people are yearning for still more children. Never before, has the world had quite so many people all reproducing at the same time. Many countries have large youth bulges, huge numbers of people quickly entering into their reproductive years, due to past natural growth. Surely all these people still have the natural or God-given right to enjoy having their precious darling babies? I believe that stupid and arbitrary limits upon our population size, should never be imposed. Why do you want to allow needless persecution against naturally-large families? Families obviously come in all sizes, and if people supposedly have "choice" to "plan" (against) having more children, then why wouldn't they have the obvious choice of preferring the simplicity and elegance of the most natural method of so-called "family planning," of using the "no method" method, that allows for the proper and natural family growth? Denying people's rights to bear children, that obviously goes against the human life. How can you claim otherwise? It also attacks against human rights and against human dignity. Most people are against population control of human beings. Most people do not want to be told how many children they can have. I know that there is a finite amount of land space, and that is why I am for allowing the human-density of the world, to rise naturally, the obvious way how billions more people can fit into the world. As a pro-lifer, you know that I must oppose any arbitrary "caps" upon world population size, as caps mostly mean the prospect that population size will soon exceed the cap anyway, making excuses for needless government meddling or government violence. Our ancestors accepted that population is what it is, and did not think that it could be controlled. Even family size was long thought uncontrollable.

Don't use "Be fruitful and multiply"? And why should I not look to God's Word for truth? But there are other reasons we can look at, if you wish. I do reserve the right to come back to "Be fruitful and multiply" whenever I want to, because I don't want to be like you population-phobics, and if I do not look to the source of truth, then what is to keep me from coming to the same conclusions as you misguided pagans? There are no practical nor moral means by which to control human populations. And much of the population growth comes from other countries, and notably Africa. By what right, should Babylon America make itself to be some globalist dictatorship, and try to conquer all the world, in imposing its NWO Western contraceptive imperialism? What moral imperative do I have, to try to keep the world from naturally blowing up with people?, as I am not seeing any such imperative. Even the liberals insist that as human populations grow, more people should become sexually-active, which is an obvious recipe for "uncontrollable" exponential expansion of humanity, as babies begin to come out of additional billions of baby holes. I very much agree that more people should be having sex, but they should also take the responsibilities that come with that, of being faithful to their spouses and of providing for and loving their children. Our society is so sensual, sex is everywhere, our pop music is crammed with messages such as "Everybody is doing it. You can feel it in the air," and who doesn't know that the natural purpose of sex is the production of babies? Also, I suspect that an increasingly human-dense world, makes the world more reek of the natural scents (or pheromones) of humans very much "in heat," and also makes it harder to be away from other people, which then further intensifies the natural reproductive urges and makes people all the more want to mate, especially in overcrowded shanties in which so many people live so close together, that surely they can hear the natural music of neighbors reproducing every night? Children grow up routinely seeing their parents mating, in places where entire families sleep in a single room, due to corrupt governments spreading poverty, and so they all the more want to marry young, so that they can enjoy the proper outlet and means of satisfying their powerful reproductive urges by reproducing. The only proper way of dealing with this is to allow people to improve their housing conditions if or as they can, but not at all, eliminating people, nor by figuratively tossing condoms in poor people's faces, as if human life hardly even matters anymore? They say that children are the only wealth of the poor, and that children are old age security also, so why are we not more considerate of the many good and compelling reasons that people may have to enjoy having naturally-big families?

There is no need to eliminate or "euthanize" people, as humans have high ability to adapt, and we have the moral obligation to find or make place for everybody, including all their progeny. I do not believe in killing people in order to have more space for myself, thus we do have the moral imperative to allow and encourage the entire world, to grow denser and denser with people. I have heard that Adolf Hitler claimed that Germany needed more lebensraum (living space). But that is no excuse to attack country after country, who also need more living space for their own also-growing populations. Since WW2, world population is now triple the size as it was then. Did we find some new frontiers that we didn't already know about? Did humans spread to more worlds? Did even the mad-scientists, find any way to make this planet bigger? Well how then, were we able to triple our numbers? Well obviously, most all countries simply grew denser and denser with human population, and as a pro-lifer, that is the only moral way that I can see to proceed. There is just getting to be so many people, where can we put additional billions of people? Where we always have. In-between all the people already living. More places must become occupied by people, as there is just now so many of us! As a pro-lifer, I do not expect people to control their fertility, but rather to respect the body's natural reproductive rhythms, stop fighting the body's attempts to get pregnant, and to ever encourage people to freely push out all the babies within them. Cities only occupy but 2 or 3% of the land area of earth, so why not build more cities and more suburbs, whatever is needed for our ever-growing numbers? Besides, the people need the jobs that it would create anyway.

 

[pronatalist]

I agree with this premise. The bigger problem is overpopulation. We need to control human reproduction if our planet is to survive. Yes, that will lead to economic problems, even collapse, but that is not the end of the world. Technology can help but only to some extent. Either we stop breeding at this rate, colonise other planets (which seems a remote possibility), or we face extinction. The language of human rights is irrelevant here, and in any case we have no 'right' to destroy the planet because we can't control our urges.

