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Overpopulation- Stopping It


apowerr
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How you feel about population reduction  

24 members have voted

  1. 1. Is the 1 child policy a good way to reduce population?

    • Yes
      10
    • No
      15
  2. 2. Do you agree with giving people in 3rd world countries contraceptives in the place of traditional aid?

    • Yes
      16
    • No
      9
  3. 3. Should governments provide contraceptives to populations?

    • Yes
      21
    • No
      3


17 posts in this topic

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The world is overpopulated. I'm pretty sure that is accepted as fact. Chine and India are both countries with large overpopulation problems. China inacted a One-Child policy and India even went as far as Compulsory Sterilization. So how do you feel about population control? Arguably the overall standard of living would be higher if the world population was reduced to say, 1 Billion or so. Also, Global Warming would become irrelevant if the global population was significantly smaller. However, imagining 5/6 people you know being nonexistent is certainly depressing. And don't people deserve to be free to have as many children as they'd like?

 

Personally I'm not entirely sure if the 1 Child Policy is bad or not. However I do know that I support giving third world countries contraceptives, we don't need starving people having starving children.

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In an ideal world, it is the perfect solution. But most people would probably see such a thing ending up in a dystopian hell hole, worse than we started with.

The problem is though that giving condoms to people in the Amazon Rain Forest won't stop them from having huge families. If it did, it would probably lead to their extinction, as they would die out. What really needs to be looked at, before any thought can be taken on such things, is the demographics transition model (DMT):

Stage5.jpg

Ideally, we need a world in stage 5. However, that isn't as easy as it sounds. It is only happening to countries that have experience deindustrialisation, such as Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece and most notably Japan. If ever country was in state 5 of the DMT, we would have no problems with overpopulation and probably global warming, but the economies of the world would collapse.

Most of the ELDCs in the world are in the 3rd stage of demographic transition - something that modern Europe when through in the last 2 centuries. Because of our actions, it is nearly impossible for those countries to advance in the same way Europe advanced, because they cannot go through the industrial revolution. When we went through the industrial revolution, it made us rich, because the UK was the most advanced country in the world. But for ELDCs, that isn't possible as they are playing catchup.

People that live in ELDCs have a different perception of birth and death. Let's put it this way, would you only ever have one child if there was a 50% chance they would die before adulthood? Would you wait till they die before you had another? No. You would have as many children as possible. Families would traditionally have many children because many of them would die, but as the healthcare system gets better, many more children live, but they still continue to be born at the same rate. So there is a huge increase in population. Only by increases in education can the next stage be reached. Families need to be educated to not have children and to use contraception.

So what we need to do is educate them, and allow their economies to boom, so they can advance to the 3rd and 4th stages, producing much better goods and services that the whole world can benefit from.

 

So what we need to do, rather than chucking condoms at Africa, is cancel their debts, to help build the economy (If I recall correctly, about half of Brazil's GNP is used to pay off debts - think how much richer they could become!) and help develop education systems in rural Africa and other less developed parts.

 

A one child system isn't something that can be implemented 'just like that' without sacrificing rights. However, if it must be done, it must be done. Just consider the alternatives if you plan to rule a country in the near future :censored2:

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The world is overpopulated. I'm pretty sure that is accepted as fact. Chine and India are both countries with large overpopulation problems. China inacted a One-Child policy and India even went as far as Compulsory Sterilization. So how do you feel about population control? Arguably the overall standard of living would be higher if the world population was reduced to say, 1 Billion or so. Also, Global Warming would become irrelevant if the global population was significantly smaller. However, imagining 5/6 people you know being nonexistent is certainly depressing. And don't people deserve to be free to have as many children as they'd like?

 

Personally I'm not entirely sure if the 1 Child Policy is bad or not. However I do know that I support giving third world countries contraceptives, we don't need starving people having starving children.

 

The war is just as good as the 1 child policy. So is abortion.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/arti...in_page_id=1811

http://chinaview.wordpress.com/2007/05/24/...cy-spurs-riots/

 

Nazism is the proper terminology.

 

Overpopulated? LOL. Thats the 3rd stupidest {censored} thing I've ever heard.

