Hmmm, we have condoms, pills, sponges, fleshlights, visectomies, and safe abortions, you'd think it wouldn't be too difficult to stop making babies...

Definitely. Put a big ammount of blame and huge ammounts of cess-ridden filth on the Catholic church for their anti-birth control stance. Most of the civilized world has a low birth rate - either a declining population or increasing only due to immigration. The 3rd world keeps reproducing at an insane rate.

I think there is too many people on this planet who consumes 4 times more food, water and energy than they need to have a good life.
We here complain on, for example, Africans for being too numerous, but we really can't blame them. They're killed by hunger, wars, AIDS and pollution and they consume almost nothing compared to us. Their national economies are dictated by International Monetary Fund, so a majority of their production goes to our supermarkets for ridiculous prices, where it rots. We are masters at wasting of resources.

I'm pretty sure it's unethical to talk about lowering a number of people, when the real problem is the exaggerated consumption and it's OUR consumption in the first place! Not theirs, we can't blame for consumption the almost 3 billions of people living from less than 1 dollar per day, or the 800 millions directly suffering from hunger, or the 10 millions of them who dies from hunger every year.

The education and contraception are very good things, but there is no way how to get them to the poorer half of the world. First, a situation there must be stabilized by humanitary help, rebuilding of economies, negotiation with extremistic leaders, forgiving them all their debts (which is only just), restoring their independence, sharing of resources and other such very logical and necessary steps. Then people there will be able to get educated (about a contraception, for example). But until then, what? Wanna come there, into a poorest village or a slum, and say "there is too much of you guys, what about you all getting sterilized, so we unimaginably rich and fat people of the West and North can have even better life?"
Well then hope they doesn't understand English.

Same here.

If it were up to me you'd have to meet some sort of set requirements to have children. I know it sounds awful, but I'm sure everyone here agrees there are people who should definitely not have kids. We could even use this unnatural selection to improve the species. And before anyone says it I am not racist.

No, Luminon. It works the same way it did for pioneers who first moved to North America:

You start-up a homestead & farm, beginning small and working upward (perhaps with the help of a spouse or some friends/neighbor volunteers), birthing children early and getting them out in the field more or less as soon as they can carry a bag of seeds. It works surprisingly well, from a certain perspective; you essentially get to pick-up an extra set of free hands every 5 years or so.

This is how the whole 'family farm' paradigm first started.

 

They won't hire help because kids are much cheaper and more easily controlled, and they aren't educated of the mid to long-term consequences of having large families.

 

EDIT: Oh, and you can go right ahead and substantiate your overconsumption vs overpopulation claim, please.

All right, except of a general statements of this kind which appears quite often over the years, the most recent one was here:

Beyond Terror

by Chris Abbot, Paul Rogers and Johan Sloboda
An excerpt from the book studying a close relationship between the global crises and threats we are in.

The article with excerpt is available here, just scroll below the article by Scott Champion named 'The end of unfettered capitalism' (which is magnificent btw) and there it is. There are the paragraphs with some more precise numbers.

It seems to me like a vain patchwork, without solving the primal cause of all that. It's not rational to have a society producing so abundantly the above mentioned kinds of children and then to blame the children.  I say, first stop pissing into a pond, before attempting to filter the water. This is not a genetical problem which could be solved by selective breeding. I will now propose a real causes of it.
cancer - environmental pollution, a society supporting unhealthy food and habits
diabetes - environmental pollution, a culture supporting unhealthy food and habits
depression - a competitive, dehumanized quasi-culture (just 'culture' further )
theism - a fear-based culture, non-critical education suppressing individuality and self-value
ugliness - a competitive culture with a commercial idol of a skinny woman, which is anyway not preferred by the most of men
adult acne - environmental pollution, a culture supporting unhealthy food and habits
ADD - who knows, but the co-factors may be an environmental pollution, food, and social pressure
obesity - too much of food and junk food, a competitive culture creating a lot of stress, a policy of food corporations, misusing the endorphinal brain reaction on food as a hard drug, and so on.

I know, there are genetic causes, but these are not primary, nor the most important for now. They can not be solved on the mass scale anyway, until the above mentioned causes will be solved first. (environmental pollution also counts with a nuclear radiation)

 

 

That's EXACTLY what I'm saying. They can't afford help on their farm, so they have more children. I do not remeber exactly where I saw or read it, but it's not uncommon for families in third world countries to have 10 or 12 children to help on the farm. Also, most of the time it's not just a "farming couple" as you put it, but a whole extended family.

The answer in the first world is remarkably easy.  Government funded free birth control and abortion coupled with comprehensive sex education beginning in grade school.  Free vasectomies to any male, whatsoever.  End stupid rules like the ones in Georgia hospitals where medicare won't cover the cost of a birth if the woman gets a tubal ligation while having a C-section.  Yeah... that's a rule.  Go figure that one out.  Makes no sense to me.

