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A crazy solution to the world population problem

Locut0s

Locut0s

Lifer
So this isn't serious, just something that occured to me out of the blue today. This is undoubtedly morally wrong and not something that you could ever actually do but it is an interesting thought experiment. What it is is a solution to the world's problem of overpopulation.

The solution? Engineer a virus that randomly sterilizes a random sampling of the world's population. The virus would be engineered so that it had absolutely no other impact on the affected person other than making them sterile or infertile. No side effects whatsoever. The virus would be readily transmissible either through the air or like AIDS via sex and blood. You would have to make sure that the number of people it sterilized was high enough that it made an impact on the world's population but not so high that you needed to have a high replacement rate to maintain a reasonably large population. Also you would have to make sure that the targeting was 100% random and didn't favour any one genetic type over another.

Any individual infected with said virus would probably feel it extremely unfair and cruel but when you look at it from a global perspective over time it has some merits.
 
Silly... Very silly.

Why should people in the US, which does not have population problem be punished because of other parts of the world that do have population problem?

Also, why should somebody like me - that is likely to have no more than 2-3 kids, be punished over action of people who have 10+ kids?
 
Argo said:
Why should people in the US, which does not have population problem be punished because of other parts of the world that do have population problem?
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Woah Woah Woah where do you get this is going to happen over here??? Only places this should happen is Asia, Africa, South America, and the ghettos in all the world.
 
You people seriously don't think we have population issues in the USA? You guys must live in Montana or something...
 
Also, seems very dangerous. Make the virus just 1% too aggressive, and you would cause population decline and extinction 🙂
 
Or a way to get rich (and possibly a terrorist) give everyone the virus and have it be 100% effective without the cure and sell the cure for $10.

Disease + remedy = profit. Or we could just make the t-virus and release it in certain places.
 
Argo said:
Silly... Very silly.

Why should people in the US, which does not have population problem be punished because of other parts of the world that do have population problem?

Also, why should somebody like me - that is likely to have no more than 2-3 kids, be punished over action of people who have 10+ kids?
Click to expand...

Because the US is also overpopulated. Not to the degree of China of course but 300+ million is a heck of a lot of people especially at that standard of living. The world can only really sustain a small fraction of it's current population at US standards of living. And also because the idea is to avoid the politically sensitive issue of targeting any one race, country or people which would probably lead to unrest and wars. Countries that are adversely affected by the virus more than others could simply enact more lenient emigration laws to bring more people in that way.

Again I'm not being really serious about this.
 
Why would you RANDOMLY sterilize people? I mean honestly if you're going to do this, you might as well define some sort of benchmark for "should/should not reproduce" and sterilize people who don't pass.

I mean if you believe that forced sterilization is immoral & you're going to do it anyway, you might as well do it in a way that's maximally beneficial. Wtf is this trying to be "fair" when you're already fucking sterilizing people?!
 
Soccerman06 said:
Or a way to get rich (and possibly a terrorist) give everyone the virus and have it be 100% effective without the cure and sell the cure for $10.

Disease + remedy = profit. Or we could just make the t-virus and release it in certain places.
Click to expand...

The Feds would just take it away from you.
 
You could just raise the overall socioeconomic status, since childbirth rates are generally inversely proportional to GDP per capital.

Or is it just that the United States is more willing to spend the money making a weapon than actually helping people?
 
RocksteadyDotNet said:
This.

You would just need to engineer the virus so it doesnt affect whites.
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But then it would miss Mormons and Catholics...two groups seriously in need of such a virus.😛


Locut0s said:
Because the US is also overpopulated. Not to the degree of China of course but 300+ million is a heck of a lot of people especially at that standard of living. The world can only really sustain a small fraction of it's current population at US standards of living. And also because the idea is to avoid the politically sensitive issue of targeting any one race, country or people which would probably lead to unrest and wars. Countries that are adversely affected by the virus more than others could simply enact more lenient emigration laws to bring more people in that way.

Again I'm not being really serious about this.
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Then, the US could simply enact more stringent immigration laws...and kick out all non-citizens and any anchor babies they've had while living here. (although, I suppose, since the anchor babies are legally citizens, we couldn't make them leave...only their parents/non-citizen siblings. Hell, we could seriously reduce the US population with that...🙄
 
lxskllr said:
You people seriously don't think we have population issues in the USA? You guys must live in Montana or something...
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You must think that waiting in Los Angeles rush hour for a couple of hours is a "population issue". Please, I implore you to make your own personal contribution to reducing over-population wherever you live.
 
I'm surprised by how often I need to say this in Off Topic, but there is no world population problem.

There is a problem of corrupt governments and wealth distribution.
As long as there isn't free land and resources for everyone (no matter the population size), we'll have starvation and poverty.

The poorest countries in the world - mostly African and Asian nations - do have resources and support, it's just most of the wealth ends up in the hands of war lords, corrupt politicans, and greedy businessmen, and the poor don't have the power to raise themselves up (or not very easily).

Knock down the population of the earth to 250 million, and we'd still have the same problems. Given even just 25 million, I'm betting with current technology we'd still have large scale wars between the nations of the earth.
 
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Be careful what you wish for, for you might get it.

"The 12 percent of the world’s population that lives in North America and Western Europe accounts for 60 percent of private consumption spending, while the one-third living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa accounts for only 3.2 percent. "

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/810

If anything it is North American and Western European population that has to be turned into fertiliser.
 
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end food aid
massively subsidize american farmers so they are incentivized to not grow much food at all, only enough for america. this raises food prices around the world and will depress population. it will make americans thinner as well.
job done.
 
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