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

[kyrax12]

Can oil last us through 2050 at this rate?

 

[tynopik]

false premise

far more worrying is the plummeting birth rate that will lead to an aging population and destroy all social benefit models

 

[Ns1]

false premise

far more worrying is the plummeting birth rate that will lead to an aging population and destroy all social benefit models

so what you're saying is the social benefit model is broken.

 

[Oyeve]

"Oops, we launched several nukes by accident!"

 

[SphinxnihpS]

Human-initiated/caused?

Mass starvation due to actual limited resources, due to population growth (as opposed to non-human initiated drought, flooding, etc.) is the only plausible answer I can come up with.

Morality doesn't even matter. In WWII the NAZIs (fuck you dictionary, Nazi is not a fucking word!!!) were killing people at the rate limit of killing people and they didn't even dent the global population, and that doesn't even include actual war casualties. They didn't even dent the replacement rate. Outright mass murder will not work.

Man-made biological pathogens will all hit a saturation rate that will also not significantly slow population expansion. Even the Soviet-invented combination of Smallpox and Legionaire's Disease would not do the trick. There is also the same problem here as with nukes, what's left sucks.

 

[MetalMat]

Can oil last us through 2050 at this rate?

There are plenty of untapped oil reserves but it will get more and more costly to tap into it (including oil shale) thus driving prices of everything up.

I really wish there was some way we could move away from using oil as energy. Sure it is easy and great for that, but oil has so many valuable other uses outside of just being burned as an energy source.

 

[KLin]

global thermonuclear war


"Shall we play a game?"

 

[Ns1]

global thermonuclear war


"Shall we play a game?"

no rush gg k? huk ^_^

 

[KLin]

no rush gg k? huk ^_^

Please go watch Wargames.

 

[tynopik]

so what you're saying is the social benefit model is broken.

it soon will be if birth rates keep dropping

there's a limit to how many non-workers each worker can support

 

[sandorski]

Allow right to die & assisted suicide.

Kill off the weak at birth.

I could beat any Newborn in arm wrestling.

 

[yuchai]

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

No, a higher population (and growing one) is highly beneficial for your economy, until you hit the ultimate barrier of running out of resources.

 

[wirednuts]

eliminating welfare would work. it would also cause crime to shoot through the roof

i would just give more incentive money wise for people to not have kids. because as it is now, in america, its actually profitable for people to have kids as long as they dont have high paying jobs.

 

[wirednuts]

No, a higher population (and growing one) is highly beneficial for your economy, until you hit the ultimate barrier of running out of resources.

were also going to have to fight china someday, and we would like to better that 10:1 advantage they have in just numbers.

 

[yuchai]

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.

Right, but no country wants a shrinking economy and lower living standards. So the only realistic approach is to grow your population and economy/power and try to get more than your fair share of resources from others to keep it growing. Obviously not sustainable on a global scale, but there's no way out of it.

 

[SMOGZINN]

As for oil, its just a matter of decades until oil is replaced with something better.

That is pretty doubtful. We don't even know of anything that can theoretically replace oil, so it is going to take a bit longer then a few decades.

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.

Once you have a resource crunch it is already too late, the world is over-populated. At that point we have a war over the control of the remaining resources. This could be a lot closer then we think. It does not necessarily take an increase in population, but a sudden increase in consumption by India or China to do this. This could well happen in the next decade.

were also going to have to fight china someday, and we would like to better that 10:1 advantage they have in just numbers.

But, we will never fight either of those countries in a land war. They simply could not field a effective army, and we would not want to. Such wars will be fought in the air and the sea. It will be about stopping the movement of the resources more then anything.

 

[SMOGZINN]

To the topic on hand, how to ethically combat population growth.

