this could offend...
Mar. 3rd, 2004 11:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dredpiratebunny...so lately ive realized that i have an obsession with population related problems, including the thinning of the gene pool and baby factory women...im seriously thinking that i need to come up with some kind of educational thing that talks about this problem...hell, even china knew what to do when they had a population problem...however, with our government, that kind of thing isnt possible...so this has to be a conscious choice by its citizens.
these are just basic ideas right now, and im not sure how to gather them into some kind of functional treatise, but i think its important. im not usually the soapbox type.
this is going to be kind of like the recycling plan. eventually, we need to think about how many people the future will hold; lets start downsizing now.
point 1.
there is no reason to birth more than one or at the most two children per female. if it is necessary to have more, adopt one that is already here. there is no need for huge families anymore...unless you live on a huge farm and need the help. it is selfish to bring more children into the world, especially if you can not afford it.
point 2.
it bothers me that the government rewards you for having children.
this is mostly a welfare thing (i was a welfare kid...it sucked). if a person has a child, they get money from the government if they cant afford it. so they have another child, and the government pays for that too...and so on. why not reward those who dont have children? they will use less of our country's already depleted resources. and abortion isnt for everyone but lets face it, a one time fee vs. a lifetime of expense.
point 3.
there is only so much land and only so much resources.
eventually we are going to run out because there are way too many of us in existence. if we cut down now, the future could be a little less bleak. if there are less people to help with all that government money out there, maybe the deficit would shrink a bit...i dont know much about how that works though. think of all the daily annoyances from there being huge groups of people in one place. (malls, rush hour, etc.)...and lets face it there is stupidity in large quantities of people. id like to see us as a country smarten up.
i think thats all i have in my head at the moment, but i might come back to this entry often to write down more ideas.
yeah, i know some people are going to not like it...oh well...i just think its important....but im interested in all opinions anyway.
these are just basic ideas right now, and im not sure how to gather them into some kind of functional treatise, but i think its important. im not usually the soapbox type.
this is going to be kind of like the recycling plan. eventually, we need to think about how many people the future will hold; lets start downsizing now.
point 1.
there is no reason to birth more than one or at the most two children per female. if it is necessary to have more, adopt one that is already here. there is no need for huge families anymore...unless you live on a huge farm and need the help. it is selfish to bring more children into the world, especially if you can not afford it.
point 2.
it bothers me that the government rewards you for having children.
this is mostly a welfare thing (i was a welfare kid...it sucked). if a person has a child, they get money from the government if they cant afford it. so they have another child, and the government pays for that too...and so on. why not reward those who dont have children? they will use less of our country's already depleted resources. and abortion isnt for everyone but lets face it, a one time fee vs. a lifetime of expense.
point 3.
there is only so much land and only so much resources.
eventually we are going to run out because there are way too many of us in existence. if we cut down now, the future could be a little less bleak. if there are less people to help with all that government money out there, maybe the deficit would shrink a bit...i dont know much about how that works though. think of all the daily annoyances from there being huge groups of people in one place. (malls, rush hour, etc.)...and lets face it there is stupidity in large quantities of people. id like to see us as a country smarten up.
i think thats all i have in my head at the moment, but i might come back to this entry often to write down more ideas.
yeah, i know some people are going to not like it...oh well...i just think its important....but im interested in all opinions anyway.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-03-04 07:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-03 11:43 pm (UTC)One thing to ponder is resource distribution and population concentration. I'm not saying population growth isn't a problem, because we're at that point where global growth will become exponential. But often overpopulation is seen as such because resources are unevenly distributed or badly managed/wasted, resulting in masses of poverty and the illusion that there's not enough to go around, or because people are heavily concentrated, such as in areas of India or Mexico City. With better resource distribution, resource conservation, and population distribution, overpopulation wouldn't be quite as much of a problem. By resource conservation, I mean renewable farming techniques and fuel and such. One area of resource distribution that some organizations believe is a problem (and I won't even get into personal views here) is military v. social spending of tax dollars.
Also, overpopulation is less of a problem in the United States and other western countries. In fact, birth rates are declining in many western countries. I'm not sure about the US, but I don't think our birth rates are high. Most of US growth is due to immigration, I believe. (You'd have to check those figures, though. I'm not positive.) I think many US economic problems in population come from lack of family planning, particularly among urban poor. Sex education still starts at too late an age, and many places even have "abstinence only" plans, where abstinence is taught in place of safer sex in schools. And, of course, the government funds this. Politicans will clamor on and on about "welfare reform" and never dare voice a word on family planning, which is just plain cowardice. It might seem impossible to some people like you or me that people could honestly not know family planning, but many really don't.
