Population Control
 

The current estimate for world population is about 6.6 billion. Human beings have always had an exponential growth rate. In fact, the only event that's ever put a dent in the global population was the bubonic plague.

The big question is, at what point is enough enough? Much of the information I'm looking at comes from Here as well as my biology class that I'm currently taking. At what point will we reach such a population that there'll be a catastrophic breakdown and naturally occurring homeostasis?

The current estimate for when we'll reach 9 billion people is the year 2058. Will that be too many for the world to support? Will it be sooner? If the quality of life is as bad as it is now, what will it be like in 40 years with almost 3 billion more people to support?

Another question is, is our population growth already a problem? I would say that since we are already having wars over resources, problems with fresh water, problems with energy generation and things like that it's already started happening.

So, if we were going to do something to stabilize our population growth what would be some ethical and humane ways to do so? Increasing the death rate through being lax about suicide prevention, encouraging physician assisted suicide/ euthanasia, and other means? Or reducing the birth rate using limits on number of children born, mandatory sterilization, altering the media so every sitcom doesn't have a baby introduced as if it will save the show? What are other things that can be done?

Population growth will inherently stabilize itself.

This is due to the limitation of food, water and living space. Subsequently we'll become too crammed together, too lacking in resources in order to survive, and so the people will die off.

As we get more forced together then we're subjected to more viral and bacterial infections. This in turn spreads more diseases more readily.

As we get more choked up close to one another crime increases, violence that results in fatal or near fatal status will become more common. And thus that will also lower the amount of people.


Basically, overpopulation will handle itself. However, it's going to be messy and nasty...and I'm not going to be around for it since I expect we still have a few hundred years.

The major ethical concern here is the notion of impeding rights on an individual or small scale level due to a global or large scale level, the latter of which many individuals probably don't care about. Humans haven't always had an exponential growth rate either, not according to sources I've looked at in Conversation Biology courses. But for the most part, yeah, and it's sort of sobering to hear that all the malaria, AIDS, and world wars couldn't hope to dent the Human Hump Rate. According to a body mass-population size/rate graph, we're rats.

Am I in support of population control? Well, as long as we're not actively culling people. I'm not really in favor of genocide, but I would be fine with active prevention of reproduction. Mandatory birth control, for instance.

But, does it matter where I am? Canada's got a negative growth rate without immigration. Richer, more educated nations seem to reach a homeostatis. The uncontrolled growth is happening in the underdeveloped countries where they really don't have the resources to support them. Oh, and I guess in China, because they're so numerous even if a small percentage reproduce, you still have a fuckload of new people entering the world.

On the other hand, it may just be another obstacle we'll overcome. Though there are possible bad ends to this uncontrolled growth, maybe we'll be fine. I don't mean to say that in a "Ah let's not investigate it or anything, it'll sort itself out" way, but we've gotten as far as we have due to technology, perhaps it'll keep us going through necessity as well. Especially if the more influential countries in the world are threatened.

We've been having wars over resources since basically ever. Shit, "war over resources" is practically a tautology.

War is basically only fought for resources.

One idea is to try and reduce waste and excess. You talk about a low standard of living, but that depends on what area you're looking at. Some people live in barely survivable conditions, while others have ridiculously cushy lives. One has to wonder how many people the world could support if the world's resources were more evenly applied.

Holy shit. One out of every four of my posts in the Discussion forum tend toward communism.

Please I've been over this in Geography. As a country becomes more industrialized its population rate increases rapidly but stops or comes to a slow crawl when it finally becomes industrialized. Economically speaking the recent surge in population is because more countries are becoming, well, to put it simply their climbing the economic ladder As they do well... Fuck, whats that chart called, it simplifies everything. Okay this is basically it:

Stage 1:High birth rate + High Death rate = Population Fluctuating, Often very slight Increase.
Stage 2:High birth rate + Slightly lower death rate = Slight Increase.
Stage 3:High birth rate + Rapidly lowering death rate = Large Increase.
Stage 4:Lowering birth rate + Low death rate = Slight-Medium Increase.
Stage 5:Low birth rate + Low death rate = Population Fluctuating, Often very slight Decrease.

Odjins comment is more accurate then he thinks it is.

You're still thinking on too local of a level. Yes, there's a few countries that have negative population growth (Italy, Germany, and Japan are the ones that come to mind), but globally there are five births for every two deaths.

Take a look at the Q&A page on the website I linked above. The net growth is 70 million people per year.

But that's entirely beside the point.

The point of this thread wasn't to convince you that population growth is a problem. The point was to come up with possible ways to limit population growth without being inhumane or unethical about it. Pointing out that all wars are fought over resources is just avoiding the issue.

You had mentioned wars over resources as part of your evidence that the population was growing unsustainably large, so in my view it was eminently necessary to refute this claim, as any discussion of measures to limit the population hinges on a determination of whether, in fact, the population needs to be limited.

Anyway: Interplanetary colonization.

To the moon, Alice! TO THE MOON!

Not being allowed to procreate would probably make a lot of people's blood boil. That being said, as far as ethics goes, I am more in favor of limiting that option in someone's life, versus perpetuating war (which we can probably agree arises based on lack of resources), famine, continued low quality of life, etc.

Here's the problem, and this happens all the time in ethics. In theory, I might be in favor of mandatory birth control (not sterilization at this point). In practice, how would this work? How do we legislate a policy that other countries with out of control growth rates stop making babies? I just don't see it.