Controling Human Population

[YT300000]

I would put all my resources into building Skynet, and get it to wipe every last one of us vermin off the face of the fucking planet.

[RedImperator]

Hypothetical scenario: Someone give you the job of regulating the human population on earth,so on the 6 billion+ humans how many would you kill and how much will be left after?

Earth is more than capable of feeding six billion people. Shoddy economic systems and even shoddier political systems are universally responsible for local food shortages, not a wordwide food deficit. And we don't have anywhere near all the arable land on Earth in production--hell, in North America, they're taking arable land OUT of production to build subdivisions.

There's no need at all to kill anyone for the sake of population control, even if such a course of action was morally tolerable.

[Darth Fanboy]

A qualification to purchase alcohol is now mandatory astration. Drinking age lowered to 14 (raised to 14 in Mexico) in order to further that end.

[InnerBrat]

1) Space program. More living space.
2) Redistribution of resources, worldwide. No more food mountains for the lucky.
3) The main problem is not high birth rates, but low death rates. I'm not going to kill everybody, but I will invest in healthcare aimed at age-related disorders, to extend the useful working life of the adults, so they do not need to be supported by a dwindling next generation (cue TUs whining about me raisng the retirement age)
4) More and better sex education, and an encouragement of more equal rights for women (personal agenda, moi?), because women should not feel they have to have children.

[Darth_Fin]

I'd kill every last person on the planet, then I'd kill myself. Then another species would have to rise and be the next dominant life form on Earth.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Absolutely nothing. I'm seriously worried about the long implications of zero or even negative long-term population growth. Every single demographic projection shows the population starting to decline at some point; so I'd use the power to find ways to feed the maximum projected height which we could reach (probably by agricultural improvements and expansion in cultivated land in third world countries--if every country in the world had the farm efficiency of the USA we would not be as nervous as we are now about population growth), and then start worrying about what's going to happen to a humanity facing population decline, and how to prevent that. Possibly certain technologies which are being developed now will compensate for the trend in industrial countries for the population to decline. However, it may be that in the long run we will have to colonize space and create locally more productive populations while the population on Earth suffers from an ultimately exponential decay.

I have every faith that we can feed twelve plus billion people; why not, when six billion can be fed and half or more of the world's cropland is still operating on techniques straight out of the middle ages? What concerns me is that indications suggest we're a species headed towards population decline. That has never been good for a species.

[CelesKnight]

Hypothetical scenario: Someone give you the job of regulating the human population on earth,so on the 6 billion+ humans how many would you kill and how much will be left after?

Why are we regulating human population? I assume that you’re worried about the environment*. Mother Earth is dying from litter and smog... I don't buy that that is a problem, but let's assume it is for a moment.

*-After all, killing people to prevents starvation (as some people seem to be assuming this is about) seems somewhat, ah, extreme. And, off hand, I can't think of anything else that this could be about..


There are several available options that can be used in any combination,:
1)Kill people
2)Lower birth rates
3)Lower the impact of people on the Earth

1 is easy enough to understand. I think that most of the posts in this thread are along this line. However, I don't like this approach. Killing billions for to stop them from hurting the Earth isn't right. (Killing billions for my personal amusement… now that’s right.)

2 is much more viable solution. It's not immoral (to most people), it should be relatively easy for a world government to enforce, and the long term effect is the same as 1. Propaganda can help against the middle class. The rest could theoretically be controlled through something like contraceptives in the water or forced worldwide contraceptive shots (like the smallpox vaccinations). It's interesting to note that China's 1-child rule is allegedly creating more boys than girls. One would assume that this imbalanced will cause the population to continue to shrink even after the program ends.

However, as I implied above, the real problem isn’t the number of humans, it’s the effect that those humans are having on the environment. You and I probably waste more resources taking a shit than a hundred of our ancestors wasted in a week. There's the water in the toilet, the power to pump the water, the power for the lights, the chemicals in the cleaners and air fresheners, the gas for the trucks that transport the air fresheners and toilets to the stores, the trees used to make the toilet paper, etc, etc, etc. That seems somewhat silly, but think about all the other things we do on an average day. That all adds up. I think that the world's getting by fine now, but could it get by with 6 billion living like us? I really don't know. And it's not like the third-worlders are innocent either. There are a lot of polluting, resource using cars and factories in the third world.

The more than each person's impact on the world can be reduced, the less need there is to reduce the total population. If I was a world dictator, I would start with birth control measures, regulations and taxes on things that have too big of an impact on the world, and propaganda to encourage people to have less impact on the world. Of course, being as evil and misanthropic as I am, plenty of innocent people will be dying too. But that last comment is besides the point.

[CelesKnight]

1) Space program. More living space.
2) Redistribution of resources, worldwide. No more food mountains for the lucky.

1) Nowhere near being practical. The number of people that could be put into space per year is going to be a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the number of people born each year. For the forseeable future, at least. Moreover, it would proably be cheaper to put someone up in a luxury hotel on Earth than put them in space (i.e. it's too expensive.)

2)Not needed. An American's BigMac doesn't take food out of the mouths of African poor. There is enough food to go around, and that could be increased even further through more use of modern agriculture methods.

Hungerwise, the real problem isn't the amount of food, it's the piss poor distribution methods in the poor nations. Plus, some dictators use food as a weapon against their own people. IMO, the real solution is to kill the dictators and built modern transportation lines.

[Gandalf]

I have every faith that we can feed twelve plus billion people; why not, when six billion can be fed and half or more of the world's cropland is still operating on techniques straight out of the middle ages? What concerns me is that indications suggest we're a species headed towards population decline. That has never been good for a species.

I have no doubt that that was well thought out, but can other resources support such a high population?

[LT.Hit-Man]

Hypothetical scenario: Someone give you the job of regulating the human population on earth,so on the 6 billion+ humans how many would you kill and how much will be left after?

Ok then this is the way I'd do it if the world pop was 6 billion.
Frist I'd get all my friends and there imeate famly as well as my famly and then kill off 5.99.99% of the rest of the world popluation at random.

[The Kernel]

There is a really simple solution to this problem: eliminate extreme poverty.

Poverty has always been the link in population growth; growth rates grow much faster the poorer the group of people are. In the United States and most of Europe, population growth has leveled out and is actually beginning to decline in some areas (such as Italy). If we can eliminate poverty and establish a bare minimum of existance for ALL of the Earth's population then the solution to many of our planet's problems such as crime and overpopulation can be controlled.

[LT.Hit-Man]

There is a really simple solution to this problem: eliminate extreme poverty.

Poverty has always been the link in population growth; growth rates grow much faster the poorer the group of people are. In the United States and most of Europe, population growth has leveled out and is actually beginning to decline in some areas (such as Italy). If we can eliminate poverty and establish a bare minimum of existance for ALL of the Earth's population then the solution to many of our planet's problems such as crime and overpopulation can be controlled.

Good point.
If you want to take it a step up kill off say 2.5 billion people and use there carcassis to fertlzie the crops for the living, more food and more elbow room

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I have no doubt that that was well thought out, but can other resources support such a high population?

Not many of the resources in use in modern society today but certainly the resources within our technological capacity to utilize; and we have enough of the former to serve in a transitory capacity.