Are there any morally right ways to slow "overpopulation"?

[spacejamz]

 

[mvbighead]

One child per marriage actually reduces the population by my highly sophisticated calculations. Seems like two should be ok.

Beat me to it:

Actually, when you think about it, you only need limit child birth to two children. One child for each parent. Growth stops. Having one child would result in population contraction, if it were to be followed strictly.

Enhanced sex education would stop some growth. Provide free condoms another. Provide free sterilization, and encourage it with some sort of tax credit. Any number of things really.

To me, the reality of this terrible situation is that a good amount of the population expansion is not from families that can afford it, but families that can't. There are exceptions, obviously, but it just seems like people that have a greater amount of kids are less educated, and have less meaningful income. I know someone who has four children, of which he now has custody of none, as he does not have the means to support them, nor does his wife. Neither parent is educated, and neither parent has a job that is more meaningful than a cashier at Taco Bell, yet they have four kids.

The simple truth is that it is easier to have a kid than it is to adopt a puppy from the humane society. They have restrictions on who can and cannot adopt an animal. Any person can create life with another person (of the opposite sex of course), and there isn't a single form you have to fill out to do it.

My suggestion would be to offer free snipping and a tax credit to those that get snipped. Want to be on welfare? You gotta get snipped. If you're a female, you have to take birth control. If you have another child, your welfare will be terminated.

That might not be fair, but neither is an honest family limiting themselves to two children because that's all they feel they can afford, when another family has four or five children and is largely supported by the government. Case in point, my wife and I are likely going to have two children at the most because it is more financially feasible than three or four. Our home should be a much better environment for our kids than that of the guy I mentioned earlier. It's really ridiculous when you sit back and think about it. Good parents have fewer kids because they realize their financial limits, but yet support others (who don't realize their financial limits) by way of taxes.

 

[mvbighead]

An average of 2 would reduce your population over time as not all will be able to produce offspring of their own (death before reproductive age, infertiliy, etc)

A reduction in population wouldn't be a terrible thing. But limiting it to two children per family would provide a more consistent, and gradual reduction in population.

The limit of one referred to earlier would only shrink the population to a greater degree. The point is, the growth must be limited. A limit of 1 would cause a pretty drastic drop in population over a shorter time period than a limit of 2, obviously.

 

[MontyAC]

The world is getting too heavy:

 

[Druidx]

Support same sex marriages.

 

[Texashiker]

I think we should stop all childhood vaccines except polio and hepatitis and let nature run its course.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Bring up the standard of living worldwide so that survivability of children is high and so that the population are not sustenance farmers where more children = more workers for the farm.

Population growth due to people having 100 kids is very low in parts of the world with higher standards of living as the costs associated with caring for the children keeps family size in check.

Of course this won't slow things down right away, it will take at least a generation or two before people catch on.


Otherwise, since Morality can often be interpreted different ways, depending upon how warped your mindset is, you could do all sorts of really really evil things claiming it's moral. Pretty much every "holy war" since the beginning of time was fought as a "we are morally right, they are morally wrong" war.... that keeps population in check, though sometimes after the war there's a boom, if the population gets truly annihilated, it won't be enough to overcome the losses.

That said, depending upon what happens with global climates, I think the earth can sustain 20-30 billion people pretty reasonably. And while we always hear about peak oil and running out of resources, we have TONS of natural gas and coal, and we have a lot more oil than what we know about. And we have a lot of "more expensive" oil that we DO know about.

 

[yuchai]

A reduction in population wouldn't be a terrible thing. But limiting it to two children per family would provide a more consistent, and gradual reduction in population.

The limit of one referred to earlier would only shrink the population to a greater degree. The point is, the growth must be limited. A limit of 1 would cause a pretty drastic drop in population over a shorter time period than a limit of 2, obviously.

Realistically though having a declining population IS a terrible thing. Just think about the impact on the economy for instance. You can't increase productivity forever so at some point your economy will be on a perpetual decline.

A decreasing population also means an aging population. This wreaks havoc on entitlement programs (think SS, Medicare where working people pay for the benefits of beneficiaries)

I'm sure there are a whole host of other issues that I'm not thinking of as well...

 

[MrColin]

Voluntary walk-in euthanasia clinics in every city. Incentivised voluntary sterilization. Progressive child taxation. Ramping up the media/cultural forces that already make opposite-sex pair bonding so unappealing. Make child-bearing a privilege to be earned, instead of a right that can be exercised by accident.

 

[airdata]

Just put flouride in their water and pump their food supply full of toxins and hormones... it'll work itself out eventually.

 

[kyrax12]

Realistically though having a declining population IS a terrible thing. Just think about the impact on the economy for instance. You can't increase productivity forever so at some point your economy will be on a perpetual decline.

