Ways to deal with overpopulation

[sam42ification]

Genocide??? If the bible is to be believed it worked the first time. The ice is melting i think a giant flood is inevitable.

 

[John the Gamer]

I read last week that for the first time in recorded human history there are more people who're overweight (1.250.000.000 (1.25 miljard, or 1.25 billion))

Then people who go hungry everyday (1.100.000.000 (1.1 miljard, or 1.1 billion))

So I'm guessing we still have plenty of room and food to go around, it's just that the rich steal it all and poor people on africa don't get it because of corrupt officials and rebels that roam the continent.

And we could always launch all criminals, old people (over 80?) and terminally ill to Venus. It's not like they'd survive atmospheric entry anyways, and we could have them take some obsolete space debris with them whilst they're leaving earth's orbit.

 

[razerdoh]

I was watching the news a few days back and there was a quick report on world population. This year there will be approximately 7 billion people living on Earth. I did a little research on the projected population growth world wide and found the numbers to be quite disturbing. While I was researching I started pondering about the issue of population control and how society would rationalizes euthanizing humans or restrict certain people from reproducing and even going as far as genetically altering humans to restrict longevity. I'm curious to see everyone's thoughts on this controversial topic and please keep it civil.

Its simple: poor people needs to stop fucking...

 

[RanD00M]

Do what China does to some extent. Only two kids per parents. That way we drastically reduce the birthrates without eliminating anyone.

 

[Doitpow]

Colonize Mars.
.

this...a thousand times this.

or europa or venus of something, I bet if we found a way to strip all the shit out of venus' atmosphere and use it as fuel venus would be the new Vegas.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

It's not really 7 billion. It's only about 7,000,000,000 people (i.e. seven thousand million). I still don't understand why Americans use the short scale...

I actually though their way made more sense, but that's just me it seems.

I don't really see any way to reduce the population without being hugely unethical. You would have to get people to agree to doing things like getting vasectomies or something, but I doubt you would get enough people to agree to it. If you force people to do things I think that's too unethical to be a good idea.

Mass sterilisation.

No more babies, for anyone, we'll have a massive piss up and enjoy the last forty or fifty years of human existence and then draw a line under it.

Wait a minute... Your plan to save humanity from overpopulation is to wipe it out through underpopulation?

 

[Kekkles]

This reminds me of a VERY similar situation, what's it called... 2012?

That massive hoax.

Someone's been playing too much Deus Ex. IT'S NOT REAL!

 

[Lord Kloo]

The thing about stuff that gets bigger is that eventually everything gets too big and just collapses in on itself.. So my plan, just wait it out, eventually everything will go to s**t and normalize.. In the mean time I'll be busy drinking coke in my survival bunker.

Besides over-population isn't going to be a problem.. we'll run out of oil before 2050 so that'll hopefully kill off a few hundred million, here and there..

 

[Jakub324]

So, how will we determine what is the perfect way to handle kids. Nobody is perfect at handling kids.

The system wouldn't work unless a perfect idea of handling could be created, which it can't.

It would be an incredibly abused system, especially in today's political world.

You would have radical liberals trying to make it so that conservative couples don't get to raise kids because they would be filling the child's mind with those wrong conservative ideas.

And the same would happen with the radical conservatives.

As well as radical atheists calling for sanctions against religious people breeding and spreading false ideas of there being a god.

And the radical religious people calling the same against atheists and other religions against religions.

It just can't be done because there are way too many kinds of people with their own agendas that it would become a bureaucratic as well as social nightmare.

But it shouldn't be done anyway because it takes away freewill. You would have a perfectly nice couple that is refused clearance to have kids because they failed one or two small sections of a complex test. That is just plain wrong.

You can't deny that some people are less perfect with kids than others. I think we should do something now before it's a problem, and then life will suck less. Yes, it takes free will away, but it's necessary.

 

[DSK-]

Thermo-nuclear war. That is all.

This^

"It's the only way to be sure!"

