population control options

Ludi · Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 4:15 pm Post subject: Re: population control options

Education by people from the community is key to reproductive planning, I think. You can't just go in from the UN, hand out condoms and expect folks to start using them. That's why I say it has to be community oriented, part of a holistic view of people and their place in the community and the living world.

You might find some useful info here:

http://www.populationconnection.org/

http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/

btu2012 · Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 4:20 pm Post subject: Re: population control options

btu2012 · Last edited by btu2012 on Sat Sep 29, 2007 4:32 pm; edited 2 times in total

Ludi · Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 4:28 pm Post subject: Re: population control options

That's a weird idea. Generally folks in villages are very community oriented...

I'm not sure why you're worrying about folks in Bangladesh or Africa, personally. Are you planning to go into international aid or something? Or are you trying to make overpopulation THEIR problem? As far as resource use and stinking up the planet, the first world is far more overpopulated than undeveloped countries.

You might enjoy reading this speech by author Daniel Quinn, regarding population:

http://www.ishmael.com/Education/Writings/kentstate.shtml
_________________
"...powerdown so soft and fluffy you'll think you're living in a pillow." - jboogy

btu2012 · Last edited by btu2012 on Sat Sep 29, 2007 5:32 pm; edited 2 times in total

Ferretlover · Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 4:55 pm Post subject: Re: population control options

btu2012 · Last edited by btu2012 on Sat Sep 29, 2007 5:12 pm; edited 2 times in total

Ferretlover · Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 5:06 pm Post subject: Re: population control options

When TSHTF, I think we are all going to be surprised, even those of us who have been trying to determine the when, how and what-then of it...

btu2012 · Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 5:24 pm Post subject: Re: population control options

hi-fiver · Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 8:52 pm Post subject: Re: population control options

One giant step for mankind would be for Catholicism to embrace birth control.

btu2012 · Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 11:37 pm Post subject: Re: population control options

gg3 · Posted: Sun Sep 30, 2007 3:13 am Post subject: Re: population control options

Start here: human ecological footprint (see WWF, "ecological footprint") is presently 2.1 Earths. Thus we are already in overshoot. Sutainability is a tradeoff between population and consumption (resource throughput per person). At 2 - 3 billion humans we can have an approximately European standard of living: fully comfortable but highly efficient. The USA standard of living (slightly more comfortable, highly wasteful) is sustainable for a total population of about 1/2 billion. For a population of 6.5 billion, Cuba of all places, is exactly on target (tolerable considering some of the alternatives, even acceptable, and even acceptable to folks like me who find communism a bad dream). Get to around 8 billion and we are looking at Somalia, and much beyond that, we are looking at something far worse we don't even have a name for yet.

So let's assume that the goal is 2.5 billion at a European standard of living. The world at-large has to get its population level down by half, and the USA has to get its resource throughput per person down by half. These two need to go hand-in-hand for practical reasons, and doing so will also meet ethical criteria whereby substantial efforts are made on all sides rather than on one side only.

And here also, defining values include minimizing the degree of intrusiveness of the various measures. Note that control of reproduction in and of itself is not as highly intrusive as any number of other measures such as reduction in citizenship rights as a function of number of offspring. There is no right to reproduce, period. Another defining value is that a living person is of near-infinite value but a blastocyst is of zero value. That is, we want to treat living persons as if their lives are worth preserving if at all possible, but "potential persons" (the "unborn child," the "unconceived child," and also the "inconceivable child") are not living persons and thus have no rights or moral standing.

So, onward toward the means.

Means vary by local conditions; what works in one place may not in another.

1) For the "third world" particularly the places with higest birth rates:

Education for female humans past the 6th grade results in a 50% reduction in birth rate, purely voluntarily. Thus, globally, full legal and cultural equality for females, including education commensurate with that available to males. This will have to be enforced with trade incentives and sanctions, embargoes where needed, and in some places by military means, and by the latter I mean international allied attacks & occupations, and cultural change imposed from the outside if needed (it worked in Japan after WW2, preserving what could be preserved of existing Japanese culture and radically overhauling the aspects that had become a threat to world peace).

International economic aid should be contingent upon negative population growth, and the message made clear, via means that governments cannot censor (long technical digression omitted to save space): "If you breed like mice, you will starve like mice and no help will be forthcoming. If you want to eat, you must reduce your population, and then you will get all the help that can be mustered."

This will of course cause social upheavals. However social upheavals are inevitable one way or the other; better to have them along the route to sustainability than along the route back to the caves.

