this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
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Interesting Global News

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[–] [email protected] 73 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Unpopular truth: We don't need 8 billion humans. We don't even need 1 billion. Not for a terrestrial species occupying only one planet.

Ideally, the global population would stay about the same, but slowly rise and fall in seasons like the temperature.

This is a windfall that we should use to sort out the food distribution problem. But we won't.

[–] Deceptichum 37 points 9 months ago (7 children)

We don’t need any humans.

Who gets to decide which humans get to reproduce and who doesn’t?

[–] [email protected] 32 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

I hope he's not fr*nch

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Well, an aptitude test sure wouldn't hurt.

The truth is, once we outgrow the religious imperative to just crank out babies like it's a contest, and make it legal and easy for anyone to have sex without worrying about impregnation, then there would be little need to regulate reproduction.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

So... You're a eugenicist..

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Wow. Which one of you asshats downvotes this?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] -5 points 9 months ago

It's actually called rational thought instead of reproducing like a virus

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

Eugenics is some evil bullshit. We figured this out around 1935-1945.

Bodily autonomy for all.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

The ones who would fail a test to determine if they are mentally prepared for the responsibility of raising a child.

The ones who think that determining if someone would make a good parent (which is done to everyone with wants to adopt) is the same thing as eugenics.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago

The literal eugenics??

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's not really about who gets to reproduce, it's about infant mortality.

Pre-1900 there were just around a billion people, yet it was very common to have 7-10 children. Most didn't make it to reproductive age, so the population wasn't growing at that same rate.

Now infant mortality is low, very low in developed countries, yet it is still common to have 4-6 children. Nearly all of whom will reproduce.

Realisticly, no one needs more than one children. Two would be generous. More than two is excessive.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

no one needs more than one children

So... this is how it ends. Some predicted a virus, a climate change related natural disaster or an asteroid. But what finally got us, was some bad math.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)
  1. Enshrine medical rights for women's bodies that allows them to abort pregnancy, and allows doctors to make that decision for them in case of early complication leading to emergency (a conscious woman not at risk would never be forced to accept treatment that would endanger a viable fetus, but a nonviable fetus would never lead to undue risks in a more ideal world than what we live in).

  2. We'll start with a democratic system of laws with a philosophy of marginal satisfaction offset by an aversion to suffering taking priority, a good first step would be to simply incentivize education and remaining childless, perhaps with tax credits or guaranteed income welfare.

  3. Introducing or reintroducing publicly funded community buildings for education on human reproduction and a distributor of contraceptives.

  4. Then, if the majority agrees, we can strip felons of reproduction rights with the outlined and protected by law ability to sue the state in assumption of prejudice based on protected class. Finally, punish people with excessive childbirthing habits, like more than five or six, perhaps with fines and risk of prison time as well as a three strike system for upgrading to felony.

Or at least that is usually how it works. Definitely cannot skip the order in this, though, the education step needs to come first or second and could probably solve this issue alone single-handedly. If we implemented this in reverse order then it would probably just end up in history books thirty years from now as "that time we almost lost entire demographics to racist eugenics" and that would just be awful.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago
[–] RatherBeMTB -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Capitalism. You need money to feed kids. People are having less kids mainly because today having a kid is too expensive.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

People were popping out 10 kids under the feudal rule, living in a hut made out of mud. Today, we live better than the aristocracy did back then. What changed is the attitude. We no longer want to see half of our kids die of hunger, or a preventable disease. And not only that, we prefer them to have a better life than ourselves. People actively choosing whether to have children based on the circumstances have my fullest respect.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (3 children)

meh. theres no need for any humans to exist.

i seem to recall that you could fit 8billion people into a single city double the size of texas. you could then feed those humans with an equivalent land mass.

this notion of overpopulation is more about resource use than existent numbers of humans. as you point out, distribution is the real issue and the fact that humans are greedy fuckers.

the planet doesnt care if its hit by a meteor, has its surface wiped by an expanding red dwarf or falls into jupiter. it has no agenda or purpose other than what we, humans decide to do with it. we only get that honor because we are the only ones here.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I'm speaking from the context of human survival. I support the continued existence of the human race. You're speaking from a more nihilistic standpoint than I prefer, but i do agree with what you said in general.

Though, forcing everyone to live in DoubleTexas sounds like hell on Earth.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

speaking from the context of human survival

Woahhh no need to bring your controversial opinions in here.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I for one would like to here more about DoubleTexas the megatropolis

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

i seem to recall that you could fit 8billion people into a single city double the size of texas

Do you want Mega-City One? Because that’s how you get Mega-City One.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

the point isnt the megacity. its to draw attention to the fact the planet is bigger than we think, and we suck more than we know.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Do you even know what the word "unpopular" means?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago

We need around 69 trillion to populate the entire Orion arm. We gotta start multiplying like god commanded rn so we can conquer both hell and heaven!