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The Georgia Guidestones, erected in 1980 by unknown individuals, addresses the problem of population by giving exact advice. The recommend 500M people on earth.
If you are not familiar with the Guidestones, you should read about them....
Robert J. Sawyer tackles this problem in his award-winning Neanderthal Parallax trilogy of novels. I'm reading the last of the three novels right now.
The novels deal with parallel universes -- one being the universe we know, and the other being an exact duplicate of our world, only one in which it was the Neanderthal species that rose to dominate the planet instead of Homo sapiens.
While speculating on what cultural differences might have evolved in the Neanderthal universe, the author puts forth some interesting (if not quite acceptable to Homo sapiens) ideas on how the Neanderthal civilization in his story practices population control. https://www.amazon.com/Hominids-Nean...s%2C177&sr=8-2
Killing off seniors wouldn't help long term; they're unlikely to breed, so that would not affect the birthrate. And I'm over 60.
How about bumping off every child born in odd numbered years, or leap years, or some other factor that reduces births to the desired rate? Right now, that's offensive, but after 50 years or so, people would be used to it. And isn't there something like that in the bible?
I've long thought that we should all get some kind of birth control installed just before puberty, and have to pass parenting courses before we get the antidote.
I picture a little gold lock in the belly button; you get the key upon course completion. Both potential parents have to unlock before pregnancy can occur.
That would prevent unwanted pregnancy, but might lead to discrimination, lock picks, sales of master key on eBay...
I read that Japan is developing robots to care for the elderly.
The argument is Logan's Run and take out elders versus Thanos and random lottery methods. Meanwhile the government of the largest nation of the world actually did try to limit births now has money rolling in and old people fearful since they do not not have family to care for them is now reversing that policy.
And now other governments are trying to induce their younger folks to reproduce. I guess hoping the family member will take care of his elder relative instead of developing and buying the robot or importing aliens who do not want to adopt the culture of the elders who allowed them to immigrate in to care for. If they didn't want their young people to gain a bit more education so that they would be he management class directing the immigrant labor force they might start trying to get the older teens to reproduce instead of waiting until their 30s to have fewer children and thus not reach the sustainment rate
Contraceptives added to water supplies, starting with India and Africa.
WHO could do this w/o telling anybody.
WHO and UNICEF....they're already doing this. It's in the vaccines....or so suggests the Conference of Catholic Bishops in Kenya. Fertility is decreased in young females who are forced into special "Tetanus vaccines" specifically for young women.....5 jabs over 2 yrs and aimed only at childbearing-age women. Tests confirmed those vaccines tested positive for the HCG antigen, an anti-fertility agent. If there's not enough money at the UN to pay for the vaccines, the Gates Foundation steps up to make up the difference. Countries like Kenya are encouraged to participate in these vaccine drives or their AIDS relief money will be affected.
The Georgia Guidestones, erected in 1980 by unknown individuals, addresses the problem of population by giving exact advice. The recommend 500M people on earth.
If you are not familiar with the Guidestones, you should read about them....
And read the United Nations Agenda 21 (for the 21st century) while you're at it. They want every aspect of our lives controlled by them. We're almost 1/4th of the way through the century now, and they have several benchmark years, 2030 being one of them. A lot has to happen in the next 10 years, and the global response to this virus (I think) is part of it. I'm glad I'm not any younger (don't look forward to what's to come if this ideology comes to pass) and that I don't have children / grandchildren to worry about.
I am a pro-natalist & avidly against population control.
I'm one who believes a country's greatest natural resource is their children.
I don't like what the zero population growth narrative did to our society starting in the late 1970s.
We didn't just lower fertility rates; we lowered quality.
I don't think think damage we did to this Earth can be repaired if contending with crumbling infrastructures, loss of taxpayers contributing to social security & uneducated people bereft of solid values. I mean; has it worked yet? Everything has only become worse since the Kissinger era NSSM 200 was written in 1974.
Crime, famine, lack of opportunity in employment, inadequate education. The destruction of the environment and climate change. Increased costs of basic necessities like housing and food. The decimation of forests and wildlife habitats. Water shortages. Overpopulation negatively effects our quality of life.
