Governments have instituted brutal population control measures to the great detriment of the societies over which they rule and causing great personal sorrow for many families. No small part of the environmentalist movement advocates population control for the sake of preservation of nature. Of course population restrictions are anathema to the ideals of a professed free society.

The society is still free. You just can't have any of it's money, formerly owned by other citizens (prior to being taxed) thru the form of unemployment or welfare checks without agreeing to be sterilized.

Hardly racism. China needs women.

That's the problem with the United States!
It needs to model its society after China & offer wages 5 cents lower than they do!
Then all those corporations founded in the United States, would be falling all over each other, trying to be the 1st to get back home.

Quoting myself seems tacky, but...
Is there anything there to argue about?

Can't argue with stats, however, it would seem to me that each country would be most concerned about the growth rate of those classes of citizenry in their society which causes them the most money, i.e., economic drag on their economy.

In the United States, we are most concerned about those on welfare, who by having another rug rat, sees an increase in their welfare check and doesn't have to pay for the birth.

2nd most important birth rate, would be those who are unemployed from low paying jobs for more than 13 weeks, as they have been lying around at home, with plenty of time to get knocked up, or knock up their wives & thus end up with a kid in their house when the unemployment runs out & it comes time to collect welfare.

My concerns are probably off-topic from the reason you started your thread, however, this phenomena I am describing has an adverse effect on the U.S. economy and the economy of any other country that subsidizes the welfare of families out of work, thru taxation of others, who would have otherwise spent that money.

Population is projected to stabilize somewhere between 8 and 10 billion. That's a pretty big bump from where we are now, but the days of exponential growth are over.

Industrialized countries have the lowest fertility rates. If not for immigration, many of them would have declining populations. There is a very strong, if not quite direct, relationship between industrialization and drop in fertility.

The problem is that if the developing world continues to develop along the same pattern as the currently industrialized countries have, the quantity of resources used world-wide will need to increase something like 10x current levels.

My suggestion would be to not bother trying to influence population growth, mainly because the natural trend will take care of it long before any intervention policy will. Instead, those of us in more developed countries with already stabilized non-immigrant populations need to very aggressively curb our resource usage, and offer the developing countries more sustainable paths to advancement.

I don't know if we can reasonably expect to cut our usage enough to matter, though. My back of the napkin number crunching says we'd need to cut by... a lot. Like 80%, maybe, to maintain current (unsustainable to begin with) levels.

Yeah, we may be in trouble, and not in a long-term way that slowing fertility will solve. Short term, in the decades to come, as the people already alive in India, China, Indonesia, etc. start buying more cars, eating more meat, building bigger houses, and buying more toasters.

Soylent Green is people.

There was a magazine called "Omni" that was in print in the mid 80s. There was an article in it that I recall, where they talked population growth and our ability to feed the world.

The surmised, based upon the rate of improvement in food growth in the world & current population growth, that the industrialized nations would not be able to feed its own citizens by the year 2045, much less 3rd world nations.

Now a lot has taken place since then, and, I'm sure that there have been a score of improvements in food growth per acre that was not foreseen at the time of the article.

I believe that the fact that the "1% Club" who has control of approx 35% of the world's wealth is basically acting like December 21, 2012 is the end, is evidence of the fact that we are not going to be able to sustain the world's economy in the fashion in which we currently are.

I know, as well as any sane person, that 21Dec12, is nothing more than the date in which the planets and the sun in our solar system line up with the center of our galaxy. How in the world the Mayans were able to calculate that is beyond me, but that's another topic altogether. However, I know of no evidence of the "1% Club" taking any type of action that is beneficial to our planet and its citizens as a whole.

You say that we shouldn't try and control population growth because it will take care of itself, however, a welfare state that makes it profitable for a woman to dump babies into the world is counter-productive and detrimental to an economy.

It is a fact that businesses report that some applicants on unemployment will put down a date that they are available to come to work, which coincides with the date in which their unemployment runs out.

All the business has to do, is look at the applicants resume, see the date he/she lost their last job & do a little elementary math.

Cite it or admit that you favor bigoted eugenics. Those are awfully bold claims to make without offering any evidence.

You want me to cite evidence of the fact that Americans on welfare game the system? How old are you?

Or do you not live in the United States?

"Bigoted" !! You think the majority of welfare recepients are minorities?

well, this http://www.topix.com/forum/afam/TS6CBT754MKNC4E90 says 1% more are black than white, so maybe I'm wrong about that.

However, the bulk of the recepients are black/white with blacks owning the heavy side of the coin by 1%. That's far from being "bigoted"

What about china?

What about it? It doesn't affect me. I should be dead before the U.S. experiences a food shortage to the extent that I cannot afford to buy food.

I am talking about the U.S.