I also cringe a bit when I hear things like the government gives mothers more money for more children. I really think it's more of a "let's make sure the kids survive" vs. a reward for childbirthing. One alternative would be the mother having even less money to feed/house/etc the kids, and the way shelters are filling up and food pantries are being depleted, I'm not sure that removing additional welfare monies would be a good idea. The other alternative, removing children from mothers who can't afford to care from them and placing them in the state systems is a lousy idea too, since that uses up more government money, not to mention places children in a terribly managed, underfunded system. The whole social services area is one where I think better resource distribution would be a good idea. Of course, I'd rather see that money come out of the pockets of khaki-conspiracy corporations than middle-class pockets. ;-P
Anyhoo, just some thoughts. Keep on thinkin'!
no subject
Date: 2004-03-04 07:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-04 01:14 pm (UTC)I made a record about this once (focusing on the wars, which are more dramatically tragic than the subsequent age of decline).
Overpopulation is a problem in other parts of the world, certainly. The Chinese situation is particularly remarkable when you appreciate the horrific scale on which the Chinese perished in the last century at the hands of the Japanese, the Nationalist government, the warlords and worst of all Mao Tse-Tung.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-04 01:18 pm (UTC)Bunnygoth doesn't like to debate, so I won't harangue her, but the ill-distribution of resources doesn't change the fact that there are 5 or 6 times more humans on this planet than I believe it was ever meant to hold. That the number of people is continuing to increase exponentially is something that horrifies me.
The good news is, Bunny's right, the US birth rate is dropping. Our generation and the one just above ours (my brother's 13 years older than me) is marrying much later and thus finding it tricky to have more than one child. Some of them are adopting, but many of them are happy with their one or two children. Let's hope this trend spreads beyond the urban areas and goes global . . .
no subject
Date: 2004-03-04 07:41 pm (UTC)The recent population increase is partly a consequence of better medical care. Arguably, a good proportion of the survival value in such care has been the efficacy of drugs such as antibiotics, and rather more recently, antivirals. Without effective antibiotics, many diseases now curable, are incurable. Antibiotics are a cornerstone in surgery. Remove their effect, and people can die from physical mishaps now considered trivial. A septic ingrown toenail, for example.
Thanks to many decades of extreme overuse and a little thing called evolution, these drugs are now much less effective, and are continuing to dwindle in efficiency. Massive overpopulation will foster the conditions for a rapid spread of new diseases. Barring major improvements in our treatment of disease, we'll see some pretty bad shit in due course.
One of the many limits on the size to which the world population can grow is the availability of energy. Our current stock of fossil fuel is draining. Opinions differ as to how much time we have left, but when we run out, we'll see more bad shit. Wars will be and may already have been fought over the remaining fossil fuels. The economy has little foresight.
The people who lack the foresight to exercise self-discipline with regard to breeding are, in the main, not bright. There's still a continuous evolutionary pressure on us even given the apparent comfort zone of technology. Stupid people die in car accidents, electrocute themselves, run with scissors, poison themselves *inadvertently* with paracetamol, or sit in a fucking compound in Africa and at the behest of an ugly nutter with bad hair, drink Kool Aid laced with cyanide. Or, they deny their children sex education in a context where the wrong approach can kill. Or worse, they deny their children basic medical care like a blood transfusion.
On the face of it, eugenics may be a good idea. Unfortunately, it's more of a political tool than an effective biological one. We may be bright enough to determine which qualities make for a good sheepdog, but we still don't understand human intelligence well enough to direct our own evolution. How many of you believe that IQ is a genuinely effective predictor of the creative potential possessed by any given individual? It's a number, a scalar, used to describe a thing with many facets and probably as many hidden tradeoffs.
I don't have any fundamental moral problem with the idea of eugenics, but I have serious doubts over the potential effectiveness of any application thereof.
On breeding. Every single one of our direct ancestors had at least one child who survived to a marriageable age. I'm sure that a proportion exercised judgement and care in doing so.
This is basic wisdom.
If you think about the problem from the viewpoint of evolutionary strategy, it would benefit less intelligent members of sociaty to have more children. Pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap. It's an ugly thought, but Nature is entirely ruthless, lacking anything with which to ruth. The point that you raise has probably been true for as long as intelligence factored in the survival of our ancestors...
You can't force people to breed according to your definition of wisdom. But, Nature moulds us in unobvious ways. Ultimately, the survivors will be the fittest. The best approach that we can take is to work towards an environment which will reward intelligence and imagination.
As already mentioned, we need energy and resources.
This is why we need a *real* Space Program.