How would you deal with overpopulation

yes, it's clearly not a detailed enough plan to work yet, lol.

you could scale the percentage differently through income brackets, maybe.

also I'm still not convinced that rich people would have 20 kids just because they can afford it, but I definitely see your point

Our monkey DNA is still strong and the procreation instinct isn't going anywhere. The problem of overpopulation is a tricky one to solve. Things need to get a lot worse before anything tangible is done. Unless nature deals with it and kills off a large percentage of the world's population. Which would probably lead to even worse things. We're fucked either way.

yeah, think it's called progressive taxation, but it's very unamarican, "punishing people for success" kinda thing.

Especially those trust fund kiddies born into wealth, poor them for having to pay a bigger share.

I am a somewhat un-American dude, I guess.

  On 1/2/2014 at 11:32 PM, Doomczar said:

Would some of our starving 3rd world countrymen approve of your need to procreate when they're starving to death?

Let all just get gay for a little while.

Make people feel bad about having more than two children.

If it were possible to change the culture to think of having a whole litter of kids as a 'bad thing' rather than a 'great thing' it would probably truncate the population a bit. A few of my highschool friends have had more than two kids, and frankly, I find that completely irresponsible. Mostly irresponsible to the energy and food resources that we all share. I think people with a comfortable lifestyle get bored and start pumping out babies. At least that's how it appears on my facebook feed.

  On 1/2/2014 at 11:32 PM, Doomczar said:

 

  On 1/2/2014 at 11:23 PM, joshuatx said:

 

  On 1/2/2014 at 11:19 PM, zaphod said:

what's considered white trash? is that going to be written into a law? seems like we're just not allowing people we have a personal bias toward to have children at that point. i wonder how many watmmers wouldn't have a high enough iq to have kids in that kind of world? i'm guessing quite a few...

 

Yeah that can't be the solution period.

 

I want to have kids and the idea that I or my potential offspring would have to be approved by any entity, especially a government, is disturbing and fundamentally wrong. It's easy to toy with the idea of eugenics and sterilization, etc in our current reality but it's at best a cynical cop-out.

 

What if the life society could provide you if you do not procreate would be more fulfilling than one with procreation?

 

Or why is it "fundamentally wrong" to have a governing body looking out for the interests of all humans? Would some of our starving 3rd world countrymen approve of your need to procreate when they're starving to death? Why do you feel like you (any reader, no one specific) have the right to create another consumer in an already vastly overpopulated world? Why not have some form of quality control for our future humans? Do you perceive that as wrong?

 

Just curious.

 

I perceive any ban or limit as mandated by any ruling establishment (most likely in the form of a government) as fundamentally wrong. It's should be a personal choice. There shouldn't be legal limits or any flirtation with sterilization, eugenics, etc.

Now, that said, I'm not against government incentives to have less children or be responsible for it, primarily through family planning and sex education. The same people who believe in having an irresponsible number of children are the same who keep these things from being implemented. I'd even be open to the idea of financial incentives for men and women to not have children, but that slips into dangerous territory as well.

My wife and I are only going to have two kids. We'll adopt if we want more. We've discussed it often. Most of my friends, who are all college educated and productive citizens in different ways (many are artists as well)...they aren't having kids anytime soon. I don't know anyone even close to being part of the wealthy elite, and let's be honest, they are the ones least affected by all of this. Those in power literally play off of a large and misinformed voter base.

We're all consumers but I doubt anyone here on WATMM is a SUV driving, tract home dwelling, fast food eating, megachurch attending parent of 5 or 6 kids. That's precisely the kind of lifestyle that needs to be eliminated and I believe at some point it's inevitable that it won't sustain itself. Every year I strive to spend less on commodities, grow my own food, recycle, eat less meat, buy local, reuse and re-purpose things, etc. I try to be the antithesis of our "throw-away" culture.

Most Americans can attest that their peers who dropped out of school, were in and out of jail, and/or are of less than average intelligence and ability are more often than not the ones who procreated first, and in multiple cases with multiple partners. Many don't get married or stay together. Others insist on having 3+ kids while also (because of 'tradition') having only single-income households. So don't get married specifically to get government benefits. These are often the source of so many problems that plague disadvantaged children growing up.

Braintree highlighted this too...

  On 1/3/2014 at 2:12 AM, Braintree said:

Make people feel bad about having more than two children.

 

If it were possible to change the culture to think of having a whole litter of kids as a 'bad thing' rather than a 'great thing' it would probably truncate the population a bit. A few of my highschool friends have had more than two kids, and frankly, I find that completely irresponsible. Mostly irresponsible to the energy and food resources that we all share. I think people with a comfortable lifestyle get bored and start pumping out babies. At least that's how it appears on my facebook feed.

  On 1/3/2014 at 2:34 AM, joshuatx said:

 

We're all consumers but I doubt anyone here on WATMM is a SUV driving, tract home dwelling, fast food eating, megachurch attending parent of 5 or 6 kids. That's precisely the kind of lifestyle that needs to be eliminated and I believe at some point it's inevitable that it won't sustain itself. Every year I strive to spend less on commodities, grow my own food, recycle, eat less meat, buy local, reuse and re-purpose things, etc. I try to be the antithesis of our "throw-away" culture.

i live in a corridor of one of the wealthiest, most educated areas in the united states. i'm surrounded by people with good jobs, often for the government, masters degrees, etc. it's also full of people with kids, sometimes many per family. that "throwaway" irresponsible lifestyle is perhaps the strongest i've ever seen among these wealthy, educated people. my biggest issue with generalizations is how wrong it is to point fingers at lower classes because i see some pretty abhorrent shit among these people and most of them are well off enough to support a largely unsustainable (in the long term) lifestyle. always lol pretty hard at everyone driving to whole foods for their organic food in an suv while they work jobs at northrop grumman making missile designs for the government. we're just fucked guys, face it. everyone contributes.

