Ahlycks said:
Option 1 would never work because option 2 exists.
pretty much this, we could never practically get to option 1, but hypothetically speaking... *tl;dr at the bottom*
remember the badguy from firefly? if it was possible, i would be him. yes, option 1 is incredibly harsh and downright montrous, and the generation of humanity that would go through it would live in misery and have every reason to hate me, but in the long run, its for the good of humanity as a whole. overpopulation is probably the worst problem humanity faces; a great deal of societies problems stem from there just being too god damn many people. while option 1 is unnecessarily harsh (really, i would just rather devise a way to stabilize earth's population, so that we could DECREASE it over the years instead of keep increasing), option 2 is what we are already doing: following human nature, and by nature humans are still just cavemen; that isnt evolving, thats stagnating, and sooner or later we're gonna start devolving if nothing changes. option 1 is a ridiculously extreme change, but option 2 changes nothing.
i think its important to note that, at least in my opinion, option 1 would just be transitory; no police state like that could ever last, but it wouldnt matter, because as population decreased and political/ social/ economic reforms took effect, there would be less need for control. your friend seems to be describing this as a sudden change, but that would never work; obviously a business regulation here and a 'parental qualification test' there would be accepted by people much less violently than just shoving a totalitarian regime down their throats all at once.
in practice though, option 1; if it didnt suck and die for the obvious reason of being in direct opposition to human nature; would fail anyway. a society built on pure logic is just as bad as the anarchy of pure instinct. even a society of AIs would need some emotional input to their society. an intelligent creature with no emotion is the failed ubermensh; imagine a computer with no one to operate it, we would become nihilists, with no reason to even bother maintaining our society, and it would break down.
that is the beauty of the american system (what is supposed to be anyway, try as they might the founding fathers just couldnt find a solution for the problem of them dying and idiots eventually taking over). it is built on the struggle of government and its people, putting just one aspect in power will fail, and every attempt to find a balance has failed, so the driving principle is to lock both sides in a war of control forever; teetering back and forth to maintain balance on the tightrope, not leaning on one side or trying to have perfect balance continuously. in principle, this would be all the substitute natural selection we need; government gets big brother-ish, we let em know who's letting them stay in power. the people get a bit too rowdy, the government lays the law down. but of course, this still requires some degree of mutual cooperation amongst humanity that does not exist, some common understanding of the system and the balance of power, and if we had that, we wouldnt be discussing this right now, because we would be too busy living in our impossible socialist utopia.
....really, the point where option 1 would work is the point where we no longer need it. its an incredibly restrictive control mechanism trying to work on something that refuses above life and function to be controlled. the entire purpose of government is to compensate for the flaws of human nature to establish some kind of order, but if human nature could be controlled, we wouldnt need to do that.
well, congratulations OP, i think youve just convinced me of the utter futility of government as a concept, and i dont think i need to list the problems of an anarchistic society in the age of nuclear missiles. i guess right where we're at is as good as is gets, depressing as that is. i rescind my earlier comment that overpopulation is our main problem; technology is our main problem; we have power far beyond our ability to responsibly use it. it progresses several orders of magnitude faster than it should; lack of control isnt our issue, our power to control is.
...i think this question is better left unanswered, because im pretty sure im one of those nihilistic computer-men now.
tl;dr
lets chalk it up to 'humans are stupid and therefore any society we make, anarchistic or police state or anywhere inbetween, will also be stupid'.
