I don't think that any reference to expediency is going to address what other people mean by morality, or amount to a moral imperative. Additionally, the examples you offer might seem demonstrative to you, but others could view them as reducing the force of your argument while adding nothing to any claim towards expediency.
China's one child policy didn't lift billions out of poverty nor did it prevent them from becoming marquee exploiters and polluters. Additionally, it created it's own problems with both utilitarian and moral components.
It's simply not the case that overpopulation has lead to poverty in africa, though in that condition of poverty it's certainly true that a greater amount of misery can be effected with greater numbers. A significant portion of the rest of the worlds wealth was (and still is) extracted from the continent. This began with an explicitly colonial relationship but has persisted after independence with homegrown despots raping and pillaging whatever they can lay hands on, whilst the basic flow of resources under colonial rule has persisted in all but name. Nevertheless, the continent retains the greatest potential for growth and the largest stores of as yet unexploited resources.
We are not a species that derives strength from scarcity of numbers. Completely the opposite. It may be the case that given smaller numbers some specific individual has a greater quality of life - even this much is arguable...but we're no longer talking about the strength of the species anyway.
Speaking of species, we are not deer...and I doubt that anyone is interested in "adding wolves" leaving this analogy without much meat to attach a position to.
I'm certain that a person can make an argument for expediency, even prudence, without any of the above. None of the above argues against the contention that we might hope to float by reference, however, any and all of the above work against the strength of this particular argument in it's favor. There's a really interesting thing going on when it comes to childbearing (alot of them, really). By and large, people have as many children as they want to, whether that's one or ten. Access to sex ed and reproductive health services will (and can) only modify the number of unwanted pregnancies. There are fewer of these than people imagine, and people likely imagine a larger number because they include unplanned pregnancies in that set. To give an example of why this produces a misconception, use my family as an example. I've had five children all told. None were planned, all were wanted. Conceptually, and just by reference to myself...the numbers we have in mind could be off by as many as five children (and tbt, I'd have had nine if we had as many as we wanted). We had the option of utilizing contraceptives or aborting the pregnancies..and we certainly had an economic incentive to do so, but we didn't.
Here, in the states, children create the mere addition problem. They add to the resources a family requires but produce no resources or earnings themselves. This is probably why economic disincentive is the highest listed reason for people who decline to have as many children as they would have otherwise preferred. Nevertheless, those families with just the one child consume more resources and produce more carbon not only than those multi-child families in third world countries...but also more than their relatively poor contemporaries in the states. Meanwhile, in developing countries, the mere addition problem is either lessened or reversed. The amount of resources consumed by the addition of another child is either marginal, or less than the amount of resources that they can produce for the family.
This is compounded by reproduction being completely out of phase with earnings. Here, earnings peak in our 40's, but our child bearing years are somewhere between a decade or two earlier. This is irrespective of the number of children we have. Some of us wait longer, to bring the window of earning closer to the window of need..but this produces the second highest listed reason for having fewer children than we would have wanted. Waited too long. While it may seem counter-intuitive, the major difference between families is in the level of relative wealth - with the relationship as it regards to either the consumption of resources or the production of carbon being entirely the opposite of what we may suppose. Particularly to a person advocating in the general for population control in order to reduce human misery and resource consumption..those families who wait longer, or indeed wait so long they have no children, actually consume more resources as a consequence of their wealth while producing less than those families who do not wait as long or who have more children.
So, with the above in mind, I would suggest that we are trying to look at a problem through the specific lens of our own predicament, and that the underlying contention that people who have less and consume less with more children should stop breeding (or even would), though they have an economic incentive to continue (and we have skin in this game too..we get our stuff from them) is fundamentally at odds with our our own position and predicament. If we were angling for an argument of expediency, it would be more expedient to the problem of climate change -and- global poverty to enforce poverty on those in the developed world through than it would be to reduce the level of reproduction in the third. This can be seen in the fact that even in some hypothetical scenario where we manage to create a situation in which those third world countries have first world education and access, and reproductive habits, as I did, we will only have created the scenario which exists here in the states already, with the impoverished and child ridden masses actually contributing less to that problem than the wealthy and childless while producing very nearly the entirety of all goods and services required to be a first world country.
Now, I doubt that anyone would read "enforce poverty on those in the developed world" and see a moral imperative. Just as a thing can be expedient and yet -not- a moral imperative, it can be expedient while we have a moral imperative not to do it. I would say that we, in the global north, have a moral imperative to stop pretending as though the filthy poors in childistan are the problem, they're not even the problem in our own countries. They're only a contributing factor in their own poverty, though having so much as one child is the singlemost productive indicator of poverty in our own country - because we have created that misery for them just as, and in the same way as we have created it for ourselves.
