Population Control

After spending my time traveling back from the supermarket on a ridiculously overcrowded bus, it just accentuated how Auckland's resources have to be spread too thin. Same for the rest of the world. Supply of food, water, housing etc. is going to be outstripped by demand and something's eventually gotta be done about it, under consequence of some serious problems. New Zealand already struggles with generating enough power to keep up with the demand, and we're only a country of around 4 million. Our welfare system is also incredibly strained because of too many people and no jobs (as is the case in other countries, too).

What do you think about world wide population control? Personally I can see a case for it, but I'm open to criticisms. There are of course going to be issues cropping up. People should have the right to as many children as they want, government interfering in personal lives etc. etc. but there are always going to be positives and negatives to a decision. In this case, for the good of sustainability I think people are just going to have to deal with it.

That's a hard question to answer. China has population control.......don't really want to dabble in that discussion though....lol. Then you have the poorest countries on the planet continuing to have children in the hopes their family lines will somehow survive, due to poverty, disease, etc. There are so many children in foster homes because they never get adopted. (something I wish I would have thought of many years ago before having more of my own naturally) They make it so expensive to adopt that a lot of people just can't afford to do so even if they want to. And yes, then you have the welfare system that's completely out of control. Here in Vegas, there are too many people and not enough jobs either. I think we lead the US in unemployment statistics and home foreclosures.

I don't know if population control is the answer, but I do agree that something's gotta give.

That's a hard question to answer. China has population control.......don't really want to dabble in that discussion though....lol. Then you have the poorest countries on the planet continuing to have children in the hopes their family lines will somehow survive, due to poverty, disease, etc. There are so many children in foster homes because they never get adopted. (something I wish I would have thought of many years ago before having more of my own naturally) They make it so expensive to adopt that a lot of people just can't afford to do so even if they want to. And yes, then you have the welfare system that's completely out of control. Here in Vegas, there are too many people and not enough jobs either. I think we lead the US in unemployment statistics and home foreclosures.

I don't know if population control is the answer, but I do agree that something's gotta give.

Speaking of adoption, in case I never find someone suitable for me in the future, I am planning on adopting a child, just so I won't be lonely living by myself. That and it'd be great to be a parent because I'll be spending my hard-earned cash on someone else besides myself, etc.

Personally, I wouldn't mind there being population control, but at the same time, I'm pretty positive that here in the United States, as far as studies have claimed it to be, a lot of families aren't really having more children. Instead, vice-versa is true. I'm still worried about jobs though, because now that a lot of people are going into college to pursue a better education, there will be more competition in the future. More competition = more education until you reach your desired 'degree'. That's what I'm extremely scared of, because what if I get a decent job, and then once I hit my 40's (as an example), I might feel like I'm not as smart as some of the upcoming IT employees that probably had way more training and knowledge in the field than I do.

I don't think the United States is that bad to be concerned about population, but other countries might.

My personal belief is that people should limit themselves to I would say no more than 4 children. There are many however that should not have kids at all. I have a friend that totally fits the later part. He has no steady income and niether does his wife. They rely on the goodwill of others and their church to get by. They just had a child not long ago and are now about to have another. It really pissed me off when he told me they were having another kid. My first thought was, "wow, really dude. You are having another kid when you cant care for the one you already have? Thats just great." I really feel bad for his kids just because they will grow up in a welfare state because neither of them can seem to do something with their lives.

In many countries in the Western world, population growth is negative. Meaning, the average woman has less than two children. In Europe, especially Scandinavia, there are any number of laws aimed at encouraging women to have babies. Incredible things like two years' paid maternity leave. And still, the women there would rather advance their careers, or enjoy their freedom, and just refuse to have any/more children.

Overpopulation is mostly a problem where people are either ignorant about birth control, forbidden (by their religious leaders) to use it, or too poor to afford it.

The solution is education. The more women have something better to do with their lives than be brood mares, the less overcrowding there will be.

4 children will still cause growth. I say no more than 2.

The solution is education.

I am REALLY tired of hearing this line everywhere.