 

In order

1. They attacked us because of our freedom.

2. Global warming is killing us.

3. The world is overpopulated.

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At what point would you consider the world to be overpopulated? It isn't a linear measure, as overpopulation means "x amount of people are too many for y amount of resources to be divided to generate z life style"

 

As it is today, the world isn't overpopulated, as the resources exist to give all people in the world enough for a fairly decent quality of life.

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Overpopulated? LOL. Thats the 3rd stupidest {censored} thing I've ever heard.

I'm not a scientist, and I couldn't sit here and prove that it's overpopulated. However U.N. (eww, I know) projections state that by 2050 there will be 9.1 billion people on the earth. Most of the projected growth would be taking place in lesser developed countries. Source

As it is today, the world isn't overpopulated, as the resources exist to give all people in the world enough for a fairly decent quality of life.

Right but all of these resources are not evenly distributed, and so you have entire nations in poverty. Obviously less people won't solve corruption and problems with economies etc, but couldn't it improve overall quality of living?

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That is a point. In the world as a whole, there is not an excess of population. In some specific places, there is. In a place like the US, one might say it is underpopulated (by the previous measure).

 

Distribution of resources has nothing to do with overpopulation.

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Overpopulation.. now there's a touchy topic. In nature, overpopulation is when the size of a population relative to its ecological niche becomes excessive. Generally famine or epidemics take care of that. By this measure, human overpopulation was a fact several thousand years ago.

However, being the clever beasts that we are, we have circumvented nature's checks & balances with such things as hygiene, medicine and agriculture. Then there is population stress.. we generally call the result of population stress a war. Wars tend to wipe out large numbers of males in their prime reproductive age, which also helps limit overpopulation. Still we grow. The tragic state of the world is a direct result of the fact that there are simply too many of us.

 

All well & good, but what can we do? the vast majority of couples want to procreate & to a certain way of thinking, the very meaning of life is to create new life. We are the victims of our own success in this respect, and limiting procreation on anything but a voluntary level is a gross violation of personal freedom.

 

In short, we are mid-way in a disaster of global proportions. Africa is probably feeling it the most, due to the political, medical & economical tragedies that have befallen that continent (in turn consequences of... you guessed it, global overpopulation).

 

Something has to give, but what is it to be? I don't think we're going to get things under control by voluntary means, China has tried the 1-child policy & ended up with a surplus of boys, (the usual solution for this is a war) which leaves a whole stack of unpleasant prospects, all of which can be seen happening in various parts of the world. The greed & selfishness of the "developed" world is increasing.. as migrants flood from the worse-off parts of the planet, the haves are increasingly closing their doors to keep what they have grabbed.

 

In short, I see no good news here, because at the end of the day, the human propensity for selfishness; *I* want to have lots of kids *I* want more material goods than I need. *I* want to profit disproportionately from the work of others, etc etc works against the good of the whole population.

 

So, as I see it, the disaster started a loooooong time ago.. The only question is: how will it end?

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Simply put, we don't have an overpopulation problem. We have a distribution problem.

 

You can fit the entire world's population inside of Jacksonville, Florida's city limits if you pack them in tight enough. Give everybody in the world 1 acre of land for a house and a small garden and you can fill North America, leaving 6 other continents completely free.

 

I do agree that governments should help with contraception when possible, but more to prevent the spread of disease than to prevent pregnancy, even if that's a nice side effect.

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Simply put, we don't have an overpopulation problem. We have a distribution problem.

 

You can fit the entire world's population inside of Jacksonville, Florida's city limits if you pack them in tight enough. Give everybody in the world 1 acre of land for a house and a small garden and you can fill North America, leaving 6 other continents completely free.

 

It would be interesting to known how much land is needed to feed the entire world population, also considering everything which can go wrong.

I don't have any scientific data, but I suppose we have more than enough.

