The world's population should be at most 50 million.

[onlinebiker]

Humanity faces problems......so lets sterilize the poor!



Allow me to suggest that the poor aren't the source of humanity's problems in those regards we've been discussing.  Think things are rough now....wait until Cocksucker Mcprepschool gets control of entire generational demographics at a go.  We worry that there isn't enough to go around(there is)..but their solution to that p Mkroblem will be to eliminate each increasingly wealthy rung of The Poor™ so as to leave more rape and pillage for the wealthiest remainder.

Business as usual, sure, but IDK why anyone would want to cosign it.

See anybody forcing this?

Voluntary, capice??


It is likely the poorest will take advantage of such a program - and I doubt any will have any regrets for doing so. 

It might even be a good idea to offer twice as much - as college tuition.

..

Or do you think poor people WANT to have kids they can ill afford??

[The Grand Nudger]

See anybody forcing this?

Voluntary, capice??

Sure, sure....we can already get voluntarily sterilized, though..and theres no clear reason why the state would have a compelling interest in incentivizing that.  

It is likely the poorest will take advantage of such a program - and I doubt any will have any regrets for doing so. 

It might even be a good idea to offer twice as much - as college tuition.

Two problems, already.  Firstly, people have trouble paying tuition already..finding and then awarding twice that amount to people for literally doing nothing seems like a poor return on our tax investment.  Secondly, an economic inducement in the face of poverty strays away from the fundamentally voluntary nature of the proposal. It becomes deeply coercive. The same simply cant be said for economic assistence to parents...as no amount of having children will lift one up and out of poverty. Our government isn't that generous, lol. Just as a sidebar, you from the US or elsewhere? I;ve heard other welfare systems described and I can see where people living under those might be coming from..though just changing their welfare system seems to be the less drastic solution.

Or do you think poor people WANT to have kids they can ill afford??

Many do, sure.  Like the option being open to you to be sterilized, we seek to preserve that option for them.  If either of the two of you need government assistance..it's the folks with kids.

I'm still stuck on solving what problems we have before we go floating around the idea of getting rid of all the poors. Things like climate change and resource consumption, for example, are not issues of poor people creating a shortfall. They're the ones suffering it, lol.

[Mister Agenda]

That's the best part, if you don't want kids, you don't have to have them.  Doesn't take an incentive, doesn't require a poor fucking ideological commitment.  

I know..I know, you wont get all that sweet sweet free money the gov just gives us parenting types.  Imma gold plate my toilet this weekend with all that filthy lucre.

The worst part is that we know not enough people will choose to limit their reproduction soon enough to avert the dire consequences, which will fall disproportionately on the poor.

---

See anybody forcing this?

Voluntary, capice??

Sure, sure....we can already get voluntarily sterilized, though..and theres no clear reason why the state would have a compelling interest in incentivizing that.  

Averting food and/or water shortages might be considered compelling by some state actors.

---

Although personally, I think free birth control and sterilization would go a long way towards reducing family size of people in poverty, even without further incentive. I'd like to see numbers on that where it's been tried, though. Religion is likely to be a strong barrier to taking advantage of such programs.

[The Grand Nudger]

The worst part is that we know not enough people will choose to limit their reproduction soon enough to avert the dire consequences, which will fall disproportionately on the poor.

Adding insult to injury, their procreation isn't what caused the problem to begin with.  It's a giant shit sandwich, for sure.  Not so much for the state, though..because the only reason it would act on the metric of "too many people" is if it were much more specific.  Too many usians in the us.  Thing is...if it weren't for immigration..we'd be below the pop replacement rate, and the same pattern follows in most of the developed world.  Immigrants, themselves, within a few generations, mirror the native norms.

Meanwhile, it is our relatively non-breeding (first world) selves that are causing these problems.  It's unclear why reducing the number of breeders, or poor breeders, would help to solve a problem that they are not significantly contributing to...or at least, it would seem like there would be a hell of alot more direct and efficacious ways to handle whatever issue it is we seek to address.  

---

Although personally, I think free birth control and sterilization would go a long way towards reducing family size of people in poverty, even without further incentive. I'd like to see numbers on that where it's been tried, though. Religion is likely to be a strong barrier to taking advantage of such programs.

Definitely.  You can take a look at the numbers on states that promote actual sex ed and access to both contraceptives and reproductive care and see that the number of single teenage mothers is massively lower than bible thumping states.

