breeding like rabbits

[Mystical]

Yes but not setting any limits and growing large amounts of children to fend for themselves has come to show devastating effects on entire generations of overly populated underly educated and massively unemployed generations of people whose parents have no long term planning for massive populations of people and can't provid medical care or social services to its people.

[DramaQueen]

Yes but not setting any limits and growing large amounts of children to fend for themselves has come to show devastating effects on entire generations of overly populated underly educated and massively unemployed generations of people whose parents have no long term planning for massive populations of people and can't provid medical care or social services to its people.

For example egypt.

[Mystical]

I'm not saying we should impose population limits. I'm saying having a populations belief system be: Have babies! With no ability to support that plan, is ignorance and a problem for everybody who will have to toss money into human mercy payments that only ends up fortifying the stupid people who enacted these policies in the first place. So.. Why are they saying have lots of babies? I think its to get monetary support for themselves at the expense of starving children and a purposefully ignorant population.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yes but not setting any limits and growing large amounts of children to fend for themselves has come to show devastating effects on entire generations of overly populated underly educated and massively unemployed generations of people whose parents have no long term planning for massive populations of people and can't provid medical care or social services to its people.

Wouldn't argue at all - but that doesn't change the nature of the suggestion. The shittier conditions are the fewer options one has, strength-in-numbers grant more opportunity for the individual lineage - and generally doesn't concern itself for the overall population. Perhaps it would be best if a certain group of people auto-euthanize their family line - but why not the wealthy and well to do, rather than the poor? After all, aren't they commonly the ones consuming the vast majority of whatever resources are available while simultaneously contributing to or establishing the conditions of poverty for the "others"?

Having children is an awfully convoluted way to go about securing money - there are easier ways, and considering the pitiful sums involved - I think that you may just be falling for some common conservative spin on this one Luckie. The most heinous "overpopulation" issues occur in places with no social safety net to speak of anyway. I don't think your suggestion is really an accurate representation of their motives. -I think- they're just trying to survive, to live life and do what human beings (and all life) does. I'm not even willing to -suggest- that they stop doing that, no matter how well intentioned my reasons may be.

[DramaQueen]

What does Good Book say about all of this?

[Michael]

A common theme in history is that the part of society that breeds less generally considers, rightly or wrongly, the part of society that breeds more to be inferior, and to be a problem. This has always caused tension. Perhaps one of the most influential writings was Thomas Malthus's 1798 treatise, "An Essay on the Principle of Population" in which he noted that population increase was exponential whereas food production increase was arithmetic (i.e. the population would increase 4X for every 2X increase in food production). It wasn't clear how he derived those figures. Malthus suggested that uncontrolled population increase would lead to war and famine, and noted that the poorest bred earlier and more. He started a movement concerned not only with how the population was growing, but in which group it was growing.

Malthus, as a related aside, was a key inspiration for one of the most significant scientific theories of all time....

"In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The results of this would be the formation of a new species. Here, then I had at last got a theory by which to work". Charles Darwin, from his autobiography. (1876)

Malthus opposed the "poor laws" which provided welfare for the poor, on the basis that, if poverty were relieved, the poor would just have more children and society would be pushed back again into poverty and food shortages. Move the clock on to the later part of the 19th century and we find Francis Galton drawing on Malthus, Darwin and Mendl. Galton was the first to propose that intelligence was largely inherited (Darwin, for whatever reason, thought intelligence was down purely to education). Galton noted that the more intelligent waited until later to have children and had fewer children, whereas the less intelligent would have children earlier and would have more children. He proposed, echoing much earlier work from Plato, that society should control breeding (Plato, foreshadowing Darwin, had noted that farmers knew which animals to breed to make the best herd, so why didn't society do likewise). The trend, Galton said, must be reversed. Intelligent people must be matched to mates earlier in life and encouraged to breed more, and the less intelligent delayed in breeding. Marie Stopes took it a step further and proposed enforced sterilisation for the feeble minded and enforced birth control for the poor classes. Galton coined a phrase for this new science of planned breeding; he called it Eugenics. Eugenics was embraced almost completely by the elite of the time (with the almost singular exception of G.K.Chesteron). The famous author George Bernard Shaw, at a meeting of the Eugenics Education Society of 3 March 1910, suggested the need to use a "lethal chamber" which used lethal but painless gas to rid society of those that did not provide a net contribution. It is unclear now whether we was serious or being ironic and warning of the dangers of going too far. But it was clear that his words were sadly all too prescient as Adolf Hitler took the academic thoughts of the British Eugenic movement (of which even Churchill was a member) and turned them into a dreadful reality.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Perhaps one of the most influential writings was Thomas Malthus's 1798 treatise, "An Essay on the Principle of Population" in which he noted that population increase was exponential whereas food production increase was arithmetic (i.e. the population would increase 4X for every 2X increase in food production). It wasn't clear how he derived those figures.

They're not making land any more ... and making land arable and productive is much more time-consuming than making newborn mouths to feed.

[Michael]

Yes Thump. Nobody disputed the general thrust of Malthus's predictions. People questioned the precision of his maths as he made quite a few precise predictions which, with hindsight, didn't come to pass. But, yes, everyone could see the basic truth in what he was saying, even if his maths was perhaps trying to be more precise than warranted (he was a great fan and advocate of Newton, and was looking for the same level of precision in what turns out to be more more uncertain projections). He didn't, for example, foresee the huge increases in food production per acre that careful selective breeding of plants would bring.

Sorry, I should have been clearer there.

[The Grand Nudger]

Thankfully we no longer have to find more land, or make it arable or productive. There would, absolutely, come a point whereby traditional field based ag was incapable of supporting an increasing population. Back when we were limited in that manner it was a legitimate concern, now that we know that this is just about -the- most resource wasteful way to engage in food production, not so much.

[Michael]

By the way, thump, I can't really tell from the resolution of the photo - is that an SG you are playing?