Population Control

I've been reading and I've come to a conclusion that a majority of the world's problems could be diminished by reduction of Developed nations' populations.
Think about it;
Lower population decreases the strain on the environment.
Lower population decreases the cost of goods.
Lower population decreases the strain of social programs.
Lower population lowers unemployment.
Lower population raises wages.
Lower population increases the attention that teachers can give to students.
Lower population encourages more attention put towards a smaller number of children by parents.
Lower population decreases the spread and contagiousness of disease.
Lower population decreases some of the pressures that lead to crime.
Lower population decreases poverty.


Of course, all of these would have to be accomplished by allowing abortions and a change towards "abstinence only" education in public schools.

Nations such as Japan and Italy are reporting negative population growths, coupled with inproved standards of living and higher incomes.

Lower population slows the economy, increasing the likelihood of contraction.

>>2

Thread over.

>>1  Natural selection - groups that dont propagate are replaced by those that do.

>>4
take off all the safety lables that state the obvious (do not stop chainsaw with genitals) and let nature take its course.

>>2

lol no

>>2
Not really, simply means a more even distribution of wealth.

>>1
I think you've attributed wrong causes. Developed countries aren't better because they have lower population, but because they have more capital -> better education -> better technology.

Capital and technology decrease the strain on the environment.
Technology decreases the cost of goods.
Technology (education) raises wages.
Technology (education, higher wages) decreases the strain of social programs.
Lower population lowers unemployment <--?
Capital (more funding) increases the attention that teachers can give to students.
Technology (education) and capital (higher wages) encourage more attention put towards a smaller number of children by parents.
Technology decreases the spread and contagiousness of disease.
Capital (higher wages) decreases some of the pressures that lead to crime.

Lower population is incidental.

>>8
Actually population does play a part. It has to. If the population of the US was 500 billion, people would be pretty poor wouldn't they?

Populations are too high. We need more natural resources per person so the gdp per capita can increase. Communists like to have huge populations because they think that it gives the proletariat more incentive to overthrow their capitalist masters. Are you a communist?

With the simple concept of supply and demand in mind, wouldn't the, "less people means we're all richer" thing be moot? Everyone would have more money, but its value could not stay the same, as it is easier to get.

>>9
-->If the population of the US was 500 billion

Not really. See how dense Japan is.

As for natural resources per person, well that's some neo-malthusian theory right there. The idea that there is a set amount of resource - as opposed to the resources humans actually create through technological advancement and entrepreneurship - and that its running out, is unfounded.

>>10
The 2 main factors affecting gdp are the natural resources per person and the amount of people needed to manipulate those resources to increase their value. Value is of course determinned by a market economy. Technology, education and machinery increase a person's ability to increase the value of those resources.

If we start off with 1 guy with the world to himself, he won't be very rich. Likewise if the world's population was 1 trillion most people would starve and possibly have to eat each other to stay alive, it would be absurd and absolute chaos until people have eaten each other down to a level of population the world could sustain. Anyways, if we increase the number of people in the world we see that people can cooperate and mutually benefit each other and increase the gdp per capita. As population increases further more complex and large scale industries can be developped allowing more efficient machinery and more variety of value increasing industries with few restrictions on resource use.

However at a certain point different resources become strained. It becomes physically impossible to use the resource any more efficiently or to increase it's value any more. If the population continues to grow, the population will notice they can afford less and less of goods and services dependant on that resource. Long story short their gdp per capita begins to decrease.

The point where gdp per capita begins to decrease often comes before the point where gdp is at it's highest. The question here is whether you see the population as manufacturing units (proletariats) and the gdp must increase to the highest possible or whether you see the population as citizens (bourgeoise) and the gdp per capita must increase to the highest possible.

>>11
What if there were 500 billion people in the US would be more dense than Japan. The analogy was intended to prove that there is a cap to the maximum population possible. If you can't even admit that there is a cap limit, since it is so unreasonable to think otherwise you must be a troll.

"As for natural resources per person, well that's some neo-malthusian theory right there."
No it fucking isn't. It's straight forward logic. If fossil fuels allow 1 acre to feed 20 people and there are 15 people per acre, then fossil fuels run out and technology only allows one acre to feed 5 people without fossil fuels, what happens?

What if population reaches it's limit for the amount of food available and there is a drought? What do you think happens?

Fucking idiot. gb2 soviet russia

>>12
If fossil fuels allow 1 acre to feed 20 people and there are 15 people per acre, then fossil fuels run out and technology only allows one acre to feed 5 people without fossil fuels, what happens?

I did say malthusian, didn't I? WELL AGAIN I SAY

Malthusian.

>>13
Well if you think malthus deserves all the credit for something so blindingly obvious, either you don't have the intelligence to see how blindingly obvious it is or you are a troll.

>>14
LOL, Malthus was wrong, and so are u

>>15

How or Why was Malthus wrong?

>>16
Wiki is your friend.