First you have a massive propaganda campaign. Every TV features 1 and 2 child families that are wealthy, happy, and fulfilled, while 3 and larger families are poor, over worked, and generally unhappy. You have infotainment campaigns on how safe and effective birth control is. You have magazines, talk shows, and popular music all giving a message that women are more likely to put out for men that have been sterilized. You get the message out that using birth control is normal, and doing it with out protection is weird and dangerous. You directly combat the opposing forces. Catholic Church says that birth control is morally wrong, then you attack the Catholic church with propaganda about how often they are wrong on such issues.

Second you follow this up by heavily subsisting both birth control and birth control research. Make it profitable for companies, so they get in on the game. They will then do a good portion of your work.

 

[Spungo]

Kill the minorities.

Err...

You suck at math. Killing minorities means killing a minority of the population.

That is pretty doubtful. We don't even know of anything that can theoretically replace oil, so it is going to take a bit longer then a few decades.

Never underestimate the power of Big Government. People said we couldn't fly. People said we couldn't land on the moon. People said we couldn't build an underwater tunnel connecting UK and France. People said trains can't go 200mph.

Solving the energy problem is easy but very expensive. All we need to do is put tighter regulations on things, jack the taxes up really high, use that tax money to provide tax credits to upgrade old structures. This was done in the 1970s. There was a tax credit to add more insulation to houses.

Our policies will naturally go in that direction when it makes financial sense to do it. Don't worry about it so much.
Also I'm not seeing this "food shortage" people are talking about. Obesity rates are going up in every country.

 

[BladeVenom]

Yea, mandatory birth control until you apply for a breeding permit.

Every girl gets an IUD for her 13th birthday?

 

[PieIsAwesome]

false premise

far more worrying is the plummeting birth rate that will lead to an aging population and destroy all social benefit models

Yep. We need to worry about how to get rid of all these old people. Hurry up and die.

 

[SMOGZINN]

Never underestimate the power of Big Government.

I'm not sure we can spend our way out of this problem. It is not just that oil is cheap, it is that our energy demands can't be met by anything else.

People said we couldn't fly.

And the solution required lots of oil.

People said we couldn't land on the moon.

And the solution required lots of oil.

People said we couldn't build an underwater tunnel connecting UK and France.

And the solution required lots of oil.

People said trains can't go 200mph.

All of that was made possible by large industrial equipment that can't possibly work with out the very high energy density stored in oil.

Solving the energy problem is easy but very expensive. All we need to do is put tighter regulations on things, jack the taxes up really high, use that tax money to provide tax credits to upgrade old structures. This was done in the 1970s. There was a tax credit to add more insulation to houses.

What you are talking about is massive reduction in the quality of our lifestyle. No amount of structure upgrades are going to get past the fact that the next best technology has only a few percent of the energy density of oil.

 

[lyssword]

whole fucking asia is gender-imbalanced. This will lead to huge crime waves in a decade or two since they started using sonograms.. Kind of like Wild West, too many men and not enough women will lead to chaos.

 

[SMOGZINN]

whole fucking asia is gender-imbalanced. This will lead to huge crime waves in a decade or two since they started using sonograms.. Kind of like Wild West, too many men and not enough women will lead to chaos.

I'm not as worried about a crime wave as I am China being a pragmatic nation.

They are going to have a large and increasingly discontent largely male population. This is the sort of discontent that can lead to people opposing the government, so the Chinese governmental is going to want to focus that discontentment elsewhere, and a good land war could solve the entire problem. Kill off a bunch of young discontent men, and give them something other then the Chinese government to be discontent with.
India better be looking over their shoulder, they are the logical choice for that war.

 

[Baked]

Mandatory IQ exams. Anybody under a certain limit (maybe like 100) should be sterilized. Also if you go unemployed after the age of 18 (if you never attended college or some type of school) for more than xyz years, then sterilize.

Stupid, then you'll just be left with ugly people. I don't know about you, but I have standards.

 

[KeithP]

I been thinking about this and by 2050 the Earth will most likely be depleted of most of its natural resources.

Wrong. So were done now correct?

-KeithP