A decreasing population also means an aging population. This wreaks havoc on entitlement programs (think SS, Medicare where working people pay for the benefits of beneficiaries)

I'm sure there are a whole host of other issues that I'm not thinking of as well...

I thought having a lower population would be better for the economy.

 

[Ns1]

education for women is the only way.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I say have decent incentives for having only one child, but as soon as you have more than one you have no incentives at all. Only issue is people would just give birth to their second, third, fourth etc at home and not get them registered. That would cause all sorts of other issues like bad numbers on the census. So there would have to be a way around this, without impeding on privacy. Can't just start tracking people to see if they are brining more than one kid for a walk.

They should also remove the lawsuit concept completely out of the law, and lift all the stupid warnings off products. If people are stupid enough to use a blow dryer in the shower or think a superman costume makes them fly, let them die off naturally. If they were in nature and were this stupid, they'd be dead a long time ago.

 

[amish]

limit all households to two children. if there is an additional child he will be dubbed "Thirdy" and slowly driven into a psycopathic state where he annihilates an alien race giving us another world to populate. rinse and repeat ever millennia or so.

 

[soulcougher73]

Tax penelties for having kids? The more you have the more you pay?

 

[MetalMat]

How about the media stops giving people like the Octomom attention, along with having people who like those "teen pregnant" tv shows get their head checked.

 

[_Rick_]

Realistically though having a declining population IS a terrible thing. Just think about the impact on the economy for instance. You can't increase productivity forever so at some point your economy will be on a perpetual decline.

The economy cannot grow forever.
I'm not sure when we came to accept that myth, but it's broken.
Sustainability requires a shrinking economy and lower living standards, otherwise we will quite simply exhaust the natural resources at some point and end up with a war for those resources and a global crisis, which will make the hardship of sustainability appear trivial.

It's not a matter of if, but a matter of when, if capitalism can't be made to believe that growth is not infinite.

 

[SaDiZTiKStyLeZ]

Allow right to die & assisted suicide.

Kill off the weak at birth.

 

[Ns1]

Allow right to die & assisted suicide.

this should be so obvious it hurts.

 

[zokudu]

The incentives for single/2 children really is the best option. Every other opton listed here is fucking stupid.

 

[Aikouka]

Bring up the standard of living worldwide so that survivability of children is high and so that the population are not sustenance farmers where more children = more workers for the farm.

Population growth due to people having 100 kids is very low in parts of the world with higher standards of living as the costs associated with caring for the children keeps family size in check.

I don't know how possible this would be, but I agree with you. Awhile back, I was pondering whether medicinal advances were causing population problems. My thought was that our own mortality was a huge population check, and that's somewhat true. If you look at population numbers prior to 1920 or so, they weren't that high and the growth rate was pretty modest. If you check the numbers on deaths among children or even people below the age of 20, it's significantly higher than today. Since then, it isn't hard to see how the population numbers have skyrocketed.

However, I recall hearing in the past how Japan was (and possibly still is?) having problems because their death rate is higher than their birth rate. This made me look into the US's own growth rate, and honestly... it isn't that bad. If I remember correctly, Africa is the continent with the highest growth rate by far. This probably isn't much of a surprise. Is it probable to state that this is partly to due with our own intervention in these countries? The developed nations have been providing aid in the form of medication (and other things) to the poorer nations for awhile now, and it certainly helps their mortality rate. However, has their birth rate slowed to accomodate the lowered perceived need to have children?

I don't recall that being the case.

It's kind of an odd thought, but we've had such an odd effect on nature's typical cycle for creatures. I mean... how many animals specifically avoid their mating season because they don't want offspring? We certainly take part in "the ritual" but avoid actual impregnation simply because we don't need more children or actively choose to not want children. As much as some people would have you think that we're a lot more, humans are really just rather intellectually advanced animals. In the past, when a female could bear a child, she was considered of age to do so. Chris Hansen will tell you that is not the case these days.

It's definitely interesting to look at how we've changed from our more "animalistic" nature.

 

[The Green Bean]

There won't be over-population. The moment resources start dwindling, people will stop having so many babies (provided they are educated). Raising a child will be too expensive.

 

[gevorg]

FEMA already has plans for overpopulation problem.

On a serious note, overpopulation is mostly a problem for China and India, who account for almost half of the world's population, while being overall undeveloped. As for oil, its just a matter of decades until oil is replaced with something better.

 

[Juddog]

Solution is simple. Put a cap on how many kids people can have. Each person gets to have one kid, after that you're sterilized (both man and woman). The population will simply gradually dwindle down to a sustainable level.

 

[Ns1]

Solution is simple. Put a cap on how many kids people can have. Each person gets to have one kid, after that you're sterilized (both man and woman). The population will simply gradually dwindle down to a sustainable level.

see: china old child policy and related issues