Poll: Would you support a human Genophage?

[Pandabearparade]

I'm skeptical of the entire premise your question is based upon. There is a lot of unused arable land in the world. Exponential population growth is something humans will eventually have to find a solution for, but we're centuries away from the point of having no land for farming left.

 

[ccggenius12]

I feel that a competent sex robot would do more to stifle population growth than a disease, and it's far more likely to be produced.

 

[Darkmantle]

I had an interesting conversation today about overpopulation. It's not really a point of contention that there are (or soon will be) more humans than the planet can comfortably sustain. At 8ish billion, food and resources already come at the cost of exploitation and wholesale destruction of Earth?s ecology, and soon it will reach the point where there simply isn't any more left to consume. Eventually, barring some major technological intervention (spacetravel, etc.) we're going to drive ourselves to extinction. Anyway, I was thinking that in order to reverse population growth and the strain on our resources, one hypothetical option could be a genophage type fertility control administered to the human race, as with the Krogan in Mass Effect. Something completely random and non-biased, to avoid the obvious ethical and sociological issues with having any kind of selective cull. And obviously not to the extreme as in Mass Effect, but significantly reduced fertility, say one in three. I don't mean to come off misanthropic and anti-humanist (though humanism really hasn't done the planet any favours), just speculating on a solution to a problem. Yes I am aware this is not an absolutely urgently pressing world issue quite yet, and that the technology is not even close to existent, it is merely a thought provoking topic.

So what do you think? Would you be in favour?

or we could just educate everyone. As a population gets more and more educated, they come closer and closer to a replacement birthrate. most first world countries are almost there if not there already, but most if not all third world countries have population skyrocketing. much better than a genophage.

 

[WoW Killer]

The problem with that is, most overpopulation issues aren't a result of more people being born (or shagging as you so beautifully put it).

Oh, birth rates haven't increased no, in fact they've decreased particularly in the West due to contraceptive use (shagging rates are constant of course ). But what's also decreased over time is infant mortality rates. The crucial stat is how many children you have that reach adulthood. Say in the past you might have 6 children but 3 die during childhood; that's the same as having 3 children and all reaching adulthood.

But the reason you get population explosions is because each generation has more people to begin with; it's like a geometric progression. Going from 6 billion to 7 billion is a 16.7% increase. Going from 7 billion to 8.1 billion (100 million more) is a 15.7% increase. Your percentage rate of increase (actual, as in births to deaths) can be decreasing year on year, but the flat increase may still be increased each year. Given that it's taken around 13 years to go from 6 billion to 7 billion people, going from 7 billion to 8 billion will likely take less than 13 years, and so on.

Ultimately so long as the average person has more than two children that reach adulthood, then the worlds population will increase.

On topic: No, I don't support direct population control, just education; lots and lots of education. I do believe benefits systems could do with a tweak regarding large families, but a Chinese style tax on each child above one seems a bit harsh.

 

[AngloDoom]

I'd prefer some sort of application process before you could have a child. Like, everyone is born infertile, and then they get their fertility 'unlocked' upon passing a test that measures how good a parent you would make, as well as whether you are financially able to support that said child.

Not that I think overpopulation is a problem, I've no idea on the subject, but I think it's weird that some people may have difficulty proving they are legally able to purchase alcohol or drive a car, but can bring a child into the world.

I used to like this, but then I realized that meant that the state would be given nearly absolute control over the primary agent of socialization. I don't like the implications of that. While parenting is incredibly important and therefore not something we want untrustworthy people to engage in, it is that importance that makes controlling it so powerful.

Agreed, it's not an ideal set of events. I was undecided on it at first, until I heard a mother saying she wouldn't buy her children educational toys because "I don't want her to be a boff" (boff = smart person).

It made me do a sad.

Still, there's no real 'good' answer to it all. People only learn how to be a parent off of their parents and off of absorbing random influences from the media as it is. I think if the guidelines were loose enough to take into account different styles of parenting, but rigid enough to not become completely meaningless, I'd be all for it - sort of like a dissertation.
It's unlikely we'll ever get to the point where we can trust authorities with our children like that, though. I'll remain optimistic, though.

 

[Evil Smurf]

I think we should all euthanize people over 60 years old so that we keep the population down, oh lets nuke china too. SARCASM

 

[The Pinray]

I think I'm more in favor of practicing safe sex and not having children that you can't afford.

 

[Vivi22]

Absolutely not. Nature has it's own mechanisms for population control, and should the population actually reach unsustainable levels it will self-right through things such as war, famine, and disease to name a few. There's absolutely no reason to cripple human ability to reproduce and survive such very real potential future dangers simply to make the process more palatable. Because frankly, dealing with straying too far into over population shouldn't be neat and tidy. It should be really fucking traumatic so future generations are given pause.

Moreover, the idea that humans are even capable of competently managing our numbers by manipulating our own biology is frightening because we are remarkably bad at doing such things and not having it blow up in our faces as often as everything turns out fine.

And frankly, all this says nothing of the fact that in first world nations populations would generally decline without immigration. You want to curb the population boom, let's raise the standard of living in third world countries and start spreading the word about birth control.