 

[bliebblob]

We actually had a huge debate about this in uni.

For those of you who do not see the problem: when a population "finds" a load of resources (food, shelter,... or in case of humans: oil, fresh water,... ) it will grow exponentially until a certain max capacity. How high that is exactly depends on how much resources are available.

When the population hits the max capacity the population stop breeding so much because reproduction is normally only done when an excess of resources is readily available.

The problem is that the max capacity is reached, a lot of females will still be pregnant from when there were still plenty of resources so even though there are no resources for more babies, the babies keep coming for a while anyway. That means that for a while there won't be enough resources and, because the resources are divided more or less equally, NOBODY will get enough. Result: mass deaths until the population is below max capacity again.

THAT is the problem because what I just explained goes for bacteria as much as it goes for humans. In fact, it has happened before to isolated communities of humans. (Example: Easter Island)

Now the unique thing about us is that through all sorts of inventions (farm animal domestication, irrigation, artificial fertilizer, GMO's,...) we have been able to raise our own max capacity again and again. The question is, can we keep doing that? Personally I say no because our expansion is exponantial wich means it goes faster and faster so we won't keep up forever.

As for solutions my vote is on a one-child-per-family system like in China. That way we can land on the max capacity gently instead of shooting over it, than crashing back down. Sure, many people think it's controversial but it sure beats the mass deaths. (Note how we won't even HAVE to select who lives, in a way it will be decided FOR us)

NOTE: there seems to be confusion about this so lemme go into it some more. RIGHT NOW there actually isn't overpopulation yet, resources just aren't divided fairly. ( Example: starvation in Africa) BUT real overpopultion is coming allright.

 

[Racecarlock]

Two words.

Soylent Green

...
Wut?

 

[Da Orky Man]

Colonising space is flat out not going to work as a solution.

Lets suppose that it is relatively cheap and easy to send people to Mars. To make a difference to world populations, you have to send out many million people, and keep doing so every year. You can't just send a few people out once, it has to be a massive, continuing process.

Additionally, those Martians will breed on their own, even if you left them to their own devices the planet will also end up having the same situation as the Earth.

Though, if you're not worried about the Earth, but the species, if the problem is the effects of over-population on our one planet, spreading the species around a bit will mean some are likely to thrive somewhere.

I think the idea would be to enforce population limits on Earth, but not on Mars. Therefore, anyone who does want masses of children would move to Mars, and so the problem would be alleviated. Then, before Mars became filled, our technology should be enough to do the same to Venus, and possibly some of the outer moons.

 

[The-Epicly-Named-Man]

Overpopulation is a myth. The only areas that overpopulated are cities, the solution is to merely encourage people to leave urban areas and settle in rural, underpopulated areas (like the Dutch did).

 

[llew]

It's not really 7 billion. It's only about 7,000,000,000 people (i.e. seven thousand million). I still don't understand why Americans use the short scale...

But anyway. There's still more than enough food and space to go around, so I don't see what the problem is.

a thousand million is a billion... and as for "plenty of food to go around" tell that to africa

 

[Lukeje]

It's not really 7 billion. It's only about 7,000,000,000 people (i.e. seven thousand million). I still don't understand why Americans use the short scale...

But anyway. There's still more than enough food and space to go around, so I don't see what the problem is.

a thousand million is a billion... and as for "plenty of food to go around" tell that to africa

One thousand million is a short-scale billion. Pay attention.

And why should I tell that to Africa?

 

[imnot]

What?!
Im just saying!

 

[SD-Fiend]

Do what China does to some extent. Only two kids per parents. That way we drastically reduce the birthrates without eliminating anyone.

but... doesn't china still have tons of people?

 

[Dott]

Kill everyone.

 

[Dusk17]

If someone said to you "hey this rich white guy on the other side of the planet thinks there are too many of you so you need to stop having children and preferably die," how do you think people will react to that?

Half the responses on this thread make me want to beat some sense into people for having that kind of elitist mentality.