This is a topic that I can strongly stand on both sides of. Part of me wants family values to remain open and available to individuals to live out their personal dreams without having to concern themselves with bureaucracy. But the other and far more realistic side knows that we cannot support the world with what we have for much longer. Sure the possibilities for alternate living locations exist: Underground, Underwater, Space; but those require far more resources than we can muster at the moment. If we were to get to that point however, we might be able to create semi-self-sufficient societies elsewhere which could handle a portion of our burden. Of course the problem is getting there. In order to do those sorts of very expensive initial ventures, we'll have to make some questionable ethical choices and abandon support of the less fortunate. Then the possibility of unending age for the extremely wealthy(thinking cloning + neural engineering rather than stem cell) is not all that far off as well so that just stacks onto the issue.

Another thing that the US in particular has to take care of if we hope to maintain any global economic stance is a major transit reform. Freeways are all well and good, and have been a part of the American dream for generations, but we need to acknowledge that adding new lanes every two years is not going to solve the problem. We need to start prioritizing on mass transit over the freeway system. I drive about 3 miles on the freeway each day for class one way. During that time, I see on average 12 semi-trucks going my direction. Even when I lived in Minnesota 15 years ago, the running joke was that they only had two seasons: Winter and Road Construction.

Ultimately, I'm afraid that we'll remain in debate of the issue and be at a bureaucratic standstill to the point that civil wars erupt between the haves and the have nots before anything can be done.

If I recall correctly: Growth Rate = [1] (Crude Birth Rate - Crude Death Rate) + [2] (Immigration - Emmigration). In the case of world wide population control, the net migration which is covered in [2] is moot as individuals leaving one portion will be entering the other. Therefore from a world perspective, net migration will always be equivalent to zero. Therefore that leaves [1] which means that we can lower world population by either (a) reducing births and/or (b) increasing deaths. Due to [b] being incredibly controversial due to our current system of morals, see Euthanasia, it seems that the main method of keeping down population growth will be by [a] reducing births as displayed by China's One Child Policy and India's national effort to advertise and distribute contraceptives. The policies have led to mixed responses and discrepancies exist. The following is a snippet blurb from the following NY Times Article.

As the report makes clear, China’s family-planning policies are unevenly applied and replete with exceptions. The rich simply pay the fines levied on those who ignore the restrictions, and some middle-class women have gotten around the rules by traveling overseas to give birth to a second child. Millions of couples refuse to register their newborns with the authorities, although that approach leaves such children ineligible for an array of social benefits, including a free education.

Enacting the proper policy for each country, much less the world is a difficult task as even China has not successfully managed to achieve stability with the administration of their population control.

Another orientation to consider when thinking about demographics is the POET scheme: Population, Organization, Environment, and Technology. In essence, the POET scheme attempts to identify the core problem out of these four options.

For instance, Malthusians believe that population is the major problem. In order to assist the environment, maintain organization, and support technology it is of understanding that the rate of natural increase (births - deaths) should be regulated and reduced from its current value if the other three factors are to improve.

High Techs on the other hand have the belief that humans are innovative individuals and are able to invent new devices such as contraceptives, water purifiers, and alternative fuel sources that will remediate setbacks to the environment and will promote further expansion. I actually find it rather ironic that we can be conscientious of phenomena such as global warming, due to advanced computer systems that may have not been conceived if not for the Industrial Revolution. A period that involved much innovation, but also produced much pollution.

Marxists feel that population, environment, and technology are all false problems. The main problem tends to be organization. When my professor was getting his PhD in Bangor, he stated that the stores always had a refund bottle policy where you would receive a decent amount of money back for returning glass bottles that would be reused by the store after washing them. Then came the advent of plastic bottles as a main form of liquid distribution and glass bottles were phased out. Unfortunately, the refund bottle policy was also phased out along with the glass bottles. The core problem was one of organizational policy. Plastic bottles in and of themselves are indicative of disorganization. The bottle cap is composed of polypropylene which is a type 5 plastic. However, the bottle body is polyethylene terephthalate which is a type 1 plastic as noted on NPR. Due to the fact that there is a 100-degree melting point discrepancy, usually only one type of plastic can be recycled based on market demand. If there is no market demand, then recycling might not simply occur at all, therefore resulting in waste which is a detriment to the population and the environment.

In the end the POET scheme isn't intended to force you to subscribe to any "one belief". On the contrary it is set up to be conceptual so that anyone can try to think of population in terms of broader themes rather than focused examples.

Then you have the poorest countries on the planet continuing to have children in the hopes their family lines will somehow survive, due to poverty, disease, etc.

