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Child Item

Proposal to reduce global population

TeddyTedson

Now that we're at a global population of 7 Billion and breeding at an alarming and unsustainable rate, here's an idea about how we can control the human species population.

Everyone is born with the right to reproduce 1.25 children.

However, a couple could choose to have a family of 3 children if they are willing to pay the state a fee, while also having to raise a set fund to act as the child's welfare fund.

The couple who would only have 0.5 of "child reproduction credit", could buy the remaining 0.5 from a governing body who would use the money to provide child welfare for primary and secondary children born in regular numbered families, I.E. Families ≤ 2.
To be clear here, the family who are now opting to have 3 children must pay a fee, we'll say €20,000 for now, I haven't worked out the figures yet. This will be used by authorities towards child welfare payments.
However, they must also raise an additional €20,000 for their third child, who will not receive any money from the state. But to ensure the welfare of the child the couple will effectively be raising their own welfare for the child in advance of the conception.

Then there's the issue of some people who wish not to have any children. They would be able to sell their credit to anyone who was interested in having an additional child. Again we'll say at a fee of €20,000 for arguments sake, however this would not be for 1.25 children, instead it would just be for 1.0 child. The 0.25 would effectively be lost in this scenario. Also if the buyers are a family over 3 children, they would not receive the state child welfare and again would have to raise their own funds.

That's a very rough draft of a possible solution to your problem. Is this a direction people would be willing to explore. Feedback and amendments are most than welcome.

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Sindri

RichieC wrote: »

Not in the long term it won't. We rely too heavily these days on the wisdom of economists. An ideology masquerading as a science.

It is in the long term exactly how the current system will save us. Current system is based, at the very end of the day, on what the definition of life is given in dictionaries.

marty1985

TeddyTedson wrote: »

Now that we're at a global population of 7 Billion and breeding at an alarming and unsustainable rate, here's an idea about how we can control the human species population.

I'm not sure if I believe that. By 2150, according to one U.N. projection, the global population could be half what it is today. The world population is rising in large part due to a time lag. Actually, the world is in the midst of an unprecedented shift to population decline. World fertility is predicted to sink below the replacement level by 2035, and global population inevitably follows, several decades later. Perhaps this is good news for you. Personally however I would recommend you focus on the problem of over-consumption, not over-population.

The UN have safely predicted that world population will increase to over 9 billion in about 40 years, but this is driven not by increasing birth rates, but falling death rates i.e. an increase in the number of old people. (Consider this: The global population of children under 5 is expected to fall by 49 million, while the number of people over 60 will grow by 1.2 billion.)

Anyway, you can't ask the people of Europe to do any more to help you with your project. Europe is seeing some of the lowest birth rates ever recorded.

East Asia has problems. No society has ever experienced the speed of population aging - or the gender imbalance - now seen throughout Asia.

The replacement fertility rate is roughly 2.1 births per woman for most industrialized countries. The world fertility rate has already fallen to 2.61 in 2008, it had been 2.80 in 2000. But Europe is in the most critical situation. The low rates concern governments because they mean an older age structure and population decline over the long term, even with immigration. We are all living longer. In a Europe where we are so dependent on social benefits, we need a working population able to pay its taxes. Many countries now face the very real possibility that up to one-third of their population will be over age 65. That's why a lot of European governments now have pro-natalist policies to encourage people to have more children. It causes economic panic, so if you were to take your proposal to the EU the sound you would hear would be of jaws hitting the floor.

Chuck Stone wrote: »

Poverty = babies.

Yes and no, IMHO.

Of the 59 countries now producing fewer children than needed to sustain their populations, 18 are characterized by the United Nations as "developing," i.e., not rich. There are other factors at play.

TeddyTedson wrote: »

Everyone is born with the right to reproduce 1.25 children.

Dude, that's repulsive!

TeddyTedson

marty1985 wrote: »

I'm not sure if I believe that. By 2150, according to one U.N. projection, the global population could be half what it is today. The world population is rising in large part due to a time lag. Actually, the world is in the midst of an unprecedented shift to population decline. World fertility is predicted to sink below the replacement level by 2035, and global population inevitably follows, several decades later. Perhaps this is good news for you. Personally however I would recommend you focus on the problem of over-consumption, not over-population.

The UN have safely predicted that world population will increase to over 9 billion in about 40 years, but this is driven not by increasing birth rates, but falling death rates i.e. an increase in the number of old people. (Consider this: The global population of children under 5 is expected to fall by 49 million, while the number of people over 60 will grow by 1.2 billion.)

