Ways to deal with overpopulation

[noobium]

I was watching the news a few days back and there was a quick report on world population. This year there will be approximately 7 billion people living on Earth. I did a little research on the projected population growth world wide and found the numbers to be quite disturbing. While I was researching I started pondering about the issue of population control and how society would rationalizes euthanizing humans or restrict certain people from reproducing and even going as far as genetically altering humans to restrict longevity. I'm curious to see everyone's thoughts on this controversial topic and please keep it civil.

 

[Lukeje]

It's not really 7 billion. It's only about 7,000,000,000 people (i.e. seven thousand million). I still don't understand why Americans use the short scale...

But anyway. There's still more than enough food and space to go around, so I don't see what the problem is.

 

[TheIronRuler]

No, no, and again no.
As a secular Humanist, the notion of selective breeding in humans (for example, eugenics) is disgusting and the notion that some deserve to live more than others is plain wrong.
These days a man can live for two lives, two generations - literally, the average age in the western world is somewhere between 65 and 70, which means one could live through two lifetimes and accomplish twice more than his counterpart a century ago.
.
A solution?
Colonize Mars.
.
To tell you the truth, soon the price of food will rise, the availability of food will decrease... You will see bread riots in Seattle in a decade or two. That is how regimes are toppled and people die. A grim future indeed, but a future we cannot avoid.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

There's only one way to fix this problem.


A worldwide Smash Bros Brawl tournament (Metaknight is banned).

The losers don't get to breed.

No need to thank me, the Nobel Prize is enough.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

1. Make euthanasia legal, and where it already is make it easier.

2. Pour money into space exploration.

3. Further promote contraception, especially in developing nations.

4. Retirement-age extreme sports holidays.

 

[Sassafrass]

Inb4 "Kill all the stupid people."

There's only one way to fix this problem.


A worldwide Smash Bros Brawl tournament (Metaknight is banned).

The losers don't get to breed.

No need to thank me, the Nobel Prize is enough.

I support this idea but instead of Smash Bros, we play Halo Achievement PIG/HORSE instead. Because I'm fairly good at that and I'd suck at Smash Bros. XD

 

[Housebroken Lunatic]

Well, there's plenty of nukes just sitting there doing nothing but gathering dust.

So how about we dust a few off and let a computer controlled randomizer software decide where the impacts will be located? Seems fair to me.

 

[smearyllama]

The Birth Lottery system in Larry Niven's Known Space universe seems to work well-
Every family can have two children, but you need to have a license for any more, which is achieved through a lottery.
I

 

[noobium]

A solution?
Colonize Mars.

The colonization and transforming of Mars sounds like an unrealistic. Humans have not even sent a maned spacecraft to Mars but the U.S. is planing to conduct a maned mission to Mars in 2030 I believe

 

[DSK-]

Thermo-nuclear war. That is all.

 

[Jakub324]

KILL THE CHAVS! Seriously, though, I believe in eugenics. You should have to prove you can handle a kid, because it seems to be those who can't who have 20+.

 

[Kayevcee]

Hans Rosling came to talk at my university. He posed the question "how will we feed 9 billion people (the estimated peak of Earth's population in 2050)?" His answer? Easily. We can feed 18 billion people sustainably if we have the will to help impoverished nations to improve their infrastructures and agricultural output.

He has a lot of great talks on the subject, but this one is a personal favourite:

His solution to swelling populations in impoverished countries is to combat the poverty. Basic tech like electricity and washing machines radically increase free time people can have to make money and educate themselves. Better education for girls means they will be able to take jobs and will wait until they are older to have children, hence smaller families (as happened like clockwork across developed countries in the last century).

The question by the end of this century will be: how will we get people to have enough children to sustain our civilisations? Japan and Italy are already struggling, and the rest of western Europe, the UK and US (EDIT: and China- my God does China have a problem looming here) will follow. One region of Russia already has the "Day of Conception" 9 months before their national day with fabulous prizes to be won for women who give birth on schedule.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20730526/ns/world_news-europe/t/baby-car-russians-hold-conception-day/
That's right- everybody gets a half-day off work to go home and shag. Truly ours is a wondrous and golden future.

-Nick

 

[thiosk]

The trick is interstellar travel. You see, rich, developed, lazy societies like us will always need low class, overpopulated people to exploit. Asia is well on its way to development, so soon they will be looking for an undeveloped population to exploit (Africa!). Then, the africans will be developed in time, and who will they exploit?

