3 ms·

War usually does the job.

TriinT 17y ago
WW2 killed "only" 60 million or so. Population control would require having 2 billion or so killed. Unless one goes for nuclear warfare, I don't see war solving the overpopulation problem. Unfortunately, there are not enough resources to guarantee everyone a high standard of living. Poverty is the result, and poverty leads to people breeding like rabbits. We are doomed.
- mahmud 17y ago
  Wanna end over population? Offer free, unhindered family planning services. Curb the rampant influence of organized religion on private matters. Foster a healthy appreciation for one's children, male or female, so families aren't forced to get rid of their daughters through early marriage. Remove the stigma around condoms; we all fuck and it's a beautiful thing, just be careful kids. Empower women and give them equal employment so they have more time to reach for their dreams and less time popping out kids to latch onto a single source of income personified as a male patriarch. Develop family farms and agriculture and introduce automation to the process, so farmers don't depend on their offspring for labor. etc.
  - TriinT 17y ago
    The problem with those measures is that they take decades to yield results. And in a few decades we will all be fucked anyway...
    - mahmud 17y ago
      "decades" is nothing when the result is the uplifting of the entire human race. large-scale literacy campaigns started 200+ years ago, and even though we have much left to do, you can already see the effect of childhood education on the world.
      - TriinT 17y ago
        True, but literacy is literacy. You proposed going against the religious establishment... and I am all for that, but it's fighting a battle uphill. Mentalities change very slowly. Mankind has huge mental inertia.
  - anamax 17y ago
    > Offer free, unhindered family planning services. Seems to have little/no effect. > Curb the rampant influence of organized religion on private matters. Good luck doing that without coercion, substituting a different organization's influence on private matters. > Empower women and give them equal employment so they have more time to reach for their dreams and less time popping out kids to latch onto a single source of income personified as a male patriarch. Nice theory, but there's plenty of "overbreeding" in societies where women work as much as/more than men. "X is bad" and "Y is bad" does not imply that X and Y have anything to do with one another. > Develop family farms and agriculture and introduce automation to the process, so farmers don't depend on their offspring for labor. Wrong. Automation doesn't make kids useless. It actually makes them more useful. A ten-year-old girl without automation can't do nearly as much as a 17 year-old boy. The more automation, the closer they are in productivity. (Having actually worked on farms, I'm often amazed by what people say about working on farms.) If you want to keep farmers from breeding, don't have family farms.
    - mahmud 17y ago
      Allow me to answer your suspicion about availability of family planning service and its effect on reducing population growth. You probably have the West, specially U.S. in mind when you say it has no effect. I think you're forgetting the welfare-check incentive in baby-popping. Family benefits as they're in the U.S. seem to be optimized for the maximum yield of babies, and reduction of intact, 2-parent households. Single women simply get more buck for their bang (sorry!) here. And the fact that said benefits demand the removal of the father from the house, what you're left with are women raising children by themselves, and children of single moms becoming single parents themselves and going back to the system. Where generations ago they might have gone to the family farm or shop, now they're going to the family social worker to collect their own welfare checks.
      - anamax 17y ago
        The claim was that family planning services mattered. Pointing out that they have no effect when something else is present, which wasn't mentioned in the list of "what to do", doesn't support that claim. I'm quite sympathetic to the idea that many "welfare services" are failures in many ways, including population. Perhaps they should have been on the list from the beginning.
- pj 17y ago
  "Sex is the poor man's opera."
mahmud 17y ago
> War usually does the job. So does education, higher standard of living and positive outlook towards the future. Think positive thoughts, for your own happiness.
pj 17y ago
Actually, war is a leading cause of population growth. The baby boomers are an example.

WW2 killed "only" 60 million or so. Population control would require having 2 billion or so killed. Unless one goes for nuclear warfare, I don't see war solving the overpopulation problem. Unfortunately, there are not enough resources to guarantee everyone a high standard of living. Poverty is the result, and poverty leads to people breeding like rabbits. We are doomed.

mahmud 17y ago
Wanna end over population? Offer free, unhindered family planning services. Curb the rampant influence of organized religion on private matters. Foster a healthy appreciation for one's children, male or female, so families aren't forced to get rid of their daughters through early marriage. Remove the stigma around condoms; we all fuck and it's a beautiful thing, just be careful kids. Empower women and give them equal employment so they have more time to reach for their dreams and less time popping out kids to latch onto a single source of income personified as a male patriarch. Develop family farms and agriculture and introduce automation to the process, so farmers don't depend on their offspring for labor. etc.
- TriinT 17y ago
  The problem with those measures is that they take decades to yield results. And in a few decades we will all be fucked anyway...
  - mahmud 17y ago
    "decades" is nothing when the result is the uplifting of the entire human race. large-scale literacy campaigns started 200+ years ago, and even though we have much left to do, you can already see the effect of childhood education on the world.
    - TriinT 17y ago
      True, but literacy is literacy. You proposed going against the religious establishment... and I am all for that, but it's fighting a battle uphill. Mentalities change very slowly. Mankind has huge mental inertia.
- anamax 17y ago
  > Offer free, unhindered family planning services. Seems to have little/no effect. > Curb the rampant influence of organized religion on private matters. Good luck doing that without coercion, substituting a different organization's influence on private matters. > Empower women and give them equal employment so they have more time to reach for their dreams and less time popping out kids to latch onto a single source of income personified as a male patriarch. Nice theory, but there's plenty of "overbreeding" in societies where women work as much as/more than men. "X is bad" and "Y is bad" does not imply that X and Y have anything to do with one another. > Develop family farms and agriculture and introduce automation to the process, so farmers don't depend on their offspring for labor. Wrong. Automation doesn't make kids useless. It actually makes them more useful. A ten-year-old girl without automation can't do nearly as much as a 17 year-old boy. The more automation, the closer they are in productivity. (Having actually worked on farms, I'm often amazed by what people say about working on farms.) If you want to keep farmers from breeding, don't have family farms.
  - mahmud 17y ago
    Allow me to answer your suspicion about availability of family planning service and its effect on reducing population growth. You probably have the West, specially U.S. in mind when you say it has no effect. I think you're forgetting the welfare-check incentive in baby-popping. Family benefits as they're in the U.S. seem to be optimized for the maximum yield of babies, and reduction of intact, 2-parent households. Single women simply get more buck for their bang (sorry!) here. And the fact that said benefits demand the removal of the father from the house, what you're left with are women raising children by themselves, and children of single moms becoming single parents themselves and going back to the system. Where generations ago they might have gone to the family farm or shop, now they're going to the family social worker to collect their own welfare checks.
    - anamax 17y ago
      The claim was that family planning services mattered. Pointing out that they have no effect when something else is present, which wasn't mentioned in the list of "what to do", doesn't support that claim. I'm quite sympathetic to the idea that many "welfare services" are failures in many ways, including population. Perhaps they should have been on the list from the beginning.
pj 17y ago
"Sex is the poor man's opera."

mahmud 17y ago

> War usually does the job. So does education, higher standard of living and positive outlook towards the future. Think positive thoughts, for your own happiness.

pj 17y ago

Actually, war is a leading cause of population growth. The baby boomers are an example.