Anyway, you can't ask the people of Europe to do any more to help you with your project. Europe is seeing some of the lowest birth rates ever recorded.

East Asia has problems. No society has ever experienced the speed of population aging - or the gender imbalance - now seen throughout Asia.

The replacement fertility rate is roughly 2.1 births per woman for most industrialized countries. The world fertility rate has already fallen to 2.61 in 2008, it had been 2.80 in 2000. But Europe is in the most critical situation. The low rates concern governments because they mean an older age structure and population decline over the long term, even with immigration. We are all living longer. In a Europe where we are so dependent on social benefits, we need a working population able to pay its taxes. Many countries now face the very real possibility that up to one-third of their population will be over age 65. That's why a lot of European governments now have pro-natalist policies to encourage people to have more children. It causes economic panic, so if you were to take your proposal to the EU the sound you would hear would be of jaws hitting the floor.

Yes and no, IMHO.

Of the 59 countries now producing fewer children than needed to sustain their populations, 18 are characterized by the United Nations as "developing," i.e., not rich. There are other factors at play.

Dude, that's repulsive!

What is repulsive?

amacachi

Pherekydes wrote: »

Wouldn't we be better off reducing the numbers of those who consume the most?

Isn't the thread about resources?

That's already happening, tends to happen as nations become industrialised.

marty1985

TeddyTedson wrote: »

What is repulsive?

Replacing an existing human right to determine freely the size of one's family with that and calling it a right.

Nothingbetter2d

TeddyTedson wrote: »

Now that we're at a global population of 7 Billion and breeding at an alarming and unsustainable rate, here's an idea about how we can control the human species population.

Everyone is born with the right to reproduce 1.25 children.

However, a couple could choose to have a family of 3 children if they are willing to pay the state a fee, while also having to raise a set fund to act as the child's welfare fund.

The couple who would only have 0.5 of "child reproduction credit", could buy the remaining 0.5 from a governing body who would use the money to provide child welfare for primary and secondary children born in regular numbered families, I.E. Families ≤ 2.
To be clear here, the family who are now opting to have 3 children must pay a fee, we'll say €20,000 for now, I haven't worked out the figures yet. This will be used by authorities towards child welfare payments.
However, they must also raise an additional €20,000 for their third child, who will not receive any money from the state. But to ensure the welfare of the child the couple will effectively be raising their own welfare for the child in advance of the conception.

Then there's the issue of some people who wish not to have any children. They would be able to sell their credit to anyone who was interested in having an additional child. Again we'll say at a fee of €20,000 for arguments sake, however this would not be for 1.25 children, instead it would just be for 1.0 child. The 0.25 would effectively be lost in this scenario. Also if the buyers are a family over 3 children, they would not receive the state child welfare and again would have to raise their own funds.

That's a very rough draft of a possible solution to your problem. Is this a direction people would be willing to explore. Feedback and amendments are most than welcome.

much easier fix to deal with overpopulation that isnot infringing on basic human rights

offer a FREE VASECTOMY to any man with 2 or more children already

bnt

BraziliaNZ wrote: »

For anyone blaming poor countries. We in the west consume something like 300 times more than a Bangladeshi person does in their lifetime. So who's to blame really?

I keep hearing this argument, but it's fundamentally flawed: the people consuming more are doing so because they can, and vice versa. There's nothing morally superior about people who currently consume less.

There was a time in the past when Irish people were very thrifty because they had to be, and now that they don't have to be, they aren't. You can see the same pattern occurring in e.g. China, India, and (indeed) Bangladesh today. Give people - any people - the chance to consume more, and they do. There's no "wider meaning" to this: we are locusts, basically, we consume what we can afford to consume.

Another fallacy I keep seeing repeated is the tendency to look at population as a global problem. "You could fit all the people of the world in Texas, easily" ... sure, but how would they survive? There wouldn't be enough water for them, or food. People need to understand that overpopulation is a local problem. It doesn't affect all parts of the world equally. We can call it a "global" problem because more parts of the world are becoming overpopulated over time.

The way the people of the Indian subcontinent rely on the Hindu Kush and Himalayan glaciers has already been mentioned: they are heading for a water crisis. But trying to assign blame is the wrong response: what are we actually going to do about it?

Let's look at Haiti, for example: it's almost the same size as this country, but with twice as many people, practising inefficient subsistence farming. It went from 60% forest in 1925 to 2% now: they stripped the land bare so that it could barely support them and was susceptible to flooding, and millions moved to the cities. It was a disaster area before the 2010 earthquake.