 

[Revnak_v1legacy]

I'd prefer some sort of application process before you could have a child. Like, everyone is born infertile, and then they get their fertility 'unlocked' upon passing a test that measures how good a parent you would make, as well as whether you are financially able to support that said child.

Not that I think overpopulation is a problem, I've no idea on the subject, but I think it's weird that some people may have difficulty proving they are legally able to purchase alcohol or drive a car, but can bring a child into the world.

I used to like this, but then I realized that meant that the state would be given nearly absolute control over the primary agent of socialization. I don't like the implications of that. While parenting is incredibly important and therefore not something we want untrustworthy people to engage in, it is that importance that makes controlling it so powerful.

Agreed, it's not an ideal set of events. I was undecided on it at first, until I heard a mother saying she wouldn't buy her children educational toys because "I don't want her to be a boff" (boff = smart person).

It made me do a sad.

Still, there's no real 'good' answer to it all. People only learn how to be a parent off of their parents and off of absorbing random influences from the media as it is. I think if the guidelines were loose enough to take into account different styles of parenting, but rigid enough to not become completely meaningless, I'd be all for it - sort of like a dissertation.
It's unlikely we'll ever get to the point where we can trust authorities with our children like that, though. I'll remain optimistic, though.

I'm not too huge on arbitrary individualism, so the idea of a trustworthy collective having control over who is and isn't allowed to raise children is something I would totally on board with. I just don't believe in collectives that are that trustworthy. Like you I will remain hopeful though. I suppose that it would be more likely that all of humanity wold learn how to be better parents first though to be honest.

 

[Right Hook]

by then we'll have colonized other worlds.

Haha, no. I wish and hope so but anyone with the funds seems to have their head jammed up their own ass on a private island somewhere, you'd think finding a planet made of diamonds would have got these lazy fucks off their asses.

OP, I don't support global population control, I support education, if this ever really becomes a problem, an educated society would make the right choices and have less or more children in accordance. We don't need all this hand-holding, we need an intelligent populace.

 

[orangeban]

People have been saying that we're going to run out of food and room since the 19th century, and probably long before that. The way people talk about this, it's like we're suddenly going to clock 8 billion babies, and suddenly all the worlds food will disappear. No, that's absurd.

If we do start running out of food, it'll be a slow gradual thing, and humans are very good with slow, gradual things. We're great adapters, and we will adapt. Maybe our culture will become less focused on makin' babbies, maybe we'll invent new, more efficient ways of growing food. Call me a hopeless optimist, but we'll survive, we'll adapt. We always do.

And you mention exploitation and wholesale destruction of our ecology, you think those things are new? The wholesale destruction of our ecology thing hasn't come about because of overpopulation, it's because of new technological developments that were exploited way too much before we really understood their implications. The exploitation thing is a result of our imperialism days.

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

Yes, BUT only if it is designed to affect male humans. As in 1/3 MALES become infertile, while all the females are perfectly fine.
That would prevent the Krogan problem, where fertile females basically become highly prized commodities/objects and wars are fought for their possession and they are basically raped every 9 months (for humans) to maintain a constant state of pregnancy to bolster the numbers of her "side".
I would NOT want that fate for any woman. So yeah, the men should be ones harmed by this. We tend to care less about not being able to help give birth.

 

[userwhoquitthesite]

Fuck no.
I support total global pick-up-and-go war.

 

[Heaven's Guardian]

It's not really a point of contention that there are (or soon will be) more humans than the planet can comfortably sustain.

[citation needed]

Seriously, this "overpopulation" hysteria is about as accurate and realistic as a Mayan apocalypse prediction. We've got, at a minimum, hundreds of generations before it would become a real concern--barring the very likely event of some sort of technological advancement that renders the point entirely moot. And either way, by then we'll have colonized other worlds.

Thank you. Humans are ridiculously inefficient with the resources we have now because large swaths of the world can't afford the technology yet, plus large sections of the world are very sparsely populated (Canada and Russia being the two major ones) and could easily multiply their population size several times over before having the slightest problems. In fact, the problem we should really be worried about is underpopulation. Most developed nations no longer have birth rates high enough to sustain the populations we have now, and eventually the developing nations are likely to slow down. The problem is going to be too many old people without enough young people to support their retirements, not too many mouths to feed. So this nonsense over overpopulation needs to stop; there are too many real problems to talk about rather than discuss widespread forcible population control that wouldn't be even the slightest bit ethical even if there were a problem.

 

[4ged]

heh its called war people, the only natural predator for man is man, hence why racism and national separation still exist in our so called enlightened, civilized world. we are the same creature we where when we where killing each other with rocks and sticks in the stone age, we just use guns and bombs now, and wear jeans. nothing hunts us anymore though, we killed off most of the worlds apex predators, the only place you will see a gray wolf or a tiger is a zoo, instead of worrying about overpopulation we should worry about how we will fight world war 3 without nukes. personally i think world peace, overpopulation, and the irresponsible draining of natural resources can be solved in one fell swoop, all the worlds governments fight every other world governments in a giant battle royal. winner take all, the rules are simple. no wmds, no guerrilla tactics, only open war and the result will be a reduced population, one government, and enough resources for said population.

 

[Zen Toombs]

Maybe, but only far into the future. We are actually far from not having enough resources to support our population, we just need to use our planet's resources in a halfway efficient manner.

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