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You talk about fixing water infrastructure like it is really hard (so hard you need the British to do it) and your alternative is to eliminate a significant pot

You talk about fixing water infrastructure like it is really hard (so hard you need the British to do it) and your alternative is to eliminate a significant potion of the population? You think that is easier? Not to even talk of the ethical concerns or the unintended consequences, just from a logistical standpoint, your statement is absurd. There is no way that is is easier to reduce a human population than it is to increase water availability. I don't usually attack people (and technically I'm only criticizing your statement, not attacking you directly) but when malthusians start talking I immediately know that they don't know what they're talking about. And on an ethical note, managing populations is something you do with sheep and cattle, not human beings.

imtringued 6y ago
If you fix the problem today one day there will be 3 billion indians and you have to fix the problem again. It's much easier to reduce their reproduction rate through education and that education comes with other benefits.
- betwixthewires 6y ago
  People don't just have kids en masse without a reason. People historically had lots of kids for 2 reasons: a lot of them died before reaching reproductive age, and they needed more hands to produce food because most people lived in a subsistence agriculture environment. The population boom over the last 100 years is not due to people reproducing too much, it is due to a decrease in child mortality, that and development from agricultural to industrial economies meant a cultural lag time in reducing the number of kids a woman has. Once you have an industrial economy, the pressure then becomes to have less kids. You don't need to be told in a classroom to do that, it happens naturally. If you need proof, these education programs didn't exist in the west during development into industrial economies and yet the fertility rate decreased simply due to economic pressures. A fertility rate of 2.3 (the .3 accounting for child death and people who don't ever have kids) is replacement rate. At that rate population does not increase. Long story short, at least in cities (where the water shortage we are talking about is happening) you won't see a doubling of the population due to sustained fertility. So the shortages you see of water and other resources can be entirely attributed to inefficient resource allocation, and once capacity is increased to match population you won't have to worry about it again and again.
  - vishnugupta 6y ago
    > A fertility rate of 2.3 (the .3 accounting for child death and people who don't ever have kids) is replacement rate. This is a good point which often gets overlooked in the heated debate of population explosion. Coincidentally just a year or two ago Indian growth rate reached replacement levels[1]. As per the latest data (not sure if it's been reviewed/confirmed) it's now slightly below the replacement levels. Also, if you notice, the southern states's growth rate is well below that of replacement level. [1] https://niti.gov.in/content/total-fertility-rate-tfr-birth-woman https://niti.gov.in/content/total-fertility-rate-tfr-birth-w...
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      I would say the debate is more accurately about distributing resources to an "exploding" amount of people. Bringing up the entire population of India (just as an example, could be any country) to the living standards that are commonly discussed (such as potable water, sufficient nutrition, healthcare, etc) could very well be practically impossible.
      - betwixthewires 6y ago
        Yep, when I make the argument that "the problem is resource allocation, not overpopulation" I don't mean to imply that resource availability can be instantaneously ramped up locally with an influx in population, there is obviously latency there, and there will be a lag in standard of living during a sharp population increase. But this isn't a permanent state due to there being too many people. I don't think it is impossible to bring the projected population of India up to decent living standards, I think this is highly unlikely, but my point doesn't account for that, so it could very well be.