 

 

Can you explain that to me?  I know I must sound stupid, but I honestly don't understand.  It seems like I'm reading this: If a woman gives birth by C-section then she can't have a medicare covered tubal ligation?  But, if she gives birth otherwise, it is covered?

 

Is it too many fucking people or too many people fucking that's the big problem?

As far as I'm concerned, population control and eugenics are entirely unethical and immoral.  But, since you asked:

One could effect the slaughter of most of mankind in three ways: unfairly, fairly, and inclusively.  Let's take it as given that all three ways would require some sort of totalitarian world dictatorship.

The unfair way would depend upon the ruling system.  Exemption from death would ensure the military's loyalty. The victims would be chosen based on their correspondence in some aspect to the Powers that Be - race, religion, nationality, political affiliation, &c. could all come into play.  Then, there would follow a systematic elimination of the set of all x, where x =/= people in correspondence with this crucial aspect of the ruling party.

Under the fair system, a lottery would be used.  This could be at the national, ethnic, municipal, familial, or individual level (the larger the groups in the raffle, of course, the more feasibly it could be accomplished).  Either way, the losers (or winners, depending on how ironic the dictator is) of the lottery could be disposed of in an effective and efficient manner, e.g. burying alive, to be carried out by the military authorities.  To ensure these authorities' absolute loyalty to the lottery, they and their families would be exempted from the drawing.  Afterwards, whosoever chance spared would be left behind.

The inclusive, neo-liberal way would be to take a detailed census of the world, then to exterminate the desired number of people whilst ensuring that all statistically significant proportions of ethnicity, religion, nationality, municipality, gender, sexual orientation, handedness, IQ, &c. and all the combinations of the above (e.g. the population of lesbian,  female, Rastafarian Russians who write with their left hands and have an IQ between 110 and 112) are scrupulously preserved in the resulting smaller world population. 

You should pick the one which best represents your value system, though I would question the seriousness of any value system which views people as a problem, eagerly anticipates great evil befalling large swathes of the population, and seriously considers murder, eugenics, or population control as viable and necessary options.

It's not a matter of wanting great evil to befall a large swath of the population. It's simply that if we don't control the population, Malthus will come back to haunt us. You asked how to "slaughter" most of mankind, and then forget the most obvious scenario. We do nothing, allow our population to grow unchecked, and most of them will die. It's basic ecology and population dynamics. Here we are merely applying Le Chatelier's principle to ecology.

The middle portion of my original post, detailing three forms of speedy population reduction by a supposed "world totalitarian state" was an obvious satire, and I will not respond to the objections raised to it. 

Mr Brown wrote:

"Can you justify such a stance? In what way, for example, is population control less ethical 
than unfettered population growth to the point where starvation becomes widespread?"

I would answer that population control is less ethical because it is a deliberate choice, whereas unfettered population growth is a natural occurrence arising from the reproductive habits of individual humans, the artificially plentiful food supply, and effective disease control, among other factors.

There is no moral culpability where nature's acts are concerned, but there is certainly immorality involved in the ending, altering, or sterilising of people's lives against their will for what is postulated as the common good.

It's not a matter of wanting great evil to befall a large swath of the population. 
It's simply that if we don't control the population, Malthus will come back to haunt us. 
You asked how to "slaughter" most of mankind, and then forget the most obvious scenario. 
We do nothing, allow our population to grow unchecked, and most of them will die. 
It's basic ecology and population dynamics. 
Here we are merely applying Le Chatelier's principle to ecology.

You dropped a few names - some good ones, too!  Don't worry, I've picked them up for you.

Malthus does indeed predict that population will exceed its resources and sharply decline.  However, his essay is a documentation of what he sees as a natural phenomenon, not an imperative to prevent it!  In trying to forestall an unobserved phenomenon, one runs the risk of fruitlessly employing grossly unethical means, inhibiting the freedom and self-determination of countless individuals, to achieve nothing.

The only moral course is to allow the variable of population to continue to increase or decrease according to its own laws, whilst attempting to improve the supplies of food &c. (industry and science have achieved higher and higher plateaux of food production throughout history), thereby (as Le Chatelier would put it) increasing the "volume" wherein your population is expanding.

Of course there's always the Soylent Green option.

This is fallacious reasoning (argument from nature). There is nothing 'more moral', somehow, about letting a few billion people starve to death just because it would be a natural outcome. I would remind you that there is technically nothing you can name, within a rational framework, that does not act according to natural principles (if I fire a gun at some, for example, it is not the deliberate pulling of the trigger that causes their death - it is the wholly natural forces of kinetic energy & physics that the bullet acts upon that does the deed).