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It would be interesting to known how much land is needed to feed the entire world population, also considering everything which can go wrong.I don't have any scientific data, but I suppose we have more than enough.
We have enough land, but enough arable/farmable land is the big question, followed closely by distribution concerns like actually getting the food to people before it goes bad. I think we have enough arable land, especially if we move away from slash-and-burn development that renders land unusable after a few crop cycles and towards more sustainable farming methods. But getting the food to people fast enough and getting the right amounts in the right places (think about how much food your city's restaurants throw away at the end of the night for example) is still a problem, especially if one lives surrounded in hundreds of miles of desert.You also have to factor in that crops are being used for much more than food nowadays. For example, if corn-based ethanol was used in place of gasoline everywhere we wouldn't have enough land to meet demand for that. As we move away from oil this will be a factor in deciding what is "overpopulation", because right now we have more than enough food to go around but we might not have enough to keep everyone's lifestyles at their current comfort levels.
Most species haven't reached the levels ours has though. The human population seems very out of balance to me.
Because those of us in developed first-world nations use a hell of a lot more resources than say, someone 500 years ago would have. We have houses, cars, ipods, computers, tv, etc. If we all lived simpler lives it would be easy to pack more humans in and the world would keep buzzing along, but good luck trying to get the average american or european to give up their current way of life.
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Seriously all of you who consider over population a myth, come to Mumbai, India. At peak hours people actually rush in the trains like wild animals going in for the kill. If you are trying to get off at Churchgate(last stop where I live) at 6-8 in the evening, it is impossible to get off the train without getting Jostled. I actually wait for the people to come in, sit down and then I get up and leave.

 

Though I think this is going to get worse, but the younger Indian generation is getting more and more Blue/White Collar Jobs due to the rising economy and outsourcing. Not only are these people educated, they are acutely aware of over population. These people will also have less and less time to reproduce and fornicate. Also people in this segment, didnt really get to enjoy life too much, so are probably gonna be spending their incomes on luxury's. So soon enough we are going to be like Japan, where people live together but don't have kids and get married.

 

Also Chinas population is majorly on the decline. I wish India had implemented such as system, but vote bank politics don't really permit that. Also the I hope the smarter yonger politicians will actually try do something about this rather than make fake promises. But then again........who am I kidding?? Politicians.......working for the public. :lol::(

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No one thinks the Overpopulation is a myth. The WORLD is not overpopulated. India is (as an example). India barely produces enough resources for half of it's population, that's why the vast majority of the people who live in India exist in practical sub-saharan poverty. 77% (or 868 million) of Indians make less than 50c a day, which in equivalent terms (in the US) means someone who makes less than $2 (in purchasing power) per day. That's like... half a Venti Mocha.

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don't worry,

 

the big boys will take care of it,....

 

short term they always played with their power card, it's called war !

they sure know how to start one,...

 

and on long term you don't have to worry ether ,....

look at the enviroment, global warming is just the tip of the iceberg (...),

fossil fuel is the big one,.... couple percent less oxygen,... how much does it take to kill us all,...

 

and they sure do it the most painful and most expensive way, to make sure

we pay for it, all of it.

 

last not least, don't know of any civilication on top of this earth that made it over 10500 years,

so non I know, ever made it over the half-life , half-circle of our solar system aka ~13100 years.

 

real life: one guy at work was against condoms distributed at school, he said , against his religion, he had a daughter,...

think 28.5 million people in the us live under the poverty level,... and bunch of them are veterans too,

 

so, overpopulation in politics, I'd agree

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last not least, don't know of any civilication on top of this earth that made it over 10500 years,

so non I know, ever made it over the half-life , half-circle of our solar system aka ~13100 years.

 

What does this mean?

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I'm not a scientist, and I couldn't sit here and prove that it's overpopulated. However U.N. (eww, I know) projections state that by 2050 there will be 9.1 billion people on the earth. Most of the projected growth would be taking place in lesser developed countries. SourceRight but all of these resources are not evenly distributed, and so you have entire nations in poverty. Obviously less people won't solve corruption and problems with economies etc, but couldn't it improve overall quality of living?
LOL. The U.N. :hysterical::dev::hysterical:
No one thinks the Overpopulation is a myth. The WORLD is not overpopulated. India is (as an example). India barely produces enough resources for half of it's population, that's why the vast majority of the people who live in India exist in practical sub-saharan poverty. 77% (or 868 million) of Indians make less than 50c a day, which in equivalent terms (in the US) means someone who makes less than $2 (in purchasing power) per day. That's like... half a Venti Mocha.
Probably because of it's U.N. controlled puppet government.
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