---

-avoiding food and water shortages is a distribution issue, not a "too many people" issue.  We already produce more than enough food to feed the entire world, for example..and yet people still starve. Hell, people starve here..or are severely malnourished, even though we don't have too many people, we do have a shitload of food..and we do have considerable amounts of money -and- supplemental nutritional assistance.

[onlinebiker]

See anybody forcing this?

Voluntary, capice??

Sure, sure....we can already get voluntarily sterilized, though..and theres no clear reason why the state would have a compelling interest in incentivizing that.  

It is likely the poorest will take advantage of such a program - and I doubt any will have any regrets for doing so. 

It might even be a good idea to offer twice as much - as college tuition.

Two problems, already.  Firstly, people have trouble paying tuition already..finding and then awarding twice that amount to people for literally doing nothing seems like a poor return on our tax investment.  Secondly, an economic inducement in the face of poverty strays away from the fundamentally voluntary nature of the proposal.  It becomes deeply coercive.  The same simply cant be said for economic assistence to parents...as no amount of having children will lift one up and out of poverty.  Our government isn't that generous, lol.  Just as a sidebar, you from the US or elsewhere?  I;ve heard other welfare systems described and I can see where people living under those might be coming from..though just changing their welfare system seems to be the less drastic solution.  

Or do you think poor people WANT to have kids they can ill afford??

Many do, sure.  Like the option being open to you to be sterilized, we seek to preserve that option for them.  If either of the two of you need government assistance..it's the folks with kids.

I'm still stuck on solving what problems we have before we go floating around the idea of getting rid of all the poors.  Things like climate change and resource consumption, for example, are not issues of poor people creating a shortfall.  They're the ones suffering it, lol.

" no clear reason"????

Holy shit.

There' s almost 9 billion reasons.

Every major problem on this planet can go back to one cause - human overpopulation.

If we had 1/10th of the population we do - global climate change would become a much lesser threat. Starvation would cease to exist. Alternative energy would be closer to reality.

[The Grand Nudger]

" no clear reason"????

Holy shit.

There' s almost 9 billion reasons.

Every major problem on this planet can go back to one cause - human overpopulation.

If we had 1/10th of the population we do - global climate change would become a much lesser threat. Starvation would cease to exist. Alternative energy would be closer to reality.

Right, no clear reason..because the state doesn't have a compelling interest on account of the world having lots of people.  The state is, firstly, accountable for and to it's own.  There aren't too many americans.  There aren't even -enough- americans.  That's what it means when immigration is the only thing keeping us up over pop replacement (and when we require x amount of guest or illegal labor).

I strongly doubt that you'd be able to pin overpopulation as the cause of every major problem on this planet. Why would having 1/10th of the pop, for example..make global warming less of a threat? Less than 10% of the human population is driving the thing to begin with. Why would starvation cease to exist? There's already enough food, people still starve. Why would alternative energy be closer to reality with a -smaller- market of potential consumers?

-and why, after we address those puzzlers...would we start with the poor..anyway?

---

adden

To help you see how I'm approaching this, here's some trivia.  It's estimated that the worlds billion most impoverished people contribute a whopping 3% to our carbon footprint.  If those 1 billion people were disappeared...a significant portion of the total pop (through, in your case, a program of voluntary controlled breeding with a economic incentive)...that wouldn't make a dent in climate change.

Since we've been keeping stats on grain yields, the worlds population has increased roughly four or five times.  The average yield of an acre of corn...eight to ten times.  

The most limiting factor in the rollout of alterantive energy is the existence of a sufficient number of customers or consumers to make break even costs (and here we'd have to assume hefty tax subsidy, tax revenue...also determined in the aggregate of taxpayers).  

With that in mind, can you see how a person might not find the malthusian religion all that convincing? 

---

-and a fun aside or the pop control types.  What, or whom..exactly, are we supposed to save the world for..if not for children?

[Alan V]

I strongly doubt that you'd be able to pin overpopulation as the cause of every major problem on this planet.  Why would having 1/10th of the pop, for example..make global warming less of a threat?

I = P A T

The environmental impact (I) equals the population (P) times the affluence (A) times the technology (T) used to acquire it.

Population is a multiplier. One-tenth of the population means you have reduced the impact, whatever it is, by nine-tenths.

Similarly we can reduce our affluence or change our technologies to have lower impacts and thus reduce climate change.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_%3D_PAT

[The Grand Nudger]

I strongly doubt that you'd be able to pin overpopulation as the cause of every major problem on this planet.  Why would having 1/10th of the pop, for example..make global warming less of a threat?

I = P A T

The environmental impact (I) equals the population (P) times the affluence (A) times the technology (T) used to acquire it.

