Poll: Maximum Children Allowed per Couple

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XMark

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Jan 25, 2010
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Population growth rate has been dropping for decades, and is expected to level out by around 2050 (somewhere in the neighborhood of 9-10 billion) and then maybe even start falling after that.
 

Alexnader

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May 18, 2009
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okyVdtCP said:
Alexnader said:
okyVdtCP said:
Christ, what the hell is wrong with you people?
You really want to limit how many children a couple is allowed to have? How do you want to enforce this?
There shouldn't be a limit. No government should be telling its people how many children they are allowed to have. If you think they should, then you're an idiot.
snip
Did you read your post? Like, out-loud? The entire idea of that is never going to be implemented and restricts peoples rights.
It's not even 1st world countries that are the issue with overpopulation. It's thirdworld countries.
Any limit on population is going to restrict people's rights. Even mere fiscal disincentives to procreation restrict people's rights and discriminate in favour of the rich who can afford to take them. Heaven forbid a government ever restrict someone's "rights", it's not like every government in the world already denies what are intuitively inalienable rights to people. For instance, marriage equality. At least there'd actually be a decent reason to restrict the "right" to fart out babies.

The situation that Kim Stanley Robinson's idea is meant for is a desperate one, where the longevity of developed nations has risen so far that even the decline in our desire to pop out 5 children per family cannot counteract catastrophic population growth. Overpopulation in developed countries relative to developed ones is a problem that will more than likely go away as those developing nations improve their standards of living. The somewhat obvious problem of what we'd do if population continued to grow to critical levels world wide is a far more sticky problem, as it deals with certain absolutes like how many people our planet can reasonably sustain.

Barring some kind of cure for age related death (the scenario in Kim Stanley Robinson's books), you and I will not be alive by the time this scenario plays out. As sustainability measures will delay our civilisation from reaching the maximum number of humans. To claim with confidence that this solution will "never be implemented" is impossible.
 

Clive Howlitzer

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Jan 27, 2011
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No limit. It generally doesn't work. Don't you eventually end up with an enlarging population of elderly that you can't support?
 
Aug 25, 2009
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The real problem with overpopulation is that we have too many old people and not enough young people.

So really the answer is 'have more children and euthanise the old.'

But that would be wrong.
 

Adeptus Aspartem

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Jul 25, 2011
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If you want to stop the growin' population help the poor countries.

Reduce poverty, empower women in these lands, give them jobs/houses etc. and their birth/deathrate will both drop significantly.

If the world had 2.13 children per mother (thats how its counted) we'd stagnate. In Europe some countries are even under that, just because people are to busy doing other things.
Specially the part of women in society makes a huge diffrence. Basically if they're able to make a career etc. it's less likely that they get children and they'll definitly get less children.

Help the poor. It would solve probably all of our biggest worldwide problems. Except for global warming, that would probably become way worse.
But in the last decade India and China became much stronger countires economic-wise, go figure what happens if those 2 billion guys start to drive a car, use the same amount of electronics etc. as we.
But thats another topic.
 

MammothBlade

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Oct 12, 2011
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I only want to have two children myself. Having been raised as the older of two children, it's what I'm comfortable with. I wouldn't really be happy having just one child either, partly due to the perception that only children grow up spoilt, partly because it's good to have a sibling. That said a third child is acceptable.
 

lunavixen

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Jan 2, 2012
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As long as the parents can financially and emotionally support the children there shouldn't be a limit on how many kids a family can have (it's personal choice), personally though I do think any more than 4 is going a bit far, I think 1 or 2 kids is fine.

Our population is already increasing at a large rate, especially since the life expectancy of humans has increased in the last two decades along with a declining death rate in the developed worlds, it's not sustainable in the long run.
 

CrimsonBlaze

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Aug 29, 2011
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People should be allowed to have as many children as they want, so long as the children are well taken care of, they are given a lot of love and attention to, and are provided with the bare essentials to living a good, healthy life.
 

JanatUrlich

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Apr 24, 2009
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If the government tried to tell me what I can and can't do with my own fucking womb I would leave the country.

CAPTCA: be nice. NO.
 