Basically he put forward the notion that there were limits to population growth, and that overpopulation would lead to social collapse. He based his limiting factor on food production. His prediction never materialised. This was 100 yrs ago.

So now ppl are saying the same thing, but swap food for oil or environmental damage etc etc.

>>15
LOL you are so fucking stupid you can't understand a straightforward argument. Or you are a troll.

>>17

Oh ok.

Well then...

Wow, >>18 is right, you're fucking stupid. Just because something predicted doesn't happen, doesn't mean it never will. This argument *is* straight forward and the fact of the matter is your counter-point is "We'll figure something out". That's not science, that's not skepticism, which should be used when we're talking about *another* environmental based mammal exstinction. You do understand that humans are mammals, living organisms and thus subject to the environment, correct?

>>18
>>19
Goes both ways, and wtf does science have to do with this, it's just a bunch of ideas in ppl's heads. Nobody has proof.

I pointed out some other famous guy who said it all before you and was wrong; perhaps he missed something, and perhaps so did you.

If the lesson learned from Malthus' error is anything, it would be that population is not necessarily constrained by "academically imagined limits".

In any case, if all we are talking here is hypotheticals, then technology can hypothetically advance to accommodate unlimited, sustainable density.

So which is it, reality or hypothetical?

>>20

The reality is that population has directly effected the environment before, and has led to death of a population of humans before.

Malthus' error =/= what is being discussed here, you fucking PRE-tard, fuckbrain, shit-thinker.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND NOW?

>>21
Well big fucking whoop.

It's still Malthusian, btw.

>>22

That's a pretty big fuckin' whoop if it completely dismantes your stinker of a thesis, you miserable shitstick. So, you wiki'd Malthusianism? This is not relevant to the discussion at hand and no one here gives a fuck.

What's being discussed here isn't Malthusian, but instead an existential crisis that has been around since we discovered that we're from a handful of Sub-Saharan survivers. And more so since we've demystified nature itself. You need to shut the fuck up, sit the fuck back and save the egotistical dick jerking for those furry forums we're all certain you visit on a regular basis.

>>23
natural resources per person
resources become strained
cap to the maximum population
physically impossible to use the resource
population continues to grow
population will notice they can afford less

This is malthusian. Quoted from posts. Yeah, shitstick.

>>24
You have to be trolling...
Of course Malthus agreed with that, but that doesn't make it Malthusian. Malthus agreed that 1+1=2, does your belief that 1+1=2 make you Malthusian also? I believe you are some 14 year old who is like "lol i red communist manifesto im superior" and enjoys finding ways to starve people to death (a communist tradition) because he thinks it makes him "smrt". No one give a fuck anymore about your troll.

Malthus was wrong about technology, but I have taken this into account. Whether some new technology will make everything fine and dandy and everyone can have as many children as they want or whether mass starvation will become a reality as global warming sets in and fossil fuels get expensive, it is logical to prepare for the worst and only increase populations when we are certain it won't end up in sufferring.

>>25

Exactly. The difference here is that we are taking in account technology and everything else Malthus didn't. This is primarily why you fail and you can keep up with the repeating posts like >>24, but you'll just look like a damn troll.

>>25

Fuck. Malthus penned the idea. That's why it's fucking named after him. And it is the same idea you've fucking got.

I don't see where the part where "populations are too high" and Part of the argument against Malthus and his "Limits to Growth" was that resources are created. Technology allows new resources to be created that didn't exist before because it was just lying fallow in the ground/sea/air/space.

The OP started the thread saying that population caused his whole list of problems, but that isn't the real cause. Population takes a back seat to economic development and technological advancement.

And no if the population of the US was 500 billion, they wouldn't necessarily be poor. It would depend on what they created, and the level of technology. Of course, I too can pull any number out of air and use it as a counter argument.

Srsly. Go read >>9 and >>12 again and come back and tell me they weren't "ZOMG too many ppls in za warudo"

>>27
Malthus didn't come up with the idea. It's obvious. If people are eating all the food that they can possibly produce then something happens like a drought which means they can't produce enough food to feed everyone they starve. Malthus was the guy who said the state should control population growth to prevent poverty. Marx said that malthus is wrong and that tyranny causes proverty.

I say poverty is caused by 100s of different factors, tyranny and corruption plays a role, but so does drought and overpopulation.

Do you want to support ideas which reduce poverty or do you want to fuck around?

Oh and note the fact that Marx didn't create the idea that tyranny causes poverty, that's pretty fucking obvious aswell.

>>28
Well I say overpopulation isn't a cause, but a symptom.

negative population growth is disasterous. Europe isnt replacing themselves and they are about to be fucked. USA has a good growth rate.

>>31
Somewhat correct. There are developed countries that want to increase their birth rate. If less people is so great, why would they want more ppl. A shrinking population is an economic time bomb.

>>32
Ideally populations of developed countries should decline slightly, or at least have zero growth.

>>33
But developed countries aren't the ones with the major problems, however. What really causes the problems is the developing countries with fuck high birth rates that are industrializing.