This highlights the almost silly part of this dangerous state of affairs:

Who the fuck needs more than two children? How can you justify that breathtaking level of selfishness? It's like arguing that you should be entitled to whatever amount of space & decadence you wish.

And in a way I agree with you Matt, and also you Kevin. Two children are the absolute maximum, and the one child-law might go a long way to aleaviate the problem, but both of you should understand this:

The decision that I will never have more than two children, unless by the result of a "happy accident" was a dificult one for me. I arrived at it a few years back, only after serious consideration, through a strong sense of responsibity to do my, incredably tiny part to improve the future of mankind.

You see, I am one of four siblings, and I have so much love for my sister and brothers, and am very very happy to have grown up with them.

I also work with children, and I can see the many difficulties that arise from being an only child: more difficulties in aquiring good social skills, and the problem of being so pampered by parents, that it makes you too self-centered, and expectant of the world around you.

Now, all people are different, and so all only-children are different, so of course I'm not implying that it is extremely harmful to grow up without any siblings. My best friend is an only child, and hasn't suffered any real adverse effects.

But what I mean is, I can understand, and have alot of sympathy for, the incentive to have two, three and four children, and I can't personally understand the incentive not to have any, although I deeply respect it Matt, so don't worry. I think you are fully entitled to have no children (if that is what you want), and I admire the fact that you stand by your decission proudly, and that goes for all of you here who say you don't want to have children.

Now, guys, I know that you, Kevin are a sarcastic, sometimes cynical-sounding poster, and that you rarely discuss the personal emotions involved in a discussion of sociology such as this thread, and you Matt are a provocatour extraordinaire, who enjoy talking about all the governmental programs you would like to see implemented to control stupid people, but I am just a big softy really, and this is how I roll. So you write your posts in your style, and I respond to them in my style: emotionally, vulnerable and sincere.

I respect you both, so don't percieve it as an attack on your posts, just a response. Please don't feel threatened by my touchy-feely hippie response.

Feel free to be annoyed at it though. I get annoyed at some of your cold, snide, calculating responses often enough after all

As other people have already pointed out, this is a naturalistic fallacy. One the one hand, the control of the population that we are referring to in this context is about measures by which people can have sex without concieving a child (or failing that, aborting the foetus). Furthermore, we are emphasizing the fact that the ability of people to choose to control the process of conception is an important part of this process (forced birth control is a different matter). On the other, we are allowing a course to continue which will certainly lead to the destruction of vast numbers of actual and tangible lives as opposed to what are little more than potential human experiences. The choice between the two is obvious.

That's rather interesting. I grew-up with two siblings (older brother, younger sister), and certainly some days felt like I had at least one sibling too many.

But, yes, I know what you mean. I do love both of my siblings. Personally, I think I'd have been just fine with just one sibling - but I suppose I'll never be sure about that.

Well, realistically, 3 kids probably wouldn't be too bad an average number per person either (some people not being able to reproduce would likely make-up for the bit of extra population), while four is pushing it but wouldn't cause major concerns so long as it wasn't a common thing - it's when we get into the raw absurdities, 6-10 kids per family, and those absurdities become trends, that the real problem starts rearing it's head. I mean, I think you'd probably agree that having 6 to 10 children is ludicrous? :P 

This one?

 

 

Bonus cool points to anyone getting this.

But some people are so incredibly uncoll enough to have never seen Monty Python or even to not like it!

Well, my crystal turned black long ago. Of course, the number of reds in this group of posters is small as well. Certainly there are no greens.

Hmmm. Carousel anyone?

Now, don't you dare run.

What I find humorous is that seemingly everyone 'knows' that we are overpopulated and starving and wasteful and [fill in the blank] yet I'm curious as to the continued behavior of this enabling of the problem to persist. Hmmmm.

Incidentally, fewer children equates to fewer people to wipe your asses whilst you are greedily hanging onto life later. Now there is humor. Watching the old lady fall down and click her LifeAlert and no one is there to dispatch the assistance that is already overworked from taking care of other elderly childless assholes.

It is so easy to consider oneself above the problem when we are young and virile; virtually unhindered by nature's limits.

We couldn't possibly be saving our energy for later in life, could we?

Are we reserving vast areas of land for wildlife that could be food?

Don't we put restrictions on food harvesters for 'conservation' purposes?

Just wondering. Here in my 'holler' of America, there are over a million deer at last count. There are thousands upon thousands of wild animals that we domesticated thousands of years ago throughout the world. We construct 'Petcos' and have aisles dedicated to animals that really could be food for other humans. We encourage people not to plant corn or soybeans to keep the price controlled. In other countries, the price of rice is not controlled and so the farmer loses his/her ass and decides: "Fuck it. I'll plant rubber trees 'cause them Amurrikans need tires for their SUV's."