Would you agree that Haiti is overpopulated? 10 million people is not a lot on the global scale, but it's too much for their amount of land, their natural resources, their level of technology, their political system, and so on. This is not a criticism or a value judgement of the people of Haiti - it's a cold, hard fact, and getting emotional about it doesn't address the basic issues.

There's plenty of food in the USA, but moving masses of food around costs energy and money, and causes environmental damage in the process (burning oil). Then there's the problem of water, which is not going to go away. Moving the necessary volumes of water around, between countries, is just not feasible long-term. (Do we need to start towing icebergs around?)

So I would encourage people to stop thinking about global population and think of local populations and their needs. People need to have these basic resources where they are, not somewhere else. Spending money and effort to get these resources to them can (and should) only be a temporary measure, it's not a permanent solution to the problem. So, if the resources can't come to the people, the people will go to the resources: I expect mass migrations in our foreseeable future. Is Ireland ready?

Domitius Felix Invictus Aurelianus

Best way to reduce population is to let every country deal with their own problems.

Ireland had major famine and our population was reduced and guess what, we overcame that ourselves and went from a 3rd world country to a 1st world country with pretty much no outside help apart from been colonized by the Brits.

I all for helping our poorer countries but take Africa for example, the monies that pour into that continent from charities is wasted as there are no proper stable governments capable of distributing help to their people. As cruel as it would be, I believe stopping money flowing into these countries would in the long be more beneficial for them and for the world.

c_man

Solution: Chuck every second baby into the LHC proton beams.

We'll even get valuable science from the endevour*.

*Not true

Pherekydes

bnt wrote: »

Let's look at Haiti, for example: it's almost the same size as this country...

Ireland is more than two and a half times the size of Haiti, and Haiti has more than twice our population.

marty1985

Taiwan is about half the size of Ireland.

It has a population of around 23 million.

It has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world now, about one child per woman. For the Taiwanese, this is tragic.

bnt

Pherekydes wrote: »

Ireland is more than two and a half times the size of Haiti, and Haiti has more than twice our population.

Sorry - skimming a lot of stuff, mixed up square miles and square kilometres. 1 mi² = 2.59 km². If that's all that caught anyone's interest in all I wrote, is it worth the bother? :rolleyes:

44leto

You will find it will reduce by itself, in the history of our ancestry there has always being "bottlenecks" when the human population drastically reduced our present line all originated from 3000 some even put it as low as 300.

So some natural disaster is lurking be it global warming/cooling, a super volcano, an space object impact, a disease, the rapture who knows.

bnt

Domitius Pius Felix Invictus Aurelianus wrote: »

Best way to reduce population is to let every country deal with their own problems.

Ireland had major famine and our population was reduced and guess what, we overcame that ourselves and went from a 3rd world country to a 1st world country with pretty much no outside help apart from been colonized by the Brits.

The thing is: we are living in a world with mass migration between countries. Which is nothing new: about a million people left Ireland permanently during the Great Famine, in addition to the million or so who died. At least there was a frontier for them to colonise, which is (generally) no longer the case. Do you call that "overcoming that ourselves"? I wouldn't.

Analogy: a country is like a boat. At any given point in time a boat has a particular carrying capacity, which can change over time, depending on how sea-worthy it is. Some boats are more full than others. Some have free space left, but there are fewer of those than there used to be. Others are overflowing, and people are falling off in to the water - some drown, some make it to other boats and try to climb aboard. If the other boat is already full, and too many people still try to climb on, the whole boat can sink, putting everyone in the water to sink or swim.

Some boats are being repaired and upgraded by those on board, so that they can carry more people. Others are being damaged by the people on them - in different ways, only some of which can be repaired - and that reduces their carrying capacity. Some can be swamped by a typical wave, while others hardly notice the same wave. Some just let people climb on board willy-nilly, while others recognise that the boat has a safe carrying capacity and try to limit the number of occupants. However, as things are today, the boats with the lowest safety margins are without captains, the ones letting more people on board, too quickly for them to be upgraded ... :eek:

3ndahalfof6

are you suggesting 1.25 humans per couple or per person, what about gay couples will they be able to produce humans, what about the person who wants to give birth to a human not having to go down the sloppy route,

the forests would be full of human collectives with large numbers, hiding from the machines, Sarah was right.

marty1985

If it's per person, wouldn't it be higher than the current birth rate here anyway?

later12

What about a system whereby all women would have to be on contraception, and where a woman or a couple would have to satisfy certain minimum criteria in order to have children, and whereby there was a limit on the amount of children they could have.

A problem with the OP is that it's unclear how couples would be penalised for breaching the limit.

