Overpopulation

X

Xerxes

asdfghjkl
Valued Senior Member
I'm hearing alot about how WWIII would fix the problem of overpopulation. Do you guys really think killing people is the only way? do you guys take into consideration you might be the ones getting killed.

The Earths population of humans will always have the tendancy to grow as evolution has dictated, given we all have the right conditions. But say we had something like a 3 kid limit for some couples, and if some people didnt want to have kids, ever, then they could give some couples their option of 1 chile voiding their own, so that people wouldn't really be confined.
And to deal with the situation economically speaking, alot of people would be saying by now that the economy would remain stagnant, with a few up's and downs. Ofcoarse it would grow slightly as people end up living longer, and so on, but eventually we would start colonizing other places. growth would not matter as much as we would gain a broader view of the longer future. Maybe the depths of the ocean. Maybe other planets. We would undoubtably have the technology in 50 years, to do such things. human knowledge has the ability to double ever four years. that means in 50 years, humans will have more than 144 times the knowledge we do now, ( about 12, 4's in 50 and square that to acount for doubled knowledge. ) They would be completely feasable innovations. If you guys live to see it, Never forget me telling you now.......I told you so.
 
We would undoubtably have the technology in 50 years, to do such things. human knowledge has the ability to double ever four years. that means in 50 years, humans will have more than 144 times the knowledge we do now, ( about 12, 4's in 50 and square that to acount for doubled knowledge. ) They would be completely feasable innovations. If you guys live to see it, Never forget me telling you now.......I told you so.
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I have not yet heard this from an official source. It doesn't sound right. We know that research at least does not follow any specific path. It seems to me that technology comes in spikes. It was a giant leap from sliderules to computers, but going from a 90Mhz computer to a 1.8Ghz computer is not quite as earth- shaking.

I have come to accept that imposing children limits would not be feasable without the authority to do so. We need a new agency of Social Engineers. The main goal would be to make it popular to have less children. We can beat overpopulation, but only through cooperation from everyone.
 
HOW HORRIBLE OF YOU TO EVEN THINK OF USING A WAR TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF OVERPOPULATION.

That problem isn't even accepted as a valid world problem by many. How dare you use the deaths of tens of thousands and potentaly more as an opening shot in debating how to solve overpopulation.

YOU SHOULD BE SICKENEND.
 
I am sickened. Not by myself, though.

I said I've heard remarks on sciforums where they say a war will solve the overopulation problem. My idea beats the shit out of war. Incase you havent yet noticed. I'm one of the few people on this site who doesnt want to blow up everyone who's a suspected terrorist. I dont want to kill people, but I think it's alright to let them die naturally, and let the world grow with stability. And, thecurlyone, werent you one of the people who wanted to just go over there and possibly start another war.

Teg, you're right that knowledge gaining doesnt come at a steady pace, but when you look at things through a broad perspective and average things out, it eventually comes to double every 4 years. And I dont just mean leaps around issues like technology but in other fields like biology, astrology, math, all sorts of fields. I mean just look at the beginning of the 1900's. Peope were talking about how Everything was already discovered and known. One century ago, flying across the ocean was crazy, then 30 years later, veni vedi vici. 80 years later, It's a very popular option. You can look at any field, and notice it.
 
tell me how can knowledge of a human being be mathamatically calculated to fit that. I know it is feasable to say that we have come a long way and greatly increased our knownledge. if that were true then the joke about fusion power wouldn't exist

-in 1960 fusion was 20 years away. In 1980 fusion power was 20 years away and in 2000 fusion sounds about 20 years away
 
Actually, a kid limit isnt cruel. And dont forget about what other stuff I said. --people who dont want kids can give their 1 offspring credit to a couple. You could have as many kids as you want as long as you get the credits. And i also said, when it becomes feasable to colonize other places then the Idea can be changed or lifted altogher.

I am not a cruel tyrannical person.
 
Well I'm sorry about not fully understanding your first statement.

Regarding overpopulation, the problem is in third world countries that are poor. The developed/richer countries have low birth rates because of contraception, protection, and a very small percentage of abortions contribuiting to a low growth rate.

The more children you have in a farming, or hunter gatherer community in which most of the world's people live, the better, because your workforce is larger. Plus you have a greater chance of propagating your line of genes to future generations. Thats why the birth rate is high in those countries.

As wealth spreads to these countries birth rates will drop, their governments don't have enough power or money to enforce a birth restriction. If they don't do it it would leave the rich countries to enforce it which in turn would be totalitarian.

Everything will be fine, the high birth rate is also acompanied by a high death rate. Nature has a way of balancing things out.
 
I could be really silly here and say:
You have power problems, so just put the newly born in vats of goo, and keep them alive by feeding the dead ones to the live ones intreveniously.
But you all know thats fiction! right????

How about learning to build Islands, yes you head, more islands more room. In fact since we are going to end up with a bunch of useless oil rigs with no oil to pump, that's a settlement if I ever saw one. Just relocate a bunch and weld them together and viola, a shanty town out at sea.

Overpopulation isn't just caused by Births though, most of the time it's caused by mass imigration of people all trying to live in one area, so that one area suffers.
So for a cheap method of stopping imigrants, BUY Them an Island, this is far cheaper than giving them money for the rest of their life from your social system.
Infact if they have an island to colonise then you don't have to worry about them getting into racist rows, as you can send imigrants of the same type to that island.

Give them a bit of hand getting their settlements up and their food, water and power and perhaps you can have them making things out there.
 
I am probably at least one of culprits who's comments sparked this thread.

