Continuing to increase the world population is absolutely nuts.
*I’m not interested in gradual natural declines from whatever factors. 2 max implemented now.
Already happening.
The only thing you need to do to accomplish this faster is educate girls (making women valuable for things other than childbearing), provide access to birth control and family planning education, and reduce child mortality (reducing the inclination to have “spare children” to replace all the ones you know will die).
Bangladesh provides a good example of these factors at play:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.GROW?locations=BD
“World’s population is projected to nearly stop growing by the end of the century”
I already have two and cannot understand why anyone would want anymore…that said, no.
Thats’s just the dumb way to do it, because that’s not how populations work. Educate people and allow them to thrive in society, they will have less children on their own.
I have 1 bio but 6 total from other relationships that I became dad to.
Where am I on your pogrom?
I’m honestly in favor of it. Before everyone jumps down my throat, I’m not saying how China did it was the right way.
But we are barreling towards a very unsustainable future. This century is going to be very dire for these next generations. We simply do not have the resources.
There are some great “hacks” I’ll call them. GMOs, urban farming, etc, but those just treat the symptoms.
I’m not having kids and this is one of the big reasons why. My family thinks I’m crazy but from my point of view I’m just bringing kids into this world to suffer, so if I do that then it’s only for selfish reasons. And with that line of thought I think people who willingly have more than, oh, let’s say 3 kids are selfish.
It’s harsh, but seriously look around. It’s unmaintainable, we can’t keep going at infinite growth.
Not having kids works on an individual level, but without worldwide implementation/cooperation we just continue on and on growing the population. Thus this post.
I mean, bias is a problem, but there’s an even bigger issue. What happens if a couple has a third child? It may not seem like it, but this is a major problem.
Yes, putting this into law would either require the government to pay for mandatory abortions or mandatory sterilization after the second child.
Or some serious financial repercussions. Maybe extra tax that goes towards more support for people with fewer children (or their children).
You get a max of two, after that benefits are split between the number of children?
Then that’s class based bias, rich would simply pay for it while the poor get poorer. It’s a fair thought, but the waters get muddy all the way down
Yeah, the system would have to be changed by miles for this to apply evenly among classes, and by extension, races. Some assurance of equal levels of education, resources, and access to medical care to take care of all roadblocks to having exactly the amount of children you want to have. Edit: and that would mean free (as in uninhibited financially or by laws) access to abortion regardless of situation.
One of many problems unfortunately. How do you decide what to do? Forcibly remove the child? Relocate? Tax them more?
What if it was an accident? How do you prove it was? There’s no way to do it, and another reason it’ll never happen.
However if you have 5 kids and it happens again… Ehhh I’m willing to say that you did not have 6 accidents.
The problem has never been the amount of resources. The problem is distribution of resources is heavily skewed to a few.
If the abundant resources are obtained through unbridled agriculture (deforestation) and excessive amounts of ecosystem-destroying pesticides, maybe they’re not sustainable
And yet the population graph is curving toward a plateau and new generations are so much smaller than previous that many places are more in danger of a rapid drop in population (in a few decades, assuming nothing changes). This is a solved problem: our best bet is to rucsh the developing world toward development
Hard disagree - you’re effectively controlling people’s body autonomy the same way as abortion bans.
Controlling wastefulness, development for the future and education on the other hand- absolutely. Side effect is that better education usually leads to smaller families, and that’s before you also include sex ed and access to contraception.
My primary question is when do the needs of the many vs the needs of the few kick in?
All for body autonomy, but let’s say in the future, we do have food shortages and you know your future kids won’t be able to eat, and let’s say you know they will in fact starve - would you agree that it’s wrong to bring another child into that future?
If so, when is the line drawn? We already say in society that abortion is the moral choice if we know the child is doomed to die because of incurable diseases, does the same thought apply if you know your child will die of starvation?
Now, let’s say that’s happening but you’re the government. And just for this question let’s say the government is actually moral and useful, and basically infallible. I know, will never happen and our government couldn’t be farther from that, but just for the this here they are. As the government they see the problem and see that people having too many babies will cause most babies die of starvation. Is it formal for them to limit the rights of some people to not have more children if it means a larger amount of children will live?
If so, when is that line drawn?
Unfortunately government doesn’t work that way and people are cruel and have bias and so it would never work because it would be implemented in some horrible dystopian way. But I wanted to show my line of thinking, that I’m not someone who wants to be horrible, but in a backwards way to me I think it’s more compassionate
The best answer to that line is what society will accept.