Aliens! Then we force them to pick alien fruit and send it to us for no payment, so then we don't really have to work OR practice sustainable population control. So support tomorrow's physics today!

 

[Housebroken Lunatic]

And the cold hard fact of the matter is, when a member of a society has outlived their usefulness. They begin to drain it. If they're not contributing, then they're leeching.

Now this very natural fact of life is completely at odds with the collective morality we've created to fit in with our culture. We're smart enough to understand it's an issue. But complex enough to ignore what we understand because of emotional ties etc.

Err, it's not just morals and emotional aspects that perpetuate this situation but a fair bit of logic as well.

Consider the system of pensions. You do know that most people who have pensions actually has a part of their salarey (i.e produced worth) set aside for their pension, right?

In other words, some of the money that is theirs by right is "saved" for their future when they're too old to be productive workers for society. And that's pretty much a bargain between society and it's producers.

I mean, who would work towards producing worth for society if they knew that they'd basically just be tossed aside as "useless biomatter" once they're too old to work? Few people would. Most likely they'd ignore laws and societies and basically only work for themselves and only further their own ends. Tax evasions would be a rampant problem and governments and societies would collapse because pretty much no one is willing to co-operate with societal structures but only work and profit through purely selfish methods. In fact, they wouldn't have much of a choice.

So, by keeping around concepts of pensions and a sort of payed "guarantee" that you'll be provided for when you grow too old to work is a pretty logical strategy from a societal view. It provides all the workers with stability and feeling safe, and thus more willing to work in accordance with the laws of society and thus be willing to contribute some of the worth they produce in taxes.

So it's not just about friends an relatives wanting to "keep the old folks around" for emotional and sentimental reasons. There's a fair degree of logic behind letting old people "leech" off of society when they're too old to work themselves, not to mention the fact that they pretty much PAYED for the right to "leech" off of society by spending several decades of their lives working and through work paying for their pensions.

 

[Dimitriov]

It's not really a problem. Our planet could actually sustain far more humans: the issue is distribution and infrastructure.

 

[Kodachi]

There's still lots of space, meaning there's still lots of room for food. Worst case scenario? Cities get a little denser.

I know of the reports you were reading and it really sickens me that people call this stuff "science". Science is the observation and justification of anomalies within the natural **present** world. It's actually considered quite unprofessional within the scientific community to speculate the future based on current data. Usually it's not even scientists making these predictions which sucks because it inevitably discredits the field once people realize there's really nothing to worry about.

 

[Dimitriov]

The trick is interstellar travel. You see, rich, developed, lazy societies like us will always need low class, overpopulated people to exploit. Asia is well on its way to development, so soon they will be looking for an undeveloped population to exploit (Africa!). Then, the africans will be developed in time, and who will they exploit?

Aliens! Then we force them to pick alien fruit and send it to us for no payment, so then we don't really have to work OR practice sustainable population control. So support tomorrow's physics today!

Actually Asia (especially China) is already exploiting Africa and Madagascar in particular. They joined the Western powers in that club a long time ago... and Japan even longer ago than that.

But I agree that we need to find some extra-terrestrials to enslave, or at least force them to send us their resources so we can employ the aliens in manufacturing and then sell the finished products back to them.

 

[Housebroken Lunatic]

No, no, and again no.
As a secular Humanist, the notion of selective breeding in humans (for example, eugenics) is disgusting and the notion that some deserve to live more than others is plain wrong.

Erm, being a secular humanist doesn't necessarily exclude a positive view of eugenics.

Here's a quick reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_Humanism

"Secular Humanism, alternatively known as Humanism (often with a capital H to distinguish it from other forms of humanism), is a secular philosophy that embraces human reason, ethics, justice, and the search for human fulfillment. It specifically rejects religious dogma, supernaturalism, pseudoscience or superstition as the basis of morality and decision-making."

Eugenics doesn't fall into the category of religious dogma, supernaturalism, pseudoscience or superstition in itself.

Sure, plenty of religious nuts, supernaturalists, pseudoscientists and superstitious people have tried to justify their specific view citing scientifc basis in the eugenics movement.

But the basic premise of eugenics is based in biology.

Now you might choose to reject eugenics as well as these other non-humanist aspects, but there's no reason why one couldn't be a secular humanist AND possess a positive attitude towards eugenics.