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"In China, where girls have been systematically culled from the population, there were 34 million extra men in 2010, according to census data. In India, there a

• jacquesm 11y ago
  Historically the world has dealt with a surplus of men by having wars.
  • mc32 11y ago
    I don't think that's the way it worked. War resulted in a deficit of men, but it's not that kingdoms/nations went to war to reduce the number of men because it was thought there were too many men.
    • Mz 11y ago
      The way it works is we take young men hopped up on testosterone and convince them that joining the military is a good idea for REASONS. Then we go to war due to "scarcity" of resources, which is the flip side of the coin of what people mean when they say "we have too many people." So, you can rearrange the semantics all you like, but he's essentially correct.
      • mc32 11y ago
        People, kingdoms and nations went to war for many reasons, from oppression, to "marriages" among royals, land grabs, consolidation of power in order to have more political stability (fewer incursions from usurpers of the kingdom), affronts, insanity, etc. but I can't imagine many were due to "we have too many restless men" we need to concoct war, risk losing war and our people, because we have too many young men and we need culling because.... A standing army plus reserves and the population you could call up to fight is what kept enemies from wanting to invade.
        • Mz 11y ago
          If you actually study the history, the single most common reason that people go to war is due to a lack of resources of some sort. Food or something critical to the economy or whatever. (Edit: There are a MILLION explanations, but scarcity of resources or insufficient resources of some sort is almost always the actual root cause.) So, again: "There aren't enough resources" is essentially what people mean when they say "There are too many people." Sending people to war -- win, lose or draw -- tends to get the number of people down and may have long term impact on keeping the number down by removing the potential for those who died young on the field of battle to reproduce at all. You can claim all you like that "BUT, THAT isn't THE REASON we go to war" and, you know, it just makes me think you have no understanding of history. It doesn't convince me you are right.
          • mc32 11y ago
            If by men you mean people, ok. But he said too many "men". But its still backwards, its like when someone says, oh my food is too cold and you say, no, it's not too cold at all, it's simply not hot enough. Often times wars were fought for stability. If you were stronger the weaker adversaries would be less likely to wage war against you. So your going to war was more to counteract someone else's lack of resources who might fight for them rather than your need for resources... Anyhow it like saying we went to war because we wanted to live longer.... Ok. Yes, but that's not how we typically present the issue.
            • Mz 11y ago
              So your going to war was more to counteract someone else's lack of resources who might fight for them rather than your need for resources... This is causing me a blue screen of death moment. You are disagreeing with me by saying "But the war could start because of someone else's lack of resources..." and I cannot fathom how that is an argument against the idea that a lack of resources is almost always the root cause. So, I think I shall step away from this discussion now. Thank you.
              • mc32 11y ago
      • dbpokorny 11y ago
        This isn't quite correct; it should go > Then we go to war in order to make sure some other country can't create artificial scarcity of resources, which would reduce the number of people we have against our wishes It is about preventing someone else from cutting off your supply lines.
    • anigbrowl 11y ago
      They don't do it deliberately, but that's how it often happens. Even in tribal societies those with a surfeit of young men tend to start raiding neighboring tribes for women.
    • deciplex 11y ago
      Yeah, no chief or despot or king or prime minister ever took a nation or tribe to war with the explicit goal of reducing the number of young men in the population. However, when you have a bunch of extra young men looking for something to do, as opposed to a shortage of same (i.e. not enough of them to do the things that need doing), the opportunity cost of going to war also goes down. So nations with a surplus of young men are more likely to go to war.
    • duaneb 11y ago
      Yes, there are many factors. But too many men can increase aggressive restlessness.
    • rokhayakebe 11y ago
      I am not sure about in which way it worked, but in some Plato writings (thousands of years ago), there were clear scenarios on population control. So perhaps kings have been advised to send the youth to war for this purpose.
      • narrator 11y ago
        Reading a lot of middle east ancient history, it's pretty easy to see the population pressure causing regular wars. In my opinion, Gilgamesh has a much milder tone than a lot of ancient history because it was nearer to the time when agriculture and walled cities were a new invention and the population pressures were much less severe.
    • agumonkey 11y ago
      Maybe excess of immature and foolish yields too many opportunities for violent events to happen ?