  On 1/3/2014 at 3:24 AM, zaphod said:

i live in a corridor of one of the wealthiest, most educated areas in the united states. i'm surrounded by people with good jobs, often for the government, masters degrees, etc. it's also full of people with kids, sometimes many per family. that "throwaway" irresponsible lifestyle is perhaps the strongest i've ever seen among these wealthy, educated people. my biggest issue with generalizations is how wrong it is to point fingers at lower classes because i see some pretty abhorrent shit among these people and most of them are well off enough to support a largely unsustainable (in the long term) lifestyle. always lol pretty hard at everyone driving to whole foods for their organic food in an suv while they work jobs at northrop grumman making missile designs for the government. we're just fucked guys, face it. everyone contributes.

Good point. There's a lot of that in Austin too. Gentrification is certain parts is ridiculous as well: in some neighborhoods it's a mutually beneficial development but in others it's literally snobbish residents moving driving up property values and demolishing pre-war homes for modern condos. In fact, the ironic thing is many of the middle-class/working class "rednecks" (or white trash to some) out in the country live far greener and community-driven lives than the Whole Foods yuppies living downtown and working for tech startups. That doesn't mean either is mutually exclusive of course. But zaphod makes a point, this is EXACTLY the stereotypes and false divide that keeps everyone blaming each other.

I try not stereotype and I have earlier it was unintended. Speaking of, guess who has worst per capita energy consumption than China and the U.S. (albeit it's not far behind)

The overpopulation issue...I reckon Japan are already playing their part by either waiting til later in life to have children or simply lead a life of celibacy because of the risk of cost and commitment, hence their long term population decline.

But are they setting the example for other countries to follow? Maybe we should just reproduce less. A forceful, lethal approach is out of the question.

destroy religious propagation myths. That won't solve it, but it will certainly help.

I'm a fan of Hans Rosling. Here's a talk on estimations about the size of the global population. His solution: improve child survival rate. Which is an outcome of various changes, of course.

Also notice how the 1billion westerners from 1960 have remained roughly 1billion in 2010 and will still be like that in 2050. Roughly that is. Point is, the focus should mainly be on the third world.

  On 1/3/2014 at 12:32 AM, azatoth said:

Our monkey DNA is still strong and the procreation instinct isn't going anywhere. The problem of overpopulation is a tricky one to solve. Things need to get a lot worse before anything tangible is done. Unless nature deals with it and kills off a large percentage of the world's population. Which would probably lead to even worse things. We're fucked either way.

  On 1/2/2014 at 7:12 PM, ThatSpanishGuy said:

There's too many of us, that's for sure.?

actually, the real problem is that we're too crowded in small pockets of land. remember 70% of the planet is water and the fifth largest continent is not even fully explored- probably currently inhabited by only 5 scientists. we're also reproducing at a silly rate when we've had hunger problems for over 30 years since we've done such a good job destroying the ozone and deforestation the planet so we're getting abnormal temperatures that make proper irrigation impossible in some areas.

my two solutions to end this:

1). migrate some communities to underwater cities off the pacific. it can simultaneously be used a chance to experiment with preparing generation migration into deep space to find another planet to colonize (maybe one that doesn't get fucked up so easily)

2). kill people off. i hate to say it, but it would have to be a mass genocide on a global scale so all the big cities get hit real good. need to really concentrate on major urban shities like los angeles, new york, tokyo etc

you figure either way you might loose a few good people but that's the quid-pro-quo mechanics of making our lives more comfortable at the end of the shuffle

Because the people in los angeles, new york and tokyo are totally the primary reason behind the increase in people on this planet.

Just look at this https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2127.html

DAMN YOU EVIL WESTERN COUNTRIES

I think wurstwasser said it well regarding the natural fertility-limiting power of surfing the web all day and wanking it.

Also it's definitely been shown that education of women leads to fewer babbies

Rather than rewarding people for having small families, can give them a fine for having too many, like the Chinese govt. does. Like a carbon tax, lol.

Btw, just going to give myself a pat on the back as I agree with the general thrust of this thread and have lived my life accordingly. We're having our second baby soon but after that we're done, I consider it immoral to have more than 2 kids (though not that high on the list of sins).

Replacement rate is 2.3 I believe, so two kids should be fine. I'd love to have 5 or 6 kids but won't do it, just to spare mother earth.

lol at Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Uganda.

Burkina Faso: 6

Mali: 6.25

Niger: 7.03

Uganda: 6.06

Suprisingly India and Mexico are both pretty low...

can you imagine if everyone you knew had 7 kids on average? That's a ton of little rugrats scampering around knocking over your ak-47s and "necklacing" each other with burning tires...

If you cross reference this list https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2127.html with this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate you'll notice that the countries with the highest birth rate also have the highest infant mortality rate. It seems very much that poverty is the biggest cause of an exploding birth rate, the lack of access to healthcare (contraception) and the need to many people to work to support a family (this same thing was common in the west not much more than a century ago).

I really question that CIA list...have you seen the population curve for Indonesia? Yet they're only listed at 2.2, which is zpg...unless they're suddenly leveling off, that doesn't feel right...

in the west the problem isn't too many babies.. it's the too many oldies

everyone needs to smoke and drink themselves to an early grave, but sadly things are going the other way.