Ways to deal with overpopulation

[Zack1501]

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.

I can tell your joking but I'm going to be a buzz kill and reply seriously anyway.

This would not help at all. all the nuked land would be full of radiation. The land would be useless for a loong time.

 

[Mandalore_15]

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.

Because the old-school British billion is a nearly useless figure? It only ever gets used when calculating America's debt (guffaw)...

 

[winginson]

2) No child benefit after the first. So if you can't afford it, you can't have it.

Here's the issue with this one, why do the rich deserve children, while the poor don't?

Everbody gets one kid, after that you have to be able to support them on your own. So they still get to have one kid.

Also richer people (not the super-rich) tend to be very busy and may not want any, further reducing the numbers.

 

[Mafoobula]

tl;dr, didn't read a damn thing.
Some humans are really really smart. They'll come up with ways to feed everyone.
Hell, there was a guy who saved hundreds of millions of lives by producing a strain of wheat that could grow in places like Africa. Strong wheat = flour = food = lives saved.
And we really do have more land available than you'd believe. For all the expansion going on in the States, the entire population of Europe could be picked up and dropped into the US and we Americans would barely notice the influx. This is all without talking about the larger countries like Canada or Australia.

 

[SD-Fiend]

Do what China does to some extent. Only two kids per parents. That way we drastically reduce the birthrates without eliminating anyone.

but... doesn't china still have tons of people?

That's because of the size. And because almost everyone has two children there, at least two children. But here in the western world people don't think as much about keeping the family alive and making long lasting workers. I'm saying cap it at two for people that want children, and then everyone else that doesn't want to have a child can just go about their daily lives.

that still doesn't seem like it would work at all

Please do elaborate as to why it would not work.

well for that to work a significant amount of people would have to not have kids for there to be any noticeable decline in population density.

 

[RanD00M]

well for that to work a significant amount of people would have to not have kids for there to be any noticeable decline in population density.

Well less and less people seem to be having children nowadays. My suggestion is not a quick fix, but something to roll around for years to come.

 

[kebab4you]

If it really came down to it, sterilize most of the population and as such we would go back a bit. This is of course only a quick fix and would need to do these kind of fixes every now and then to keep the population down.

 

[Kolby Jack]

About a third of the world's population lives in Asia, mostly China and India. Overpopulation is an immediate problem for them, sure. But Europe, America, Australia and Africa have plenty of room to grow for now, though for the Aussies I guess it's a bit tougher to move out from the major cities because 99% of everything in Australia will eviscerate/poison/lay eggs in you if you so much as look at it.

In the current market, America can't support more people. We've already got a fast-growing poverty rate and our middle class is shrinking as the rich become richer and the not-rich become poorer, compounded by the lack of available jobs with which to support ourselves. We need to cut back on population growth until our economy can adjust to the growing rate of globalization and the new market challenges it's bringing (that we're failing to cope with)

But we are. It's already a known fact the in America coupes are having less and less kids.

 

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

Leave all of this species altering science crap out of the picture. That would lead to our extenction. The poor die young, rich live forever... That sounds like a movie that I saw a trailer for a few months ago...

"The last remedy for all is war..." Death everywhere, cultrual genocide, if we don't find a way to colonize space, then we likely die as a near-whole.

 

[blankedboy]

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...

...

Is that a joke, or am I missing something here :s

 

[AngryMongoose]

STOP FUCKING LIKE RABBITS!

Seriously. What is wrong with people?

Hell, it's not like we don't have systems to let you continue that and not destroy the planet. Just pick your favourite. You cannot justify having more than two children, considering they all survive these days, and that many children is irritating anyway.

 

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

STOP FUCKING LIKE RABBITS!

Seriously. What is wrong with people?

Hell, it's not like we don't have systems to let you continue that and not destroy the planet. Just pick your favourite. You cannot justify having more than two children, considering they all survive these days, and that many children is irritating anyway.

The thing is, we don't.

It is only natural for people to want to have 1-3 children. Yeah, some people have a mass amount of kids, but still.
The problem is the world can't find a good enough way to kill us.

 

[BonsaiK]

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.

Oh great. This topic again. Can't count how many times I've refuted the overpopulation myth on these forums yet it keeps coming up like a bad smell that just won't go away.

I'd link to one of my many older posts about this, but the search posts function for my profile seems to be not working at the moment. So, a quick summary:

* The world is not overpopulated, right now
* The world is not going to ever get overpopulated, ever, according to the UN's official projections on population growth which show the planet levelling out at approximately 9 billion people, a number it can easily support. Source: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf
* While there is not a global crisis in population, certain countries however may experience population problems in the future
* Controlling birthrate is the only proven successful way to control population growth
* Increasing standards of living is the only proven successful way to control birthrate
* War, disease, famine, natural disasters, government-endorsed euthanisation all do nothing to halt population growth because they don't directly affect birthrate, and in fact war in particular have a tendency to increase birthrate, Afghanistan right now has one of the world's highest birthrates, for example
* Current problems with starvation in certain countries have nothing to do with a shortage of food supply globally, but lack of access to food supplies that already exist - out of all food produced on the planet, about a third is wasted. Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13364178

Okay, that wasn't very quick, was it. Sorry. But in a nutshell: don't worry about it. Seriously. Don't let the trendy Internet nihilists scare you, the world is in a lot better shape than they would have you believe.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

I love this 'eliminate all stupid or poor people'.

How content will you be doing your dead end minimum wage job for the rest of your life, genius, when you're suddenly below average, after it's decided to wipe out the bottom rungs of society.

Bins still need emptying, supermarket shelves still need filling, someone needs to do it.

This isn't a comment on anyone doing these jobs btw, as I know there's already not enough interesting, enjoyable jobs with a reasonable level of job satisfaction to go around, which is why we're having university graduates stuck working in McD's when they're qualified to be working in a lab or moving into a useful profession.

Without wishing to tar everyone with the same brush, I'd imagine if you're under the average intelligence, and don't have much drive, then a Mcjob is fine, show up, do your eight hours, go home, do what you want to do.

However, if you know you're smart, focused, intelligent and could be so much more useful to society, it's going to be a mental strain to know you're wasting your abilities roping off seating areas just before noon to mop the floor. (No I don't know why they do that then either). I genuinely believe being stuck like that when you know you could be really contributing could lead to depression or other mental illness.

It sounds rude to service employees, but I'm saying there's already not enough good jobs to go around, is all.

 

[rapidoud]

Australia can't handle more population, It's not just about space. Some predicted 35million cap but we're straining now.

Although countries that are wasting more than they are producing with no foreseeable increase should have extensive population control going (US currently).

 

[Jimmy T. Malice]

The latest series of Torchwood (although it's obviously fiction) seems to suggest that we really wouldn't be able to deal with overpopulation.