Talvrae

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Dec 8, 2009
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I won't answer that, there should not have a limit period, the state have no business in deciding for us how many children we can have
 

Veldel

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Apr 28, 2010
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Lucem712 said:
I'd imagine the only way for perfect population control would be structured like the society in 'The Giver', with births being controlled and deaths being controlled as well.
Shudder....

I DONT EVER WANA LIVE IN THAT WORLD....

OT: I think as many as people can handle and afford.
 

Khada

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Jan 8, 2009
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What's horrible is that stupid people think it's their "right" to have 7 children simply because they are selfish, socially violent idiots.

Finite space, finite resources, FINITE PEOPLE. Either we read a book and learn to curb our spawning habits or starvation, poverty and war will do it for us.

People should aim for a max of 2 children. If you happen to have twins/triplets or adopt then that's fine, it will be countered by the people who don't have children or who only have one.
 

Emperor Nat

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Jun 15, 2011
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Regardless if I agree with someone's lifestyle, I don't think you should ever put a "max allowed children" law or regulation into place. Because that's where people start to become statistics, and we get incidents similar to those happening in China at the moment.

Edit: That said, I do think it's not sensible to have more children than you're capable of feeding. Personally I'd say that more than 4 kids is probably too much for most parents to handle.
 

Black-Toof

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Jan 8, 2011
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I agree with Khada.

It's not a matter of whether it should be capped or not, run by the government or not.

It's that PEOPLE should show restraint.
I've said before, having triplets is fine, adopting extra is fine.


As for the argument of as many as they can take care of:
Because a man & woman have large incomes doesn't mean that we suddenly have more room or food, it just means that they can buy that room or food more easily.
Which is great for their children but is essentially puts more demand out from others.

An extreme would be; the scarcity of food is more apparent and therefore richer families are able to buy it whilst poorer families cant.
This is basic laws of 'the Market', as something becomes harder to obtain the price goes up.

And although the above example is an extreme one.
Things can only escalate unless the PEOPLE show restraint.

I'm hearing people saying I came from a large family (I imagine 5 kids) and I want to have the same.
Well that there's the problem, if each child has 5 then Bam! that's 25 new kids.
Each one of those has 5 then that's 125 in 3 generations.
Unlikely sure, but clearly avoidable.

My mother came from a 8 child family, So, YES, my ancestors are responsible too, but I'm a brother of 1 (2 kids family) and plan to only have 2 children. If each of my aunts had 2 children, then that's 14 kids. That's still a 'large family' you just need to socialise with your cousins.
(Although admittedly we don't)

It pretty simple I'd have thought.
 

willsham45

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Apr 14, 2009
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You cannot tell someone what they can and cannot do in this sort of case, If I want 10 babies that should be for me to want and you to only care about the noise and smell.

The real question on growth is to look at where the biggest population growth is and I will tell you it is not the developed countries. Problems arise when too many people are in one place and they cannot leave it.
 

Tono Makt

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Mar 24, 2012
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R3dF41c0n said:
I'm in favor of a two child limit however there isn't a way enforce it without infringing on basic human rights.

It would have to be a choice made by the couple. Sadly most people think they live in a vacuum and their actions have no effect on their community, neighbors, and fellow human beings.
This is a similar argument I use in discussions with people who have chosen to have no children; our society in the West is utterly dependent on there being a slightly growing population to pay into the various medical and social programs which the elderly tend to draw on more than younger people. (not their fault that aging tends to make people dependent on others, just the way it is.) So when people choose to have 0 children, they're affecting everyone around them by forcing us to have more children to keep the tax revenue high enough to pay for the services that are needed, or that we will need to take a more risky solution (financially more than anything else) of bringing in enough immigrants to make up for the lack of native-born growth. (the financial risk is that most immigrants cost the country money to bring here; aid for assimilating, learning the language, if relatives like spouses and children come with them they will need aid as well, etc.)

re: OT

As many children as the family want to raise, and can afford to raise. In no way, shape or form do I want any government deciding how many children Mrs. Makt and I can have, or Little Baby Makt(s) can have in the future. Also going to toss my agreement with the posters talking about how countries that have more access to family planning don't need to have any limit set as they limit themselves quite severely (see the preceding paragraph), and there's no real way to control the population of the countries that need population controls except by mass murder, forced abortions/sterilizations, and a damn near totalitarian government.