A nice talk from Hans Rosling on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA5BM7CE5-8
We are already at more than twice a sustainable population level. Even the most generous estimates I've seen place the Earth's carrying capacity at 7.7 billion people. But most estimates say that the Earth can support 2-3 billion people at modest levels of first-world consumption. The more our planet will be stripped of its resources now (whether through overfishing, destruction of forests, or climate change), the lower the sustainable planet population will become.
Put differently, we need to lose at least 5 billion people in the next decades without replacing them with a younger generation to be able to sustain the emancipation of emerging countries. It's not about population growth stabilizing, we need both massive negative population growth and halving of current energy use in developed countries. The only "natural" means through which I can see that happening is massive food shortages or horrific wars, and I think it's a pretty safe bet that the former will trigger the latter. It's also a pretty safe bet that our global society will disappear in that scenario, so I'd rather we have better solutions before that happens.
As soon as anyone frames sustainability challenges in terms of the earths "carrying capacity" they are revealing a bias that is unhelpful. Even if you accept the premise that the earth does have some 'maximum population' then so what? It's a useless proposition -- what are you going to do, force everyone to only have one child, that is unsustainable as China discovered.
Luckily, as the parent pointed out, overpopulation is not a problem. The rate of growth continues to decrease, and global populations will peak in my lifetime.
And, of course, we should be striving in our generation to solve these existential challenges, rather than squandering our time optimizing sales funnels and click-through-rates.
In the interest of (scientific) discourse, it is generally unhelpful to redefine or ignore generic definitions. Are you asserting that the earth doesn't support any species, or that is perfectly possible to have googolplex people living on earth without reducing earth's ability to support googolplex people in the future?
In answer to your googolplex question - I think it's safer to bet on the technology developing to support such a population than against it. (Though I think we'll either be extinct or an interstellar species before then.)
My use of that population number was simply that: a refutation of the assertion that the earth has no population limit, as it will be hard to argue that our planet can support 10^9980 humans per square millimeter of land area. A genuine "argumentum ad absurdum", to counter the GP's completely nonsensical opening statement.
But instead of that, the initial reply:
- refused the basic premise that would have allowed that discussion, by indirectly positing that space on earth is infinite
- followed it up with a very questionable assertion that earth's resources are used "more or less sustainably" (which is already at odds with the previous assertion that resources are infinite, and ignores the many species we've already hunted to extinction)
- added a non-sequitur that we would have run out of resources as hunter-gatherers (again at odds with the initial statement)
- justified the plain refusal of the basic premise with an ad-hominem about bias
- continued on with the apathetic rationalization that nothing can be done anyway
- concluded by reiterating the initial statement without further substantiation
Now, you may argue that my refusal to engage in that discussion is my weakness and it would still have been possible to salvage something positive, however my time is finite and there's better, less taxing discussions to be had.
(/me out, accepting that meta-justification is considered offtopic and will be downmodded).
It gives me an idea for a sci-fi story, where a stable civilization of smart beings faces a threat of the sphere of all-consuming humans expanding at the speed of light.
This has a survey of capacity estimates on page 10. I took the median of those, which more or less matched the sources I've encountered over the past year.
Quite frankly, it doesn't matter to me whether the "real" capacity is 1 billion or 20 billion or 100 billion, as I don't believe we (as a species) have any chance of moderation in the face of opulence. As long as there's any surplus capacity left on this planet, we will find a way to use it. As fast and as wasteful as we can, until it all comes crashing down.
Can you show me these estimates? Do they take into account ways we could live with a smaller footprint (e.g. vegetarian/vegan diet) and/or advances in eco-friendly technology?
As for your question, I doubt that they would include an all-vegan world scenario, as it's considered unattainable, regardless of whether it would theoretically help. Technological advances are generally included, but with very conservative gain estimates.
The whole argument sounds to me like "we don't have to force people to change their lifestyle to adjust for Earth's capacity - we can always force people to change their lifestyle".
Which is pretty visible in the West; every time the government tries to limit access to something, you get a stream of arguments that look exactly the same as those against one child policy that are posted here.
What do you expect is causing this? Isn't a large part of the reason for this due to changes in society rather than a synchronised biological trend? For example, couples choosing to have children later, if at all.
If the reasons are social rather than biological, then there's no reason why birth rates (I'm using the term birth rates as it's a more general term for what we're considering) can't increase in the future. The view that overpopulation is a non-problem seems to be based on wishful thinking and/or short-sighted analysis.
- enormous reduction in child mortality - increased female emancipation and economic opportunities - (direct and opportunity) costs of child-raising becomes relatively larger when societies get richer
I don't expect any of those trends to reverse itself
> If the reasons are social rather than biological, then there's no reason why birth rates can't increase in the future.
Sure, and there's no reason why the worldwide decrease cant' accelerate further either. The only question is, why do you think some scenario is more likely than the other?
> The view that overpopulation is a non-problem seems to be based on wishful thinking and/or short-sighted analysis.
To me the view that population increase is/will be some huge problem seems to be continuously redressing the Malthusian nonsense that's been wrong for over 2 centuries
I don't expect any of those trends to reverse itself"
Those aren't the only trends that matter. How about:
* Reduction in working hours/increased leisure time.
* Possibility for development of life extension technology (so long as this comes with an increased window of opportunity for raising kids).
* Changes to family structures (for example, an increase in popularity in tribe-like family structures, which reduces the burden on individual carers).
The point is if birth rate is only slowing down because of how our society currently is, then birth rate predictions are based on that society staying the same, and we have no guarantee of that being the case. Even if you think it's unlikely to change in the near future, humans will hopefully be living on Earth for thousands of years to come. If you were born 1000 years ago, do you believe you could predict how society would turn out in 2015?