A few decades ago, people were talking about Zero Population Growth. That conversation seems to have been vanquished by economic considerations--more people means more customers. Who thinks more and more people is a sustainable and good thing?
I would argue that a decrease in population would improve quality of life for most.
We went over this when the Population Bomb came out and none of it came true.
Crime has nothing to do with population. It has more to do with the collapse of the basic 2 parent family.
Famine? Not much of a problem. Less people are hungry than in the past. Now if the science deniers would quit telling some areas that GMOs are dangerous even more would have enough food.
Employment. Not a problem in most pre pandemic areas.
Basic education is free in most of the world. You have to make an effort and shouldn't have any problem with education and job training. Pre pandemic many job openings.
The destruction of the environment and climate change are gradual changes. We will adapt.
Costs for most things have gone up since money was invented.
Still lots of trees. Would be many more with better forest management so many don't burn every year.
Wildlife habitats. Let evolution do it's thing. 99% of species are extinct. We are still full of animals.
Water shortages. Controlling waste would take care of most of it.
The impact of poor decision making, abuse of natural resources, war and conflict, and politics leads to more problems worldwide than population numbers. We could take away a large percentage of the population, and still have the root problems facing the rest of us, with no net improvement.
I don't like what the zero population growth narrative did to our society starting in the (early) 1970s.
We didn't just lower fertility rates; we lowered quality.
We haven't tried ZPG. Not yet. Hopefully we will soon though.
Once that's accomplished we can start REDUCING the totals to what can actually work.
We didn't learn from the errors of the post war baby boom. Then we repeated the errors. Twice.
Quote:
It's not working. We missed something.
What we missed is that the bottom cohort didn't read the ZPG articles (or much of anything else).
Worse, they were actually encouraged to over-produce by program, policy and legislation.
And that's where that 'lowered quality' issue rests. The least able continue to have the most.
(btw most of the responsibility for all this leads directly to the social conservatives)
People who paid their own way in life generally moderated their birthrates to what they could afford to do well by.
Very much how a prudent rancher will limit how many steers will graze per acre. It's not complicated.
Last edited by MrRational; 08-11-2020 at 04:09 AM..
I once took an environmental class where the professor said that the factor that would ultimately limit population was heat. (This was the 1980's, before we were talking about climate change.) She said that we would figure out how to feed ourselves, but collective body heat would ultimately limit population. Personally, I expect we could deal with that as well.
Your professor was pretty stupid.
I hate to interrupt everybody's dreams, but this discussion needs a few facts:
A new species grows into its environment according to the logistic curve-- that famous sigmoid shaped graph. Numbers increase slowly at first, then appearing to take a logarithmic growth course (Malthus panicked over this), but then hit an inflection point and the rate slows down until it becomes stable (birth rate equals death rate) at the carrying capacity.
The carrying capacity is determined by space (50% of people live within 50 miles of an ocean--there's plenty of space)...air (the atm is 6 miles thick. We only breathe in the bottom 6 ft of it.)...Water (70% of the planet is covered by water (fresh water is unevenly distributed. Sea water can be economically desalinated now, if only the "environmentalists" would get out of the way) and food (with universal use of best practices ag, we can make enough to feed 20 billion)....Human population is now ultimately limited not by natural resources, but by our ability to purchase them.
It should be pointed out that at the "left side" of the graph where the population is low, there is minimum competition for resources (The Garden of Eden), while at the carrying capacity, there is maximum completion for resources (The Jungle)..... .Some people like living in Manhattan-- pop density 70,000/sq mi, but keep in mind, they rely on Fly-Over Country for their food.
A growing population provides pressure to grow the economy-- but a shrinking population does the opposite. If populations fall, at what point is it no longer economically feasible to continue producing cars, TVs, pots & pans etc etc, not to mention large scale food production?....Would you prefer to live an 1870s lifestyle?
In regards the environment-- name a natural resource that will be depleted in the next 200 yrs (other than oil)?....There are 8 million species on Earth today. Despite claims to the contrary, only 200 have gone extinct in the last 400 yrs. ( a rate lower than expected by fossil history)...We have gained some respect for the environment since our cavalier days of clear cutting forests and dumping sewage into the rivers.
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