  - Chris2048 6y ago
    > You don't need to be told in a classroom to do that, it happens naturally That's just a theory, and if you're wrong, then what? A description of what you think will happen needs better evidence. At least one other factor is religious/cultural inertia encouraging people to have lots of children, and that is somewhat characteristic/unique for each given culture s.t. you can't really generalise it too much. There was a similar theory about non-democracies being unstable (Democratic peace theory, wrt greater public wealth), and how free trade liberates nations. How did that turn out for Chinese superpower? China is an emerging superpower, and economic powerhouse, and anti-democratic to the extend of suppressing democracy in HK. It also does lot of trade that never seems to encourage an increase in civil liberties. Now, maybe the theory was all an illusion caused by the domination and coercive power, of existing democratic nations.
- kthejoker2 6y ago
  It's true education is the gift that keeps on giving, but India is already at replacement levels of fertility, its age 0-19 population has already peaked and is in decline, and its population will top out around 1.75 billion. Their issue here is poor governance, economic inequality, and climate change.
Chris2048 6y ago
You are purposefully using language that suggests genocide. Family planning counts as "managing populations" too. Is every progression on human DNA eugenics? Is every new law facism?
- betwixthewires 6y ago
  I didn't suggest genocide, not at all. "Family planning" suggests agency. Humans have agency. The comment I'm responding to explicitly recommends forced reduction in fertility rates, removing agency, something you don't do to human beings unless you think of them like sheep or cattle. Equating a one or no child policy with "family planning" is extremely disingenuous. Any law that tells human beings how many children they are allowed to have is fascism, yes. Any directive telling human beings how they have to reproduce is eugenics by definition.
  - waterhouse 6y ago
    > Any directive telling human beings how they have to reproduce is eugenics by definition. It could be dysgenics, depending on what the instructions are. :-P How about private charities that provide voluntary incentives for some people to self-sterilize and others to have more kids? How about private charities that subsidize birth control and abortions? How about friends and family encouraging people to marry someone smart, or telling people with genetic disorders that they should adopt? Do you draw a line somewhere in the above between "eugenics" and "not eugenics"? I think your line would be far from universal. dictionary.com says "the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population", which would indeed encompass all of the above. I'm afraid the word "eugenics", like "fascism", has been corrupted into "something whose exact definition is unclear, but it's definitely a bad thing". > Any law that tells human beings how many children they are allowed to have is fascism, yes. So what is there to prevent some people from having 10 children, every generation, until the system collapses under their weight? If you say "it's the parents' responsibility to provide for the kids, and if they don't manage to do so from their own resources or persuade anyone else, then the kids may starve and that will limit the process", then, fine, that would work; though many people think the state should always prevent kids (or perhaps people generally) from starving, and I think policies with that effect have been enacted even in the U.S., and I doubt they will get repealed anytime soon. You say that people with increased access to education and health and such naturally reduce their birth rates. That may be. But I think it would be only a matter of time before they got selected for impulsivity, high libido, inclination to adhere to the parents' religion that says to maximize children, or whatever other traits would lead to a bunch of people actually having tons of kids they can't support. (Perhaps the singularity and/or genetic engineering and/or other stuff will happen and make that irrelevant long before it becomes an issue.) Maybe those traits would also lead to doing things that land them in jail for years, getting a reproductive penalty that way; I dunno if that would be enough.