Population is a multiplier.  One-tenth of the population means you have reduced the impact, whatever it is, by nine-tenths.

The poorest 1 billion are 3% of our carbon footprint (and I'm rounding up bils here to say 10bil, since we'll be there sooner or later), there's one tenth of our -future- population that would not reduce impact of climate change by nine tenths if it were completely removed.  

Similarly we can reduce our affluence or change our technologies to have lower impacts and thus reduce climate change.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_%3D_PAT

I'd go with changing our tech and fixing our distribution before I told the poors to stop fucking like that would actually do something.

[onlinebiker]

" no clear reason"????

Holy shit.

There' s almost 9 billion reasons.

Every major problem on this planet can go back to one cause - human overpopulation.

If we had 1/10th of the population we do - global climate change would become a much lesser threat. Starvation would cease to exist. Alternative energy would be closer to reality.

Right, no clear reason..because the state doesn't have a compelling interest on account of the world having lots of people.  The state is, firstly, accountable for and to it's own.  There aren't too many americans.  There aren't even -enough- americans.  That's what it means when immigration is the only thing keeping us up over pop replacement (and when we require x amount of guest or illegal labor).

I strongly doubt that you'd be able to pin overpopulation as the cause of every major problem on this planet.  Why would having 1/10th of the pop, for example..make global warming less of a threat?  Less than 10% of the human population is driving the thing to begin with.  Why would starvation cease to exist?  There's already enough food, people still starve.  Why would alternative energy be closer to reality with a -smaller- market of potential consumers?

-and why, after we address those puzzlers...would we start with the poor..anyway?

---

adden

To help you see how I'm approaching this, here's some trivia.  It's estimated that the worlds billion most impoverished people contribute a whopping 3% to our carbon footprint.  If those 1 billion people were disappeared...a significant portion of the total pop (through, in your case, a program of voluntary controlled breeding with a economic incentive)...that wouldn't make a dent in climate change.

Since we've been keeping stats on grain yields, the worlds population has increased roughly four or five times.  The average yield of an acre of corn...eight to ten times.  

The most limiting factor in the rollout of alterantive energy is the existence of a sufficient number of customers or consumers to make break even costs (and here we'd have to assume hefty tax subsidy, tax revenue...also determined in the aggregate of taxpayers).  

With that in mind, can you see how a person might not find the malthusian religion all that convincing? 

You're overlooking some rather hard facts.

1. The reason we got better at growing food - is because wee came up with better ways of turning oil into food. Take a look where all that high nitrogen fertilizer comes from - it' s petrochemically based. Consequently you are freeing up more CO2 to grow the food that' s feeding the masses. That means more CO2 into the astmosphere.

2. The limiting factor on alternative energy is demand. Have you any idea what kind of power the world consumes? Start small - look at one aluminum refining plant. It takes GIGAWATTS of electricity to operate one. You know how big an area of solar cells that would take? I had a rather sharp engineer tell me once that after doing the math - he found one aluminum refinery would take a solar array of roughly the size of Kansas. 

There is no downside to a smaller population.

There' s a multitude to a larger one.

[The Grand Nudger]

You're overlooking some rather hard facts.

1. The reason we got better at growing food - is because wee came up with better ways of turning oil into food. Take a look where all that high nitrogen fertilizer comes from - it' s petrochemically based. Consequently you are freeing up more CO2 to grow the food that' s feeding the masses. That means more CO2 into the astmosphere.

Ish, that bump was from the 30's till the 90's.  Since the 90s, biotech is the major contributor (and the trend increase is being maintained by it).  Regardless, can you see why I'm not particularly worried about people starving -because there are too many people-..when the rate of population growth is half the rate of yield increase in staple crops?  That's not counting novel arrangements or more efficient production methodologies.

(we could cut oil out of the loop entirely, but we'd have to change our eating habits and the distribution network, people will continue to starve for the same reason they do now.)

2. The limiting factor on alternative energy is demand. Have you any idea what kind of power the world consumes? Start small - look at one aluminum refining plant. It takes GIGAWATTS of electricity to operate one. You know how big an area of solar cells that would take? I had a rather sharp engineer tell me once that after doing the math - he found one aluminum refinery would take a solar array of roughly the size of Kansas. 

Demand is a consumer metric.  You need consumers.  An aluminum plant with no customers doesn't need alternative energy anymore than a rural coop with noone who will pay the diff does.

There is no downside to a smaller population.

There' s a multitude to a larger one.

Now you're just being ridiculous.