Overpopulation: You get to cast the deciding vote.

[Pyrrho]

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This is difficult. Obviously it's a very extreme and specific scenario, which makes a lot of assumptions about there being no other workable solution, which seems extremely unlikely. That's fine with me, just making a note of that. I personally wouldn't like the government to force anything on anyone that isn't completely necessary. But needs must as the devil drives (!?). The government already forces a fair amount of stuff on us in the interests of society.

In this unthinkable state of affairs, I do think the analogy with vaccinations is somewhat valid. It would seem an obscene comparison in today's world, but the world in question is not today's world. Priorities can and must change. Refusing to accept the urgent need for action in the hypothetical is somewhat akin to theists refusing to answer questions about "what if God told you to kill". So in that spirit, I'll say the question is "as silly" as that perhaps, but I'll address it anyway.

If this was to be done, sterilisation as part of the birthing process would make the most sense, but it's not that straightforward because you have the males to consider. (See below.)

So I'm not sure yet, I'll give it more thought.

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There is a bit of a problem though. When we say "people" are limited in how many children they can have, how is this counted? Most of you know by now... wait... Young children stop reading! You need a man and a woman in general to make a new human, but the woman parent gives birth to it (in the majority of cases, I'll ignore surrogates for the moment). Does this count towards an individual quota for both parents, or as a couple? If it's individual, we have the problem of the couple splitting up and then getting together with others. How do we make decisions then for the new couples? And of course, there would have to be a lot of DNA testing going on to prove individual qoutas, particular for the fathers, when they deny involvement.

If it's done regarding the couple, then we have problems too because couples break up. So this would have to default to individual quotas again unless we brand the mothers only.

Sorry for not responding earlier.  I will give you the same sort of response I gave earlier:

...
The story would have to be much more detailed to give definitive answers to those questions.  ...

How about this:  If you vote to force people to not have more children, you get to pick all of those things for yourself, in any way you like.  We can leave it that way for the purpose of the poll, and, if you wish, you can tell us how you would like these things to be arranged.

You might also be interested in this bit, which explains the origin of this poll:

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This is motivated by posts in another thread.  Specifically, this thread:

http://atheistforums.org/thread-34562.html

My first post there:

http://atheistforums.org/thread-34562-po...#pid987566

The question asked of me:

http://atheistforums.org/thread-34562-po...#pid987573


In this thread, I have set it up specifically for the question raised there.  I would hope that the hypothetical of this thread would not happen.  As for how realistic it is, I do not know.  Some people seem determined to not use birth control, no matter what.  But I do not know what percentage of the population they represent, and consequently do not know how likely the hypothetical in the opening post is to actually occur.  But for the purposes of this thread, I do not care what the likelihood is.  It is simply a question of how such a situation should be dealt with, if it were to come about.

Indeed, I willfully made it idealized, in that I do not expect a single government of the world any time soon, but wanted to simplify the decision so that immigration was not an issue, and also to make it so that the decision would actually have the desired effect overall.  If, in the present world, one country curbs its population, that does not cause other countries to do likewise, and so the use of resources and effects on the environment and the likely starvation of many will not be stopped by the actions of one country in the world as it is now.

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