imtringued 6y ago

If you fix the problem today one day there will be 3 billion indians and you have to fix the problem again. It's much easier to reduce their reproduction rate through education and that education comes with other benefits.

betwixthewires 6y ago
People don't just have kids en masse without a reason. People historically had lots of kids for 2 reasons: a lot of them died before reaching reproductive age, and they needed more hands to produce food because most people lived in a subsistence agriculture environment. The population boom over the last 100 years is not due to people reproducing too much, it is due to a decrease in child mortality, that and development from agricultural to industrial economies meant a cultural lag time in reducing the number of kids a woman has. Once you have an industrial economy, the pressure then becomes to have less kids. You don't need to be told in a classroom to do that, it happens naturally. If you need proof, these education programs didn't exist in the west during development into industrial economies and yet the fertility rate decreased simply due to economic pressures. A fertility rate of 2.3 (the .3 accounting for child death and people who don't ever have kids) is replacement rate. At that rate population does not increase. Long story short, at least in cities (where the water shortage we are talking about is happening) you won't see a doubling of the population due to sustained fertility. So the shortages you see of water and other resources can be entirely attributed to inefficient resource allocation, and once capacity is increased to match population you won't have to worry about it again and again.
- vishnugupta 6y ago
  > A fertility rate of 2.3 (the .3 accounting for child death and people who don't ever have kids) is replacement rate. This is a good point which often gets overlooked in the heated debate of population explosion. Coincidentally just a year or two ago Indian growth rate reached replacement levels[1]. As per the latest data (not sure if it's been reviewed/confirmed) it's now slightly below the replacement levels. Also, if you notice, the southern states's growth rate is well below that of replacement level. [1] https://niti.gov.in/content/total-fertility-rate-tfr-birth-woman https://niti.gov.in/content/total-fertility-rate-tfr-birth-w...
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    I would say the debate is more accurately about distributing resources to an "exploding" amount of people. Bringing up the entire population of India (just as an example, could be any country) to the living standards that are commonly discussed (such as potable water, sufficient nutrition, healthcare, etc) could very well be practically impossible.
    - betwixthewires 6y ago
      Yep, when I make the argument that "the problem is resource allocation, not overpopulation" I don't mean to imply that resource availability can be instantaneously ramped up locally with an influx in population, there is obviously latency there, and there will be a lag in standard of living during a sharp population increase. But this isn't a permanent state due to there being too many people. I don't think it is impossible to bring the projected population of India up to decent living standards, I think this is highly unlikely, but my point doesn't account for that, so it could very well be.
- Chris2048 6y ago
  > You don't need to be told in a classroom to do that, it happens naturally That's just a theory, and if you're wrong, then what? A description of what you think will happen needs better evidence. At least one other factor is religious/cultural inertia encouraging people to have lots of children, and that is somewhat characteristic/unique for each given culture s.t. you can't really generalise it too much. There was a similar theory about non-democracies being unstable (Democratic peace theory, wrt greater public wealth), and how free trade liberates nations. How did that turn out for Chinese superpower? China is an emerging superpower, and economic powerhouse, and anti-democratic to the extend of suppressing democracy in HK. It also does lot of trade that never seems to encourage an increase in civil liberties. Now, maybe the theory was all an illusion caused by the domination and coercive power, of existing democratic nations.
kthejoker2 6y ago
It's true education is the gift that keeps on giving, but India is already at replacement levels of fertility, its age 0-19 population has already peaked and is in decline, and its population will top out around 1.75 billion. Their issue here is poor governance, economic inequality, and climate change.

Chris2048 6y ago

You are purposefully using language that suggests genocide. Family planning counts as "managing populations" too. Is every progression on human DNA eugenics? Is every new law facism?

betwixthewires 6y ago
I didn't suggest genocide, not at all. "Family planning" suggests agency. Humans have agency. The comment I'm responding to explicitly recommends forced reduction in fertility rates, removing agency, something you don't do to human beings unless you think of them like sheep or cattle. Equating a one or no child policy with "family planning" is extremely disingenuous. Any law that tells human beings how many children they are allowed to have is fascism, yes. Any directive telling human beings how they have to reproduce is eugenics by definition.
- waterhouse 6y ago
  > Any directive telling human beings how they have to reproduce is eugenics by definition. It could be dysgenics, depending on what the instructions are. :-P How about private charities that provide voluntary incentives for some people to self-sterilize and others to have more kids? How about private charities that subsidize birth control and abortions? How about friends and family encouraging people to marry someone smart, or telling people with genetic disorders that they should adopt? Do you draw a line somewhere in the above between "eugenics" and "not eugenics"? I think your line would be far from universal. dictionary.com says "the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population", which would indeed encompass all of the above. I'm afraid the word "eugenics", like "fascism", has been corrupted into "something whose exact definition is unclear, but it's definitely a bad thing". > Any law that tells human beings how many children they are allowed to have is fascism, yes. So what is there to prevent some people from having 10 children, every generation, until the system collapses under their weight? If you say "it's the parents' responsibility to provide for the kids, and if they don't manage to do so from their own resources or persuade anyone else, then the kids may starve and that will limit the process", then, fine, that would work; though many people think the state should always prevent kids (or perhaps people generally) from starving, and I think policies with that effect have been enacted even in the U.S., and I doubt they will get repealed anytime soon. You say that people with increased access to education and health and such naturally reduce their birth rates. That may be. But I think it would be only a matter of time before they got selected for impulsivity, high libido, inclination to adhere to the parents' religion that says to maximize children, or whatever other traits would lead to a bunch of people actually having tons of kids they can't support. (Perhaps the singularity and/or genetic engineering and/or other stuff will happen and make that irrelevant long before it becomes an issue.) Maybe those traits would also lead to doing things that land them in jail for years, getting a reproductive penalty that way; I dunno if that would be enough.