Elcarsh said:
Melopahn said:
Id say do 1 per couple for the next 25 years, then bump it up to 2! We need lower the population a little and let the current old generation (the ones that are all suffering from FAS) die a bit so we can straighten out the world. It will be easy to solve the worlds problems when all the elderly people born with brain damage gtfo.
Except that is a complete and utter lie. What the western world has a problem with is the exact opposite; too few children, leading to a crisis of too few young people to pay for too many pensioners. To say that we have a problem with overpopulation isn't just stretching the truth, it's a downright lie.
I'm not picking your post personally, but you mentioned an idea I wanted to springboard off of.
So as the population expands the number of elderly per generation increases. Thus, the population must continue to expand to provide youth to pay for the elderly unless we have absolutely no population growth or decay (equal elderly/youth for every generation, which won't probably happen). So is the population under this idea supposed to grow continually?
If that's the case, then what happens maybe centuries from now when the population continues to grow on finite space? Also, what happens when, inevitably, the population booms at a certain time? Won't the next generation have to be larger in order to accommodate them, as we're seeing with the post-war baby boomers in the United States right now? This sounds to me like a formula for ever-continuing and often rapid population growth.
Furthermore, people keep saying that we have plenty of space on this Earth for more people. My question is, how many people would want to live in the frozen wastes of northern Asia or the barren Sahara desert? Realistically, the Earth itself is only, what, 30% land? And how much of that is habitable? Furthermore, how much is
comfortably habitable?
Isn't a more likely scenario that, under this plan, the population will continue to expand in places where the population density is already high rather than in places where we see room for expansion since cities already have many people to procreate? Are any of those desiring 3+ kids willing to move to the more "open" spaces? I personally doubt it.
From where I see it, the circumstance is bipolar: either we infinitely grow in places with already high population density or we cut population growth, accept the economic contraction for the pensioners, and then focus on having healthy, sustainable population growth with period contractions, which will be much more manageable if we limit growth speed, and have better management of our finite resources.
Or we flee to space.