There are no moral nor practical means of controlling human population growth. Obviously, people are going to unzip their pants and continue mating.

Human fertility is very hard to control, and human populations seem to grow so easily, which is all the more practical reasons why we should grow. People enjoy having powerful reproductive urges, and the proper moral natural outlet for these natural urges, is marriage and reproduction. As human numbers naturally grow, even more people come to feel these powerful reproductive urges.

I love to see people colonize more world, in the movies, but when the manned moon landings may have actually been faked, we might not be colonizing more worlds anytime soon? But we have the obvious option and moral imperative, of populating this world, more human-densely with people, so that the addition billions soon-coming, can somehow fit.

 

[pronatalist]

Rising seas, shortages of potable water, diminished irrigation resulting in smaller harvests, shortages of critical metals, religious objections to contraception (and abortion) - all these mean that our planet cannot sustain the numbers of people which are projected in the next century. Humanity and civilization will suffer.

Could it be, that the population projections are wrong, perhaps being greatly underestimated? Or could it be, that the evil mad-scientists ignore the serious prospect that a more human-dense world is a lot more doable than population-phobics would have us to believe?

 

[328982]

There are no moral nor practical means of controlling human population growth. Obviously, people are going to unzip their pants and continue mating.

Human fertility is very hard to control, and human populations seem to grow so easily, which is all the more practical reasons why we should grow. People enjoy having powerful reproductive urges, and the proper moral natural outlet for these natural urges, is marriage and reproduction. As human numbers naturally grow, even more people come to feel these powerful reproductive urges.

I love to see people colonize more world, in the movies, but when the manned moon landings may have actually been faked, we might not be colonizing more worlds anytime soon? But we have the obvious option and moral imperative, of populating this world, more human-densely with people, so that the addition billions soon-coming, can somehow fit.

We have no moral or practical imperative to overpopulate the world and thereby cause its destruction.

 

[pronatalist]

We have no moral or practical imperative to overpopulate the world and thereby cause its destruction.

Why do you think that humans are capable of "overpopulating" the world? Why would humans not adapt? Above, I showed a picture of the Star Wars planet Coruscant. Even though it has over a trillion people, it does not appear "overpopulated" to me. What does "overpopulated" mean anyway? No place exists for any more people? Well then, that condition would seem to be caused by population-phobics then, those who oppose the natural growth and spread of human life, and not by pro-lifers.

And your response, ignores rather than answers my argument. First of all, what does me having a typical 6 children, due to many objections to birth control, have to do with an "overpopulated" world? As if all of my children are not important? And then, why should I want to do anything towards preventing or slowing the world from naturally blowing up with people? The highest birthrates occur in Africa? Do I live in Africa? No, I do not. So how will Americans having fewer children, reduce the birthrate in Africa? Why should high birthrates in Africa, bother me? If people in Africa think that their countries can hold a lot more people, well of course they are correct to think that. If more people come, they surely will find or make the room for them?

There are no practical nor moral means to control human population. Thus, if human population soars more and more "out of control," we do have the moral imperative to allow it to happen.

Also, Coruscant does not appear "destroyed" to me. Probably a very nice place to live, although I am not up on my Star Wars lore, as I am much more a Star Trek fan. Of course, fictional places are defined mostly by their imaginative authors. Real places would be defined more by God, the same God who commanded people to Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and to subdue it.

 

[deleted15807]

... Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and to subdue it.

At what point can mankind mark that action item as "complete"?

 

[lafever]

Anything that would reduce mankind's massive death inducing footprint on the planet would be a good thing for the planet. Could capitalism handle a shrinking marketplace? Could humanity ever reach that general consensus and then able to execute it? I have serious doubts.

"The fundamental driving force for humanity is the genital friction that produces more people," she said. "We are 'plague mammals,' and plague mammals multiply fantastically until just before the last generation."

-Lynn Margulis, a professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and an expert on the evolution and structure of human cells.​

When I was more informed about Green politics, the UK Green party used to advocate a sustainable population for the UK at around 40 Million. This would translate to a global population reduction of neatly 7 Billion to 4 Billion.

For those who think that human consumption is destroying the Planet and those who think that Global Capitalism is killing mankind, would you agree that this is a measure that needs to be considered?

Nature has it's own way of bringing about balance, unless the human race combats world hunger and poverty nature will correct this with a new and improved bacterium yersinia pestis which will cleanse the worlds population.

c.

 

[deleted15807]

Nature has it's own way of bringing about balance, unless the human race combats world hunger and poverty nature will correct this with a new and improved bacterium yersinia pestis which will cleanse the worlds population.

c.

World hunger and poverty? Sounds like a prescription for more humans on the planet not less which is exactly what the planet needs. The problem is we will take down a host of other species with us.

www.washingtonpost.com: Earth is on brink of a sixth mass extinction, scientists say, and it’s humans’ fault

 

[tallblondviking]

Yes. If we, humans, don't take matters into hand then Mother Nature will. She won't be subtle or give us time to ease into it.