China's one child policy didn't lift billions out of poverty nor did it prevent them from becoming marquee exploiters and polluters. Additionally, it created it's own problems with both utilitarian and moral components.
It's simply not the case that overpopulation has lead to poverty in africa, though in that condition of poverty it's certainly true that a greater amount of misery can be effected with greater numbers. A significant portion of the rest of the worlds wealth was (and still is) extracted from the continent. This began with an explicitly colonial relationship but has persisted after independence with homegrown despots raping and pillaging whatever they can lay hands on, whilst the basic flow of resources under colonial rule has persisted in all but name. Nevertheless, the continent retains the greatest potential for growth and the largest stores of as yet unexploited resources.
We are not a species that derives strength from scarcity of numbers. Completely the opposite. It may be the case that given smaller numbers some specific individual has a greater quality of life - even this much is arguable...but we're no longer talking about the strength of the species anyway.
Speaking of species, we are not deer...and I doubt that anyone is interested in "adding wolves" leaving this analogy without much meat to attach a position to.
I'm certain that a person can make an argument for expediency, even prudence, without any of the above. None of the above argues against the contention that we might hope to float by reference, however, any and all of the above work against the strength of this particular argument in it's favor. There's a really interesting thing going on when it comes to childbearing (alot of them, really). By and large, people have as many children as they want to, whether that's one or ten. Access to sex ed and reproductive health services will (and can) only modify the number of unwanted pregnancies. There are fewer of these than people imagine, and people likely imagine a larger number because they include unplanned pregnancies in that set. To give an example of why this produces a misconception, use my family as an example. I've had five children all told. None were planned, all were wanted. Conceptually, and just by reference to myself...the numbers we have in mind could be off by as many as five children (and tbt, I'd have had nine if we had as many as we wanted). We had the option of utilizing contraceptives or aborting the pregnancies..and we certainly had an economic incentive to do so, but we didn't.
Here, in the states, children create the mere addition problem. They add to the resources a family requires but produce no resources or earnings themselves. This is probably why economic disincentive is the highest listed reason for people who decline to have as many children as they would have otherwise preferred. Nevertheless, those families with just the one child consume more resources and produce more carbon not only than those multi-child families in third world countries...but also more than their relatively poor contemporaries in the states. Meanwhile, in developing countries, the mere addition problem is either lessened or reversed. The amount of resources consumed by the addition of another child is either marginal, or less than the amount of resources that they can produce for the family.
This is compounded by reproduction being completely out of phase with earnings. Here, earnings peak in our 40's, but our child bearing years are somewhere between a decade or two earlier. This is irrespective of the number of children we have. Some of us wait longer, to bring the window of earning closer to the window of need..but this produces the second highest listed reason for having fewer children than we would have wanted. Waited too long. While it may seem counter-intuitive, the major difference between families is in the level of relative wealth - with the relationship as it regards to either the consumption of resources or the production of carbon being entirely the opposite of what we may suppose. Particularly to a person advocating in the general for population control in order to reduce human misery and resource consumption..those families who wait longer, or indeed wait so long they have no children, actually consume more resources as a consequence of their wealth while producing less than those families who do not wait as long or who have more children.
So, with the above in mind, I would suggest that we are trying to look at a problem through the specific lens of our own predicament, and that the underlying contention that people who have less and consume less with more children should stop breeding (or even would), though they have an economic incentive to continue (and we have skin in this game too..we get our stuff from them) is fundamentally at odds with our our own position and predicament. If we were angling for an argument of expediency, it would be more expedient to the problem of climate change -and- global poverty to enforce poverty on those in the developed world through than it would be to reduce the level of reproduction in the third. This can be seen in the fact that even in some hypothetical scenario where we manage to create a situation in which those third world countries have first world education and access, and reproductive habits, as I did, we will only have created the scenario which exists here in the states already, with the impoverished and child ridden masses actually contributing less to that problem than the wealthy and childless while producing very nearly the entirety of all goods and services required to be a first world country.
Now, I doubt that anyone would read "enforce poverty on those in the developed world" and see a moral imperative. Just as a thing can be expedient and yet -not- a moral imperative, it can be expedient while we have a moral imperative not to do it. I would say that we, in the global north, have a moral imperative to stop pretending as though the filthy poors in childistan are the problem, they're not even the problem in our own countries. They're only a contributing factor in their own poverty, though having so much as one child is the singlemost productive indicator of poverty in our own country - because we have created that misery for them just as, and in the same way as we have created it for ourselves.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