And, when it comes to sterilization, I wouldn't restrict it to people on welfare & those who go beyond X number of weeks on unemployment.

I'd sterilization criminals. Even Madoff, even though he's too old to have kids.
The CEOs of Enron, etc., etc.

Blue collar, white collar, starched collar, wouldn't matter to me. Remember that elected official with all that cash in his freezer? Freeze his ballz.

I personally do not think population growth is anything anyone should be that concerned about. To try and control the growth of population could never lead to anything good.

The main reason for the worlds population growth has been the fact we have access to so much more food. If you look at a graph of population growth you would see that it exploded the same time the "Green Revolution" happened.
Which was I believe was mid 60's, if you look at a chart of growth it explodes at this point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wo...-1800-2100.png

THe Green Revolution was when modern industrial farming practices began to take hold in the some of the poorer areas of the world. Eventually we will peak on the amount of food we can produce and then you will see a decline in at least the rate of growth, maybe a decline in the overall population

If we have any serious food crisis the population will take a massive hit. I mean we might be seeing the start of this all ready as I have been reading lots of stories of raising food cost, and food shortages all over.

Nature has a way of taking care of its self, its elementary science really. The old example of there is lots of deer, so intern the population of the wolf grows, wolves eat more deer, deer population lowers, now wolf population is to high so it starts to lower, and the cycle repeats it self. Simplistic view on it but thats the principle.

Edit- Green revolution started in 1940's right through the late 70's, making most of its impact in late 60's. So just further confirms that is the reason when you look at the population growth time frame.

[x] fret fail

I do have to say that nothing is as unsexy as people arguing seriously against jokes.

Oh and lol WHAT? You really should try to use some logic and some basic research skills before you spout this kind of absolute nonsense. Where is any proof that Native Americans believed over population was bad? I don't think there is some vast conspiracy for people to over reproduce, please read my original response and give your head a shake. You are wrong on every single level, wow scares me people believe this kind of stuff. It's not some complex issue at all actually, really quite simple.

for those that say growing population isn't a concern, do you feel pollution and or global warming is a concern?

Because mmgw is essentially a problem of the energy production needed to support the worlds population, given the current byproducts/pollution of the technology we currently have to produce the needed energy to support the billions of people.

population control is throwing away the best resource to combat the challenges of tomorrow. you need new minds to face the challenges of tomorrow. I really can't think of a greater blunder.

People who think population needs to be controlled are probably the most terrifying central planners.


They remind me of the people in Britain who in the 1800s thought at any moment Britain would run out of food and so population growth needed to be curbed. Of course, new technologies developed which increased food production, so the concerns turned out to be pretty much a lot of nonsense. It's pretty silly to think that current population capacities will remain the same in the future, when new technology has been introduced to increase food production or home production etc.

I don't think so, even at a theoretical 0% population growth you would still have millions and millions of people in each new generation. I don't think it's unreasonable to say given current technology the planet can sustain/feed/shelter X amount of people and Y growth rate, but beyond that more will starve, more will fight for what limited resources are available, ect.

What rate of population growth do you advocate or think is sustainable?

as much ****ing as people want to do, an unfettered market will lead to the best solutions.

No, i think government funded sex education, government subsidized birth control, ect.

Not to mention the mmgw movement is essentially a huge move on the need for population control, it's just marketed in more pleasant terms for the masses, imo.

Also the whole free markets = population growth is kind of silly considering the market solutions we already have for excessive population;
market solution, ftw?
http://library.thinkquest.org/C00229...sent/stats.htm

Pollution is a mild concern, global warming I'm not worried about it or not in a panic about it. Like the one study the guy posted it is not even fully agreed on in the scientific community. How biased the study was I'm not sure but either way it's not like the worlds about to end. I mean it has survived much higher levels of CO2 then are in the atmosphere currently.

Population control is way more scary then either of those two issues as it can potentially mess with the natural order of things in devastating ways. Centralized planning just always sounds better in theory then in practice. Look at how many baby girls have been killed over some stupid population control in China.

Good things will not happen if mass population control is put in place. I'd rather have a fighting chance and my children to have a fighting chance then no chance at all.

And as people have been saying peak oil is here and we will have to turn away from these non renewable resources which put CO2 into the air eventually. So why worry about it? Eventually nature will restore its balance.

Don't let Al Gore fool you he's just a rich fat cat trying to make a buck.

Welcome to the real world sucks to be a human sometimes. I showed the study which shows how pop growth is tied into food production, more food more people, not everyone is going to eat, sometimes people will starve. It's just how nature works, man is not god, he is just an animal.

This goes into how people always want everyone to be happy and well off, but to how it really is not possible, the weak die the strong survive. Read some Darwin to find out more on evolution. It's not fair but it is the way nature works.