Chuck Stone's idea of fixing the poverty and children paradox is the most worthy; but in reality, we don't trade with Jupiter: for some people in the world to enjoy advantage, another proportion must be disadvantaged. We can't all be wealthy consumers.

I think an unpalatable decision is going to have to be made somewhere down the line in relation to overpopulation. We simply do not have the resources to cope with what is coming. I hate Governmental interference in people's private lives, but I think society is going to have to admit the necessity of regulating birth rates.

3ndahalfof6

would it be fair to say the .25 of the 1.25 could be explained away by calling it after birth, this is something that could be taxed, different rates depending on the amount,

marty1985

later10 wrote: »

I think an unpalatable decision is going to have to be made somewhere down the line in relation to overpopulation. We simply do not have the resources to cope with what is coming. I hate Governmental interference in people's private lives, but I think society is going to have to admit the necessity of regulating birth rates.

Which governments? Which society? Most Western governments are trying to encourage people to have more babies out of economic necessity.

MadYaker

Government controlling birth rates and controlling who can and can't have children is not a good idea. Its just wrong.

However there are a lot of problems coming down the line in relation to our planets population. Earths population is around 7 billion now and already a large proportion of that 7 billion live in poverty, without enough food etc. However I think that is more due bad management of resources and corruption rather than an overall lack of food.

Will we eventually reach a point where our population has grown to such an extent that our planet can no longer support us? What happens then?

later12

marty1985 wrote: »

Which governments? Which society? Most Western governments are trying to encourage people to have more babies out of economic necessity.

That's not really where the problem is coming from. Less than 1000 Irish women gave birth to a fourth child in 2010. The situation is similar in other western societies.

And yes, you cannot seriously turn the population triangle on its vertex without experiencing an economic shock. But this could be mitigated by immigration reform, and by easing us into the process, which means starting the process early; ideally yesterday.

gsxr1

MadYaker wrote: »

Government controlling birth rates and controlling who can and can't have children is not a good idea. Its just wrong.

However there are a lot of problems coming down the line in relation to our planets population. Earths population is around 7 billion now and already a large proportion of that 7 billion live in poverty, without enough food etc. However I think that is more due bad management of resources and corruption rather than an overall lack of food.

Will we eventually reach a point where our population has grown to such an extent that our planet can no longer support us? What happens then?

We rethink everything you said at the start and consider it Right. Not wrong.
What would be wrong is letting it get to a critical problem.

Icepick

Chuck Stone wrote: »

The best way to reduce the population of the world is for poor countries to become developed and have social safety nets..

You will reduce the population, but developed countries will consume and pollute much more so sustainability won't improve.

MadYaker

Icepick wrote: »

You will reduce the population, but developed countries will consume and pollute much more so that will make things worse as well.

Very true. Its already happening with China and India.

Edit: Are we screwed? I've never actually thought about all of this before its a bit worrying.

gsxr1

Icepick wrote: »

You will reduce the population, but developed countries will consume and pollute much more so that will make things worse as well.

plus, who will make the worlds trainers and tracksuits.

The_B_Man

Who gets to enforce this? Professional voyeur/sexy ombudsman in each bedroom?
What about a new job of taxi/sex enforcer that brings people home after a night out, and ensures theres no drunken tomfoolery, unless sanctioned previously by the government?

We could also have a few that wander the fields and parks around the country and supervise the knacker drinking teenagers! Foolproof!

Sindri

We more than have the ability to cope with over population. As I have already posted the worlds population will reach it's maximum extent in 2050 with 9 billion people.

In that time the continent with the most amount of people, and the continent with the fastest economic growth rates, Asia, and where the most damage will happen, will be fine.

It is and will become much richer. The underlying statistics is on its side.

Johro

We need to eat more Soylent Green.

bnt

Well, I imagine that there will be a market for these "child credits", with people selling their 0.25 for the going rate. The result will inevitably be that the "child credits" would end up with those most able to pay for them i.e. the richest. Whether that's a good thing or not is a whole 'nother question.

I had an idea a while ago for a "baby bond" scheme. The idea was that people wanting to breed should be obliged to put away a lump sum in advance, to be repaid (with interest) over the next 18 years. That would serve several purposes: it would ensure that they could afford to bring up a child, that they were serious about it, and that they would forfeit whatever remains of the money if the child turned out to be a burden on the state.

(There would need to be rules preventing desperate people from borrowing the bond money from unscrupulous lenders: no baby bondsmen, please!)

3ndahalfof6

what happens if the human pup dies, would the 1.25 be reissued, or would it just be hard luck, this would tighten things up even morely