I mean, we already have a way to decide where that line is - supply and demand. In a perfect world people would decide not to have kids because its not financially possible based on the price due to shortages - like you say though that wouldn’t be the case.
With realistic considerations - your support from society ceases at two kids. If you want to have more no govt support.etc. That’s a vote killer as for some reason the governments responsible when you can’t feed your kids, but that’s the best way forward imo.
Agreed. OP is choosing the stick over the carrot. The truth is that increasing education has a direct negative correlation to birth rates, and has like a million bonus side effects too
Well, this will certainly be an unpopular opinion, so at least it matches the community! :-)
The top two responses are opposite - definitely sits right.
I think people shouldn’t have any kids.
All children should be kept secret until adulthood and then have to pretend to have been born before x year. It would build character.
The real right answer
People get children without being a couple.
What even is the definition of a couple and why should that determine the number?
Good point. The obvious, and unpopular, take would probably be per uterus insteadnof per couple, since that is almost completely trackable, unlike paternity.
This is already a tracked statistic. It’s called the fertility rate. Yes, it’s tracked per uterus, and it’s actually been falling precipitously for decades:
That would kill surrogacy for women who can’t carry babies
yeah no, that’s discriminatory
Ooo, do women have the power or are they a commodity valued on ability to have kids. Will this be a boon for feminine rights or a massive step backwards.
I smell a new post
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Great, now I’ve got to go reinstall borderlands
China.
By default I would normally agree with you, but after reading some people’s responses, now I’m not so sure. The internet is still cool in that regard.
Developed nations are seeing declining birth rates. I don’t think we need to do anything.
Every time someone raised the alarm about population growth, some unforeseen innovation made it a non-issue.
We have an absolutely unprecedented population that’s using resources at like 4x sustainable rates and still growing rapidly. Hand waving it away by talking about Malthus is just sticking our heads in the sand.
Yet population explosion is worse than ever. Only some of the developed nations are improving, though they are suffering the delayed effects of old population explosion (boomers).
It’s almost always childless young men saying this.
For a truly contentious opinion I’d love to see a married woman with three kids say it.
No kidding (ha!), I didn’t have kids because i think the entire idea is stupid. So yes, I’d suggest that other people have less also.
I mean, okay let’s break that down.
Young men, okay I’m a man in my late 30s, so throw young out as your argument. Second my wife shares the same thoughts, so, I don’t want to speak to her but maybe the gender side isn’t as important either.
Childless, well yes, my wife and I are both childless because of the massive problems facing the world today, mostly caused by overpopulation. I’d say being childless is more of a logical conclusion to having these thoughts rather than the other way around. It’s also more likely in your assumptions that a married woman with 3 kids would be pro having kids.
I don’t know what you thought you were proving, but to me it’s very logical why childless people are the people who are in favor of people having less children.
It was a flippant throwaway comment. I’m in my 40s, also married and also childless by choice. My partner and I being very similar to you.
I wasn’t proving anything, just making a subtle joke about a parent effectively eliminating one of their children.
Got it, sorry I didn’t not pick up on the joke. I’ve been accused by my parents for being selfish that I don’t want kids and so I take things as “only young dumb people have these opinions” a bit too personally. Appreciate the explanation
Oh no, no need to apologise it was a pretty weak joke… But solidarity, I’ve had that too.
And getting asked “is everything ok?” as if we can’t have kids, rather than chose not to.
And the emotional blackmail about no grandchildren.
I think it really unnerves some folk.
The opinion that childfree people must be young, immature, and selfish is shockingly common.
Having children is a selfish choice as well–people have them because they want them. That’s selfish. It’s not wrong, but it’s not some altruistic deed, either.
At least society is slowly coming around to the idea that having children is a choice and not a requirement.
Children aren’t the problem. Late stage capitalism is. We have the technology and resources to feed everyone in the world but we don’t. Because it’s not profitable.
We reward billionaires more wealth than they could ever spend in their lives. Why? For accidentally being in the right place and time to take advantage of an opportunity. We pretend they’re special, but it really comes down to mostly luck. That wealth could lift humanity out of poverty.
We need to make a new system that rewards people for doing what needs to be done, not for what’s profitable.
Humans are taking up too much land, it’s not just a matter of feeding everyone
Show me your data on that one
Population control just ends up as trying to control marginalised bodies. Stop trying to mess with uteri.