So let's be real here. It isn't 'overpopulation' you're worried about. It's not too many births that are the problem. It isn't even too many deaths. According to the world factbook, the population growth rate is .883% for 2008 that's accounting for immigration. Given the life expectancy of 78.14 years(same source) then we're looking at approximately 79 years before the population of the United States is 600,000,000. If 79 years or less from now, we haven't brought birth control, family planning, and resource development to the parts of the world allegedly in need of them then whom are we to blame?

Or maybe... you don't want that? Maybe the world needs to stay just like it is with our blood diamond dog collars and Xbox5000's. Maybe we can all stay in our 20's and 30's and never get old whilst spaying and neutering other people's children at birth. Oh yes! There we go.

We'll perfect robots to make our Viagra and Nuva-rings and fuck each other senseless  until we have to go to the cardiac ward for life support because WE are the precious ones. WE are the chosen to live the only life knowable. The future is hopeless. It is up to us to live for ourselves and our posterity can fuck off as soon as they change the glucose IV and turn our sheets for the night.

It is THEY who are the problem. Those fucking breeders. It is THEY who are taking away all the good things in MY life. I don't want to hear your whelps squawling because they are hungry; I can't concentrate on diddling the widow next door's wrinkled flappy genitalia if your children... oh I forgot. Damned Alzheimer's is acting up. She finally died last week. I'll miss her epileptic hand jobs.

Those fucking tv shows. If I have to watch that crotchety old Brooke Burke dance the marimba again with that 40-something boy why I'll just snap. I sure do wish there was some youngsters to watch dance. Viagra only goes so far when you're banging a 70 year old.

Just can't get decent service anymore. The crotchety old fuckers at the taco bell take forever to stuff and wrap a mild bean burrito. Why I remember how I used to make a ten-pack in under a minute. Now the 50 somethings can't even get 2 done in ten minutes.

[/aimless rant]

Josh, is it just that the numbers are too big for you to intuit or something? 6 and a half billion. If you 'don't believe' that the human population has experienced an exponent in population growth over the past few centuries, I guess that's your business; the numbers stand for themselves.

Do you actually have an argument against the notion that a few billion large mammals (the average human weighing-in at well over 100 lbs) are going to be unable to sustain such a large population over time? Are you aware of a solution to the problem of having to feed a few billion mouths every day of every year that the rest of the world is ignorant of?

 

There used to be wild bison, mammoths and all other manner of megafauna throughout North America. You'll perhaps want to note that it wasn't terrible difficult for us to very quickly wipe them all out.

I wrote it before and I write it again. Does anyone have the guts to face it, instead of pondering an ineffective and immoral plans? It's a major obstacle and also a major chance, it's a doorway, said shortly.
All the plans for birth control and education are very nice, but there is absolutely no way how to enforce them. There must be taken a steps to make it possible.
I mean the alleviation of extreme poverty, a peaceful cooperation of all states (for this and more goals), sharing of resources to make the global life standard more balanced, use the resources wasted on commercialism and wars for a humanitary help instead, and this all must be backed up by a global educational campaign.

No education and birth control can be brought to dozens of the poor states without this stabilizing of a situation. No succesful contact with the governments and the citizens can be made. All such attempts would be refused. It is ludicrous that a people in crowded cities with huge and full supermarkets talks about starvation and birth control! We are those, who owes to Africa, South America, or middle East! Nobody there will listen to the rich oppressors, heathens, and white devils. We must first change ourselves thoroughly, make the peace with them, stop destroying them, and earn their trust. This is not a charity, it's justice. No more we can live in isolated empires, misusing a weaker states across the world. Where do you think a content of all the supermarkets comes from? A transformation of our culture can provide far more resources than a death of theirs. It is our own door-sill, where we must start the work.

Remember, all the dreadness of Malthusian model comes from a basis, that humanity acts not more intelligently than a bacteria colony. To start behaving in more intelligent, organized way we must unite, and we can only unite in peace, brotherhood and approximate equality or a collective effort towards it, not and never under any form of oppression. Only a sovereign, individual states can unite together, as the idea of unity says, there must not be any form of dependence, oppression, or involuntary (non-)membership.

Congratulations Nikolaj, we need more of people like you. A holiday spent at Sudan or Nigeria for the local participants on discussion should do the job. Some people just can't imagine it, and so they talk crap.

Furthermore, one important technical detail. While a modesty at own needs, sparing the environment and so on is important and necessary, there are even more important things to do. It is getting organized and also appealing to political authorities. While you control just a few thousands of dollars, they control trillions.