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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.
We don’t need any humans.
Who gets to decide which humans get to reproduce and who doesn’t?
I'll take care of it
Thanks frunch
I hope he's not fr*nch
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.
So... You're a eugenicist..
Wow. Which one of you asshats downvotes this?
Eugenics is some evil bullshit. We figured this out around 1935-1945.
Bodily autonomy for all.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Introducing or reintroducing publicly funded community buildings for education on human reproduction and a distributor of contraceptives.
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.
We must all come to a consensus on how it is decided or overpopulation will diminish the resources needed to survive
Thanos
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.
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.
speaking from the context of human survival
Woahhh no need to bring your controversial opinions in here.
I for one would like to here more about DoubleTexas the megatropolis
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.
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.
Do you even know what the word "unpopular" means?
So what I'm hearing is the billionaire class is a literal plague.
That is the source/cause of nearly every problem we have , yes
The only correct analysis of the situation
Also the ruling class
“In many ways, tumbling fertility rates are a success story, reflecting not only better, easily available contraception but also many women choosing to delay or have fewer children, as well as more opportunities for education and employment.”
For once, a good news.
After listening to Malthusian panic from "conservatives" for over 50 years, I savour the irony.
It's not even conservatives, there are some doomers who get off being excessively pessimistic. r/collapse used to be hysterical about overpopulation. When I showed them the video of late statisticians Hans Rosling showing trend data of declining fertility rate, thanks to growing wealth of developing countries, and why their fears are unfounded, they just brushed it off. It is in recent years when mainstream news finally started reporting declining fertility rate and the UN project the global population to plateau, r/collapse finally stopped being hysterical on the topic.
Those twits are at best closet conservatives.
Good. Now if only we could get the wealthy and powerful to switch to a form of economy which prioritizes stability over infinite growth.
Housing is gonna get cheaper, right? right?!
If you can wait 25 years.
Regionally, whenever buildings are build to last the lifetime of more then 1 generation and with a population age curve that is top heavy at this time.
With how unaffordable life is in general, it’s not exactly surprising that people are having fewer kids. They’re a giant drain on your already scarce resources.
Frankly I was also hoping for corona to… do a little housekeeping as it were. But it didn’t really do much in terms of actual population decline.
ITT blue pilled malthusians
Without societal change, even a die-off as extreme as half of everyone dying will have absolutely no effect beyond the immediate term. Just look at the Black Death as an example: about half of Europe among others died over its period and yet we are still facing overpopulation issues not 7 centuries later.
The general populace just needs to learn and understand that maybe staying well above replacement level is not good, actually.
Of course, when the Black Death happened, the world in general was much smaller. People weren’t quite as aware as to what was happening elsewhere. And given that things like infant mortality were much higher, life expectancy was lower, no real contraception etc… people really had no real incentive not to procreate again. So they did.
These days we’re generally more aware and more in control. I like to think that if corona HAD wiped out half the planet, the survivors would see clear benefits: less overcrowding, nature is restoring, the air is cleaner, etc etc. You saw some of that during the pandemic when, for example, the canals in Venice turned crystal clear because of lack of humans.
I’d flip that coin right now. Whoever lives inherits a paradise. Use it wisely and learn from previous mistakes.
Maybe I'm just a cynic but I don't think mentality has really changed since then. If that were the case we would see more rapid population decrease instead of it just being due to financial pressure
Stop down voting him, he's right. Earth day is on April 22, so we would need to shrink earths population to a third in order to make our current way of living sustainable... (Shrink the rich first)
While I appreciate the sentiment, my whole point was that this action would probably not be an effective solution :D
Good, about time
I'm never having kids unless a few things that aren't going to improve, actually improve.