  • lzecon 11y ago
    There's no historic surplus of men. It's entirely created by selective abortions.
    • kristopolous 11y ago
      Can you expand on this?
      • eru 11y ago
        See http://www.economist.com/node/15606229 http://www.economist.com/node/15606229
      • dalke 11y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_women_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_women_of_China : "Son preference is traditional in Chinese Confucian patriarchal culture" ... "China implemented its one-child policy from 1979 onwards" ... "Given strict family-size limitations and a preference for sons, girls have become unwanted in China because they are considered as depriving the parents of the possibility of having a son" ... "About 37–45% of China's missing females may have been missing at birth [due to Sex-selective abortion]", and other factors include infanticide, poor nutrition leading to poor health conditions, and under-registration.
    • jacalata 11y ago
      No, historically a surplus of men was created by running a polygamous hierarchical society where the richest x men get 100% of the women and the remaining men are now surplus (although some amount of them can be absorbed as low status labor in risky occupations)
      • usrusr 11y ago
        Historically, even true monogamy (that is, monogamy not only on paper) would concentrate women on the upper end of the wealth/power scale, due to death by childbirth. Most men would either have a sequence of wives, or none at all. Sufficiently well-organized places to not have robbery bands internally or raiding parties externally would, in absence of wars, often be big exporters of mercenaries.
  • pcurve 11y ago
    Funny you mention this because China did use an extreme version of this technique. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_wave_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_wave_attack
    • Laforet 11y ago
      Funny you linked to this Wikipedia entry because the relevant sections correctly calls human wave a misnomer in the context of Korean War. Infantry assaults with men marching shoulder to shoulder has not happened since the Russo Japanese war - even Somme and the Japanese Banzai charges are significantly less dense than how they tend to be portrayed in the media.
• tomp 11y ago
  > The US 2010 census was pretty close to 50/50 Well, China is as well (according to information above). 34 million is 2.5% of 1.34 billion (Chinese population in 2010), so China is at 47.5/52.5.
  • Mz 11y ago
    That's not that close. I have heard the imbalance is causing real problems. I mean, that is a 5 point difference and ...geez ...(breaks out calculator cuz I'm old) about a 9% difference. And probably worse in certain age groups. If 10% to 20% of men have no hope of getting married purely based on a lack of women, not counting women making other choices or being gay or whatever, that's going to have significant social consequences.
  • arjie 11y ago
    That's pretty far from 50-50, man. It means one out of every ten men won't have a partner if you naively paired them up.
    • olalonde 11y ago
      If that 34 million figure is correct, it would be 2.5%, not 10% ("one out of every ten").
      • shrewduser 11y ago
        sure, but you'd have to look at the age / demographics too wouldn't you? it might be 2.5% of the total population but women live longer on average than men so what happens if you look between the ages of say 20 to 30?
      • thaumasiotes 11y ago
        The "one out of every ten" figure is basically correct given the division stated in tomp's comment. Assume the population is 47.5% female / 52.5% male. Then, for every 525 men, there are 475 women. This means out of every 525 men, (525-475) = 50 of them can't mate, which is 9.5%. However, tomp is wrong that 2.5% of the population being surplus men implies that the population share is 47.5-52.5 (this split means 5% of the population are surplus men, not 2.5%). It actually implies 48.75-51.25, which means about 4.9% of men have no female counterpart in the population. And this is intuitively correct; if 2.5% of the whole population can't find a partner, and all of those people are men, and the numbers of men and women are approximately equal, it should be the case that about 5% of men can't find a partner.
• princetontiger 11y ago
  Most Chinese girls are beautiful... The West will gladly accept them.
  • throweway 11y ago
    Love how this manages to be wrong on so many levels ... but in so few words. It's like troll golf.
• underwater 11y ago
  From what I understand some families were/are allowed to have two children if the first was a girl.
• douche 11y ago
  Historically, surpluses of young, unmarriageable men has not been a good situation in China. It's a recurring trend around most of the large-scale peasant rebellions. A man without access to women, with no prospects of a family of their own, has little to lose and everything to gain from violence. ISIS is a pretty standard example of how that tends to play out.