Developing countries have all the problems.

it depends alot on the situation, for less developed countries it would probably be better with a lower birth rate, because there isn't qualified jobs for the very large amount of population in the country. But as >>32, a constantly shrinking population is bad for the economy, but so is a constantly raising population.
If developed nation a) has a good and effective economy with a very low unemployment rate, low inflation, everything's going smooth, and the population starts to decrease, this will, of course mean that there are less people for the state to support if it does so in any way which of course is good, but moreso it will mean that there are less people in the already fully occupied workforce. This leads to inflation and bottlenecks, not very positive XD
the opposite will of course happen with a constantly growing workfoce, there won't be enough jobs for the people who want them, leading to high unemployment which is also bad.

so the question isn't whether to kill off a bunch of people just because "it's great to have less people" but to have a population which fits with the needed workforce, and, when there is a need for more/less workers, will increase/decrease. This of course is pretty hard to just do, but one could argue that it's possible to adjust the workforce to the population through reforms, etc.

But what about all the less developed countries, shouldn't we just kill alot of off alot of the population so they can get a relatively well sized population? uhh, no.
you'd need to industrialize and develop the society to somehow support jobs for more of it's population, this would automatically lead to an increase in general wealth, which means that the birth rate would fall, this is the same thing that happened during the western industrialization and there is plenty of proof for that.

Most of Africa has way too high birth rates. With foreign aid, they are losing less infants to disease but they aren't having less babies. In the next 50 years Africa's population is going to explode if they don't change.

OP is ghost of Malthus.

>>37
WOOOOOOOOO
I AM THE GHOST OF MALTHUS WOOOOOO

I need to make a statement about economics, our views of it have changed over time, the "laws" of economics don't always go how we predict, for example, "stagflation" was an abberation from typical economic thought, and seemed to laugh in the face of the inflation/unemployment equilibrium that intellectuals worked around.  The impact of human beings on the environment is profound, and economic stability is a much better goal imo than straining the environment with neverceasing economic growth.  Can you give me an example withing the last 10 years of a countrie's problems with a negative population growth? I see the Germans with a 25% unemployment rate in the eastern bloc, I see the Japanese with a hemorraging economy, businesses downsizing and becoming more mechanized, how do these factor in to the economic predictions you have made? Not to mention that technology also has the habit of taking jobs away from human beings, a factor that makes lower population more attractive. (why have a kid who may have to freeload for the rest of his life?)

The arguement I see being made is that we are supposed to have an ENDLESS technological improvement to counteract the strains of a rising population, and frankly, it's fallacious.
You people argue that Malthus is wrong because of the factor of technology, but you seem to forget that scientific breakthroughs don't happen from sheer force of will, we may never develop a way to perform nuclear fusion as an energy source, we may never develop a solution to Developing countries food problems, why are you assuming that we will? Hell, in the 50s they thought we'd be commuting to work in flying cars, but our carpool vehicles are still earthbound to this day.

Malthus was wrong only in applying the factors of technology to the human growth curve, but in biology, all populations are bound to the same fate, they eventually outstrip their food supply and many will die to bring the production/consumption into balance.  Humans are biological organisms, and as long as our American Economists encourage parents to buy Bonds rather than put their kids through college to become scientists, we aren't going to be able to sustain our population growth with technological improvements to food production. (Basically, stop fapping and go do some science if you want to not look like a fool later.)

If higher population is so enormously good for the economy, why have higher populations not filled out the unemployment rate? Why are so many people without jobs? Because they aren't fucking needed.  If higher population hasn't solved unemployment, who's to say that a lower population will leave corporations starving for workers? They don't need the excess, why not decrease the population to remove excess unemployed laborers? And even if corporations are starving for laborers, when labor becomes more in demand, their value will go up, and laborers get the benefit of higher wages and benefits from being a rarer commodity.  You may scream "communist" for this boon to labor, but I'd bet that some of these laborers would use the extra money they get from wages towards starting their own businesses with better technology and with a decreased need for laborers themselves, enriching the ecomomy further.

In conclusion, you may bitch at Malthus for being wrong, but he was only partially wrong, the laws of nature still apply to man, and it's definately foolish thinking to believe that man will continue to trump nature well into the future when we have issues like global warming, loss of biological diversity, AIDS, Bird Flu and the ilk knocking at our front door.  I think it would be better to try at economic and population stability, rather than keep chugging down the tracks that lead to possible disaster.  It's never been tried before, the negative as well as the positive outcomes of a trend toward stability are not confirmed, why not try it?

BTW, I AM THE OP IF YOU DIDN'T FIGURE IT OUT.

>>38
incorrect. technology will allow us to live in giant space stations and the moon and then other planets.

>>39
We'd better start building nuclear power stations, since it's the only way to make rocket fuel without fossil fuels.

Eventually the number of people born will have to match the number of people who die.

>>39
eeeey
no,it takes more engery to get all the things to the moon then we will ever get from the moon or other planets