2) For the "developed" world:

And here I am focusing on the US since that's what I know best. We too have to bring down our numbers, because every child born here presently consumes as much as ten born in India. And so....

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Free contraception, family planning, and abortion on demand, for anyone and everyone who asks. Condoms and pills etc. etc. made available at zero cost in every pharmacy, government-subsidized (and rendered revenue-neutral via the baby tax).

Sex ed in schools to include strong focus on "which method of birth control each of you will choose and why," and the technical details of using the various methods. Also teach the technicalities of non-P/V forms of intercourse: masturbation, mutual masturbation, oral sex, anal sex, and sex with whatever other body parts won't cause a pregnancy.

The puritans are going to have a cow over this. Fine, let 'em. Come right back with an in-your-face campaign to explain that puritanism is a psychiatric disturbance of people who are sexually repressed. One thing that will also help is to decriminalize and then legalize recreational marijuana because it will create a culture of sensual hedonism that will effectively take over and leave the puritans as a tiny and ineffective minority. Legalizing recreational marijuana will also have the effect of reducing consumption levels: people who are high tend to loll around and enjoy whatever is present in their immdiate surroundings, and aren't motivated to go shopping for recreation.

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Tax policy.

You have no children during your working life, you get a much bigger pension when you retire, to compensate for the "retirement survival value" of offspring.

You can have as many children by adoption as you can reasonably support. Economic means-testing is relevant here to prevent abuse.

You have one child by reproduction, you are tax-neutral: no benefits, no additional taxes.

For the second child and beyond, an exponentially increasing tax burden to the point where it becomes simply unaffordable to have more.

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Incentives for voluntary sterilization.

These incentives should be designed to appeal first and foremost to people who are short-sighted, venal, and of below-average intelligence and physical stamina. In other words, those who are both lazy and stupid. Yes, voluntary eugenics, the reason being that ordinarily it's the smarter and more farsighted who voluntarily limit their breeding, and it's the lazy and stupid who multiply like mice; thus the policy needs to offest for this factor.

Thereby, The Dude is right on target about giving away an iPhone for every vasectomy or tubal ligation. iPhones however appeal to people who are technologically aware, so the incentives to get the multiplying morons to line up for the snip-snip have to be geared to their existing lifestyles. Overt status symbols might work well here, so long as they don't result in greatly increased consumption levels (e.g. giving away SUVs won't do).

Over time the incentives can be increased to attract more and more people. Ultimately it might be necessary to bid up the rate to a year's income at middle-class wages. That's still a hell of a lot more affordable than breeding ourselves over a cliff.

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Mandatory measures:

There is no need to strip people of their rights, though evading paternity should be criminalized, with appropriate penalties applied by judges at trial (e.g. 5 years in prison, or get sterilized and walk free).

What I would really like to see: Universal aptitude testing and reproduction licensing.

Starting in the first grade, you are tested on every measurable element of human performance: physical, intellectual, and whatever else can be measured. If you can consistently perform at the 75th percentile or higher on any one thing, you get to keep your reproductive capacity. That means the smart, strong, creative, and capable, will all be able to reproduce. Someone who is none of the above, will not.

Then at the age of puberty, everyone gets reversibly sterilized. This would be the age of first menstrual period for females, and the age of first ejaculation for males, or by default at age 12.

Now in order to get the permit to make a baby, your test scores get pulled up and used to make the determination. If you're below the 75th percentile on everything, no permit, no baby. If you're above the 75th percentile on anything at all, you get the permit, and your similarly-screened partner also gets the permit. You both get your respective tubes reconnected until the baby is delivered, and then you both get your tubes disconnected again.

The only way to get a reconnect after that, is if your kid dies via means that are ruled to have been truly beyond your control, e.g. run over by a car driven by a stranger. Parents who are found to have killed one kid in order to have a chance at having another, would be permanently sterilized in addition to whatever other criminal penalties they faced.

Realistically...

None of the above is likely (grammar note: "none" = "not one," which is singular, thus "none is..." rather than "none are"), and so each of us should be preparing for life in a period of the type of collapse that necessarily follows overshoot: a nasty, violent, disease-infested dark age that lasts for a century or longer.

Get yourself to a place that you can reasonably expect will be one of the numerous but relatively small areas of light amidst the prevailing darkness. Do it as soon as possible.

Zardoz · Posted: Sun Sep 30, 2007 4:39 am Post subject: Re: population control options