The funny part is, the speed at which we brought the 3rd world closer to 1st world medical technology and sanitation minimums is kind of dicking us over (vaccination programs, clean water initiatives, etc). Those countries still have the birth rates of a dark ages population. They're trying to have as many kids as possible because so many used to die, and while way too many of those kids still die, it isn't as much as it once was. It took most of the current first world a century or two or three to bring our birth to death ratio down and we brought the 3rd world nearly up to speed in a few decades. Our obsession with personal-professional life helps too, but I always get a kick out of the fact that good medicine is biting us in the ass.

Didn't we just have a thread where some guy was getting upset about a condom and birth control initiative somewhere since the earth could easily support 10 billion+ people? I didn't chime in there but our population vs. resource issue is one of demographics and not numbers. Too many people in the wrong places with too few resources. And resources don't give a pomegranate about geo-political lines. Condoms are a much cheaper solution than fair global redistribution of essentials to life across political and socioeconomic lines. It's not a complete solution, but it works to slow the tide. Even if the birth rate magically matched the death rate per capita tomorrow, we'd still encounter the same resource distribution problems because populations are constantly concentrating toward urban areas and the global standard of living is constantly improving.

It's probably the most all-encompassing challenge of our time, and I think the best method is to take it in little bites. Huge issues arise over things in the political sphere like welfare, jobs (and the issues of how we currently educate people) but I think there's much to be done in other areas that are hard to argue against.

Working to make water desalination as cheap as possible would be huge. There's a lot of ocean out there and we'd use so little of it we'd barely even need to worry about the salt left in the ocean compared to the water taken out. Alternative energy and smarter energy.

I don't know about New Zealand, but the US electrical infrastructure is ancient, creaking and insufficient. The upgrades necessary aren't overwhelmingly divisive but a https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Smart_grid#Deployments_and_deployment_attempts being implemented and proven on a national scale somewhere would be a good step forward. Stuff like the massive east coast blackout a few years back are shameful marks on the state of our infrastructure and would be easily avoided with the benefits of a smart grid. At the very least, we need improved transmission capacity. Regrettably, smart grids are incredibly specific and would be open to obnoxious corporate bullshit (see the deployment section of that wiki page). This specificity is part of what makes the idea so powerful as an energy saving tool.

We need to be a bit kinder in general to the environment. Global warming is a huge related issue, but littler things like the rate at at which we expend underground aquifers across the globe, logging rates, how much salt we're getting into our planting soil and fresh water supplies, and utterly ridiculous disasters like the BP spill are all controllable and/or avoidable.

We need to keep engineering better crops across the world. More drought resistant, more temperature resistant, better nutrition, faster growth times, need less water to grow- you name it, we can probably bio-engineer it.

We have to rethink how we build and expand cities. Suburban sprawl is tremendously wasteful but at the same time increasing the density of our urban centers and keeping them properly supplied is an equally challenging nightmare. I honestly don't know what to consider in this department, but little things like urban farming on abandoned lots in Detroit always catch my attention.

We do need to get off oil at some point. Dramatically reduce our usage of it at least. Or from the other foot, we need to dramatically improve our technology for finding new oil wells and get to them as cheaply as possible. Alternative energy never hurts.

All these little problems contributing to the challenge of "how do we support a global and growing population" have solutions or at least means of relieving the symptoms. The easy ones just need a brief moment of political attention and some money - in many cases a not-so-horrendous sum assuming we stopped doing silly pomegranate like start wars. The harder ones are generally more directly intertwined with people and politics and may never be dealt with without political or personal sacrifice. Sadly, we've slid into this world of the "news cycle" when this is a generational problem that will need to be chipped away at for years and decades and it's hard enough to get the world to act together as a planetary collection of humans short of a Haiti earthquake or a tsunami, let alone try to keep a minimum of attention and resources directed to keeping humanity kicking for centuries to come without erupting into a World War III blood bath over resources. (On a dark note, WWIII is one "solution" to having too many people on the planet)

Wyoming could use some more people.

7 billion in a few years. Yikes. How much are people stretching it?

I am REALLY tired of hearing this line everywhere.

I couldn't agree more with you there. It pisses me off.

Speaking of adoption, in case I never find someone suitable for me in the future, I am planning on adopting a child, just so I won't be lonely living by myself. That and it'd be great to be a parent because I'll be spending my hard-earned cash on someone else besides myself, etc.

