Not another morality post!!

[Mechaghostman2]

Expediency is a functional morality, and its based entirely on our evolved social behavior.

Right, murder is wrong because a species cannot survive if more are killed than can reproduce. So the species that see this as wrong are the ones that were able to continue their population.

We evolved language to communicate information with one another, and as such, lying renders language useless. So the groups that saw lying as wrong were the ones that benefited the most from language, prospered, and reproduced.

Now, over-population (has nothing to do with space, and everything to do with resources such as food, medicine, and water) is wrong because it will put a larger demand on necessities when supply may not be able to keep up. Wildlife conservationists know this, that's why they introduced wolves into Yellowstone National Park, to hunt the deer in order to keep their population limited so that they don't eat all of the forest.

Species that keep their populations relatively low tend to be the ones that survive the best, because they don't consume their resources faster than they can be replenished. Thus, their species gets to go on for another generation.

We're about half way there to experiencing a world-wide over-population problem. Those in first world countries get to just lazily and apathetically take all these comforts for granted. However, travel abroad and you'll see the effects of over-population. It's why so many in Africa have so little. 1st world countries will soon face that, too. Not only from over-taxing the resources, but also from the droughts brought on by climate change due to so many people needing so many things that pollute. (Climate deniers will be ignored, we have the peer-reviewed science papers on our side, you have idiot bloogers and political hacks on yours.)

Now, we don't have to cull anyone, obviously. There's methods that we can use to deal with this. China has a 1 child policy, and some countries in the middle east educate their women on the importance of contraception and how expensive having children can be. So they have no problem with families not having any more children than they can afford.

To prevent humans from going extinct, and thus to do the moral and expedient thing, we must educate people with proper sex ed. The importance of contraception, the giving away contraception to anyone that wants it, and yes, allowing women to have free access to abortions, or to getting their tubes tied, and free access for men to have a vasectomy.

It would be immoral not to do these things.

[no one]

Humans are going extinct. That's how it works.

[Yonadav]

Expediency is a functional morality, and its based entirely on our evolved social behavior.

Right, murder is wrong because a species cannot survive if more are killed than can reproduce. So the species that see this as wrong are the ones that were able to continue their population.

We evolved language to communicate information with one another, and as such, lying renders language useless. So the groups that saw lying as wrong were the ones that benefited the most from language, prospered, and reproduced.

Now, over-population (has nothing to do with space, and everything to do with resources such as food, medicine, and water) is wrong because it will put a larger demand on necessities when supply may not be able to keep up. Wildlife conservationists know this, that's why they introduced wolves into Yellowstone National Park, to hunt the deer in order to keep their population limited so that they don't eat all of the forest.

Species that keep their populations relatively low tend to be the ones that survive the best, because they don't consume their resources faster than they can be replenished. Thus, their species gets to go on for another generation.

We're about half way there to experiencing a world-wide over-population problem. Those in first world countries get to just lazily and apathetically take all these comforts for granted. However, travel abroad and you'll see the effects of over-population. It's why so many in Africa have so little. 1st world countries will soon face that, too. Not only from over-taxing the resources, but also from the droughts brought on by climate change due to so many people needing so many things that pollute. (Climate deniers will be ignored, we have the peer-reviewed science papers on our side, you have idiot bloogers and political hacks on yours.)

Now, we don't have to cull anyone, obviously. There's methods that we can use to deal with this. China has a 1 child policy, and some countries in the middle east educate their women on the importance of contraception and how expensive having children can be. So they have no problem with families not having any more children than they can afford.

To prevent humans from going extinct, and thus to do the moral and expedient thing, we must educate people with proper sex ed. The importance of contraception, the giving away contraception to anyone that wants it, and yes, allowing women to have free access to abortions, or to getting their tubes tied, and free access for men to have a vasectomy.

It would be immoral not to do these things.

Your reasoning is a little wonky on some things. It is those of us in the comfortable first world nations who are causing the most resource depletion and global warming. Resource depletion and global warming is more of a product of wealth than overpopulation. About ten percent of us do about ninety percent of depletion and global warming. Eradicate half the population of the world, and you'll make just about no difference.

Also, the drive to have more than two or three children goes away after a generation or two in which women don't die in childbirth and babies live to adulthood. We used to need every woman who was capable of surviving it to have many children just to get and average of two babies per couple to survive to adulthood. That was necessary to maintain a stable population, with very little growth. Here's a TED lecture about the drive to have more than two or three children going away the survival of babies to adulthood becomes common:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI

Next, you are going to have one hell of a reproductive rights fight on your hands when you start telling women that they are morally required to get abortions and have their tubes tied, and telling men that they have to get vasectomies. In principle, I personally don't have a problem with it, because I don't think that there is really any such thing as reproductive rights. But you are likely to get women just as angry at you for telling them that they are morally obligated to get abortions as you would be if you told them that they are morally obligated to not get abortions. Women tend to believe very strongly that they have reproductive rights.

China ended its one child policy. It now has a two child policy. And human rights organizations are still highly critical of China over reproductive rights. Somewhat amusingly, pro choice feminists were outraged when they heard that the Chinese were aborting female fetuses so that the one child that they could have would be a son. If you want to radically reduce population, then having very few daughters is the way to go. That's not why the Chinese were discriminating in favor of sons, but a more drastic population reduction is nonetheless the outcome of that.  Here is an article written by an environmental journalist, talking about why he never discusses overpopulation.

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environme...n-question

[The Grand Nudger]

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.

[Yonadav]

 

Now, I doubt that anyone would read "enforce poverty on those in the developed world" and see a moral imperative.   

Actually, quite a few see pretty much just that. We don't see it so much as enforcing poverty as drastically decreasing consumption. But yeah, a lot of us want to take inexpensive jet travel away, and we want to take cars away, and downsize homes, and such. People think that they will be impoverished if they don't have that stuff, but they don't know what poverty is, and they don't know how to enjoy simple things- which arguably impoverishes them.

[The Grand Nudger]

You modify the statement because the enforcement of poverty is not actually your goal or a moral imperative so far as you're concerned.   If we're addressing the contention dispassionately, taking those things away will not enforce poverty (most of us, both in the states and globally, either do not have or possess limited access to them already), and taking some of them may well decrease it.   To use an explicitly socialist response, a massive reallocation of the current levels of consumption could completely eliminate global poverty, and reduce carbon emissions related to the then-unnecessary transportation of consumed goods.  Even assuming that this is not a significant reduction..it could at least satisfy the twin goals of reducing poverty and impacting climate change in ways that putting pressure on rates of reproduction doesn't and couldn't.

---

As an unbridled capitalist counterpoint, one cannot have the fullest benefits of the free movement of capital in the absence of the free movement of labor.   In order for a market response to effect the ends of discreet government effort..people would have to be free to move to wherever the market is suggesting and, once there, capable of consuming those poverty and consumption reducing goods and services.   So there's the most expedient way for the free market nutball's ideas to work.  Let people move with the money that invisible hands our bootstraps to environmental utopia.  

Expedient ideas can also be batshit crazy, lol.