Overpopulation is a real problem. And I think it will become more evident as we start to realize just how quickly we are bringing the environment to a point where it will no longer sustain us. Overpopulation is not just an issue of having room for everyone. It's about having enough resources for everyone too.

To solve the problem by making changes to the way we do things would take a complete re-ordering of the way we, the people of the world, approach life and the planet we live on. And we would have to start now. Because by the time the people in charge are willing to admit something has to be done, it's going to be too late. If it's not already too late. Our society consumes so much, so fast that it's already feeding on itself.

It's a nice idea, but we are not going to convince the people in power to end this trend of consumption. Our machine is going to chug away until it crumbles and the people of the earth are forced to deal with disease and famine due to the steady stream of poisons we release into the air, ground and water. Unless, of course, a huge war can both force us to re-build and convince us to do things differently before the machine can die on it's own.

I am not saying that I condone war, or even that I LIKE the idea. I just think that great loss of human life is a forgone conclusion. I suppose we could stumble upon some miracle technology that allows us to begin populating other astral bodies within our solar system, but I'm still not sure that would prevent the catastrophe on earth.

And I can't speak for others that may have made similar remarks to mine, but I most certainly HAVE considered that I could be one of the ones to die. But I have already been sure I was going to die on a few occasions. As a result, I love life all the more. But I also kind of feel like I'm living on borrowed time.

Don't lose any sleep over me, though. I could be wrong. And I'm not one of the ones screaming for war, and even if I was, I'm in no position to start one.

You MAY want to lose some sleep over the my (the US) government, though. They are going to bring our military into action, and the world is ripe for escalation of those actions.
 
Has anybody watched a television serial in Showtime called STARGATE where the ascend released a bio agent to sterilize the population?

We now have the technology to do this too. Does it give you any ideas?

The world knowledge is now at 700 Petabytes and could double in 3 to 4 years.
 
I didn't see that, kmguru. But then, I don't have a television, so why would I? I hope no one decides to sterilize all of us. If we lose the ability to reproduce, we may as well throw in the chips and leave the table.
 
First of all I love STARGATE! I'm glad you like it kmguru, I forgot to mention that as one of my favourite sci-fi films (and series).

One thing I havn't heard mentioned here is that education is the key to solving overpopulation. You will find in developed countries a lot lower birth rate than in third world countries. This is because people use protection plus we are all to busy working to stop to have children or even get married if so inclined.

Our government was getting worried earlier this year with our birth rate. I think its about 1.7 per couple or something. So if we cut out immigration we will get smaller.

Also, with x child policies you get families as in China chucking out(literally) there girl children and trying again for a boy. I saw a poor woman in China once who lived at a dump and she had rescued about 5 girls which were thrown out. She can barely afford to keep them but she tries and can not reject taking them if she sees another child(girl) in the dump.

As well as this you have the sick way the babies are killed. A needle through the top of its head as it is coming out of the mothers whomb. Not very nice for all parties involved.
 
I would never support that kind of treatment of a baby or even animal. Needle through its head....what the hell. If you have a child illegally I ment then it might mean a fine for expenses on strenuating the pressure on land and economy, or something like that. I'm not that kind of a cruel person, No way, I'm not anything like that, I dont even support the death penalty.
 
BTW I also wanted to say, as the words of Ghandi, be the change you want to see in the world. So what that we dont have an overpopulation problem here, is it not important that we set an example for those poor nations and the rest of the world.
 
One thing I havn't heard mentioned here is that education is the key to solving overpopulation. You will find in developed countries a lot lower birth rate than in third world countries. This is because people use protection plus we are all to busy working to stop to have children or even get married if so inclined.
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A few items:

Osma has 52 brothers, do not know how many sisters. Blood is thicker than water...Certain religious communities believe in the old adage: Be fruitful and multiply....so multiply...they do. Catholics do not believe in Birth control. Chinese believe strongly.

It is not the education, it is no time to take care of the babies - that is what keeps number of kids down. Mormons are required to have 6 kids per family so their clan can grow fast and cover the planet. Moslems do feel the same. Who will win? In two hundred years, only Mormons and Moslems will be living to fight the battle to win this planet.

What this means, I have no idea...I am just rambling....
 
Wwiii will not cut it!

That is just a stupid assertion. War and killing do not constitute an effective way of controlling the population. A little basic math and some knowledge of history is helpful in figuring this out. Consider the following:

If you were to calculate the total death toll for all of the major wars, genocides, repressions and man-made famines of the 20th century (ie. the First Sino-Japanese War, Armenian Genocide, Herero War, Boer War, Massacre at Nanjing, Congo Free State; the Mexican Revolution, all of the combat deaths during WWI & WWII, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, the Great Leap Forward; the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Pol Pot, Saddam, Idi Amin, Suharto; the Soviet-Afghan War, the Shah of Iran, the Iranian Revolution, Angola, Mozambique, East Pakistan 1971, all of the Latin American "Dirty Wars" of the 60's, 70's and '80s; the Eritrean conflict, Sierra Leone, Algeria, Rwanda, Burundi, Rhodesian Bush War; all of the Israeli wars, the Falkland Islands, the Gulf War, Colombia, Panama Invasion, the drug cartels etc.), the maximum reasonable figure stands at about 250,000,000 people.

With a total global birthrate of 340,500 daily, it would only take 734 days, 5 hours, 8 mins, 35 seconds and 4 decisecs to compensate for a century of man-made carnage. In addition to this, many of the prominent population booms that have taken place throughout history (except for maybe the industrial revolution), take place in the aftermath of major conflicts. With this said, it is not only unethical and cruel to resort to violence as population control, but impractical as well. I rest my case.
 
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