Good luck with that. You most likely will not be adopting anyone unless you have a partner. You might have had a chance if you were a woman, but if you're male then they really would give you a hard time trying to adopt as a single parent. Most adoption agencies want the children to enter loving families. Unless a relative of yours leaves behind some kids that need legal guardians, your chances of getting a kid to help you prevent living alone are really slim. You'd have a better chance getting an unfit mother pregnant and trying to claim custody of the child. And trust me, even then your chances aren't so good since family courts usually give custody to the mother in most cases, unless the mother has obvious problems that are serious (drug abuse, abusive parenting, etc.)

I couldn't agree more with you there. It pisses me off.

It's the solution when you're considering run-away sex issues.

It's probably quite the opposite when dealing with resources that exist mostly because of faith, such as welfare and charity.

I am REALLY tired of hearing this line everywhere.

What she's saying is the truth though. Take a look at Japan for example. Women have a role there and they don't have as many children. Less children means a lower population growth, and Japan is experiencing a negative population growth due to this.

It's the solution when you're considering run-away sex issues.

It's probably quite the opposite when dealing with resources that exist mostly because of faith, such as welfare and charity.

Seems you're all misunderstanding me, which means I haven't spoken clearly enough.
I don't mean educating people about birth control, or about the environment.
I mean education, period. Maybe I should have used the word "schooling"?

Somehow, mysteriously, in countries where practically the entire population has at least 12 years of schooling, people don't have too many children. In many of them, people actually have too few children, and the population is aging at an alarming rate. 40 years from now there will be way too few people of "working age" there, and way too many "elderly".

In my own country it has been shown, statistically, that there is an inverse relationship between a woman's level of schooling and the number of children she has. The daughters of families that immigrated here from Africa and Asia, and got the benefit of mandatory schooling to age 16 and easily accessible higher education, had far fewer children than their mothers, who often had no more than a grade-school education. Same with the daughters of families who have lived in the same area for generations (mostly Arab and Druze), so one can't say it's the effect of immigration.

I'm going to say it again: if women have better things to do with their lives than be brood mares, they will *choose* to have fewer children. No need for draconic laws and questionable morals. Even religion can only go so far in forbidding birth control. I know quite a few devout Catholics who manage to only have 2 or 3 children.
(As an aside, seems our polluted environment and high-tech lifestyle is helping, by reducing the fertility of both men and women).

Other than saying you are tired of hearing this line, please explain to me why it wouldn't work?

If you give a role to women on the work field, population also decreases.

What do you think about my country then ?
Singapore
Area
Total : 710.2 km-2 (274.2 sq mi)
Water (%) 1.444
Population (2010 figures)
5 million (est)
Density: 7,022km-2 (17,275.7/sq m)

New Zealand
Area
Total :268,021 km-2 (103,483 sq mi)
Water (%) 2.1
Population(2010)
total: 4 million (est)
Density :16.1km-2 (41.6/sq m)

There was a famous life boat example of this that I read about in Philosophy.

Let's say a life boat has a capacity of 60 maximum, 50 to be comfortable. Let's say 200 people exist, 50 are on the boat, 150 in the water drowning.

We could try to support 10 more and be good people, but then we really have no extra room at all.

We could be the great people we all are so kind and caring, and fit all 200 people on the boat, but then everyone dies.

And...Yeah logically you shouldn't help anyone out. (I'm speaking about the entire world here, and individual people representing countries.)

I am for population control in countries that can't afford to take care of themselves. Let's say we just help those countries out by making a world food bank to feed all countries so no one starves. Then a country has no initiative to help itself, it will just let the food bank take care of it.

If the country takes the initiative to control their population then sure, I'm willing to try to help them out.

I may sound scattered because I have to study for a Bio Lab quiz and I need to study but I'm here reading your comments, but the bottom line is yes to population control for countries that expect help. If your country is well off like the USA and you personally can afford to have more kids, then go for it.

To be honest it's situations like this that means we should abandon the whole controversy with abortion. It's an application of technology that does exist and should be used for those who want it and in some ways should be seen as protecting and maintaining future population growth. If you're pregnant and want your kid that's fine but you should still exercise good family planning.

To be honest it's situations like this that means we should abandon the whole controversy with abortion. It's an application of technology that does exist and should be used for those who want it and in some ways should be seen as protecting and maintaining future population growth. If you're pregnant and want your kid that's fine but you should still exercise good family planning.

Come to France, abortion is legal.
But yeah, distributing condoms and information for population control is about the same as basic sanitary mesures were for medicine. Cheap and general way of dealing with the problem with great results.