> "increase to 11.2 billion in the year 2100"
> "may rise to 16 billion by 2100"
> "forecasts between 9.3 and 12.6 billion in 2100, and continued growth thereafter"
> "World population to hit 11bn in 2100 – with 70% chance of continuous rise"
Exit programs for the kids of the local religious nuts starting from pre-school?
world won't be able to feed infinite humans so a restriction policy will eventually be needed (or systematic culling, depending on whichever comes first between enlightenment and desperation)
an interesting resulting problem of which is that population will keep aging. solutions will need to take into account non productive member in their older age, either balancing with equal amount of younger or culling from the top instead of the bottom of the age bracket
we won't likely see that in our lifespan, with some luck.
Most western countries populations grow only because of immigration - fertility is below the replacement rate.
Overpopulation is the "problem" people trot out so they don't have to talk about things they might actually have to do something about, like switching to renewable energy sources, or improving women's education in developing countries.
Which highlights the other reason people talking about overpopulation are unsettling: suddenly everyone's playing psychopath.
Overpopulation causes many problems, being able to feed them is not one of them.
If so, I totally support the idea of licensing human breeding.
Up until the 1990s in Spain, many thousands of children were systematically stolen from political activists and others with the wrong politics or wrong lifestyle. Parents were told that their newborn had died. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15335899
This will only mean the most vulnerable (who need the most support) will be unsupported. You're creating an underclass.
You'd be surprised
The traditional "license" to have children used to be marriage, and children born without such a license were called illegitimate - i.e. outside the law. It was an unjust system that hurt a lot of innocent children, and we've moved away from it for a reason.
If the current system (where marriage and procreation are notionally separate) were found to hurt a lot of innocent children, would we call our system unjust and abandon it?
I suspect not. The current culture around marriage and parenting didn't evolve from pragmatism as much as (various takes on) ethics, morality, and self-determinism.
That alone will prevent many unplanned and unwanted babies in a population without any force, political, eugenics or racist overtones.
I don't know the long term effects of these implants so it's a tentative idea.
Yes, Nazi Germany did some shitty stuff for ideological reasons and tarnished the "eugenics" label, but it doesn't invalidate the basic idea of influencing human reproduction and/or selecting for preferred traits and/or direct DNA interventions.
In practice, eugenics seems to move from "some genetic makeups are more fit for the current environment than others, and we should strive for those in future generations" to "some genetic makeups are better than others, and we should strive for those", to "some people are better than others, and we should strive for those", to "some people are better than others, and we should force there to not be so many of the others". There doesn't seem to be any clear point at which you can say, "No, you've gone too far", and explain to the true believer why the step they took is too far. They'll just tell you that it's logically implied by the steps that you are in agreement with.
And if you disagree with this, show me historical examples of eugenics movements that stopped at reasonable places. (I probably need to qualify that with "eugenics movements that had some influence", because if you don't have enough influence to get people to accept step 1, you don't move on to step 2. And that may be begging the question on my part, because Nazi Germany may be the only historical example where the ideas got taken seriously and actually influenced much of anything.)
Unrelated comment: Another danger of eugenics is exposed by my wording of the starting point: "some genetic makeups are more fit for the current environment than others..." That's clearly true. But the current environment is not necessarily the one that future generations will face; leaving them some genetic diversity (even if it creates some disadvantages) may be a net win. Remember sickle cell anemia.
Because it doesn't. I will assert that even though I'm not a Marxist True Believer.
> After seeing too many examples of it working out badly and none at all of it working well, we regard the idea as invalid.
And that's just plain stupidity, which is exactly what I'm complaining about. It's "someone tried that before some time ago and it didn't work, therefore let's label this stupid and throw it away" kind of attitude. The real reason we're ignoring the entire idea is because communist propaganda has lost and US propaganda has won, and it has little to do with actual merits of the idea itself.
You could utter similar dismissals for fire before we mastered it, or for gasoline before we created ICEs, or for powered flight before Wright brothers. What I was asking for is an actual discussion of the idea - pointing out where the idea is wrong, and talking about how can we modify it to avoid its problems while reaping the rewards.
Which fortunately you did in the rest of your comment, so forgive me for the text above, but I really really disagree with the sentiment of your first paragraph.
--
> And if you disagree with this, show me historical examples of eugenics movements that stopped at reasonable places.
I don't think we had many of such examples - the only ones we label "eugenics" happened within the last 100 years, and involved powerful people with ideology doing stupid and harmful things because doing things because of an ideology is generally stupid and harmful.
> Unrelated comment: Another danger of eugenics is exposed by my wording of the starting point: "some genetic makeups are more fit for the current environment than others..." That's clearly true. But the current environment is not necessarily the one that future generations will face; leaving them some genetic diversity (even if it creates some disadvantages) may be a net win. Remember sickle cell anemia.
Yeah, that's a strong point I'm going to agree 100% with. Too strong adaptation to current environment means you'll be really out of luck when the environment changes.
You don't want to do that after one failed attempt. You probably don't want to do so after two or three. But after enough attempts, you probably have a basis for saying that, no matter how good the theory sounds, it won't work in practice next time either. And if each time it fails produces large amounts of human suffering, there comes a time to quit trying the same stuff that has worked out badly over and over.
Heritably curing the cystic fibrosis gene with an injection? That's eugenics.
As a sibling comment notes, eugenics is conventionally understood to be gene selection via people selection, i.e. differential all-or-nothing biological reproduction of whole humans. And it was that sense of the idea I was critiquing.
And it is in that sense of the word that people shooting from the hip with talk of "licensing" the basic human right to reproduce are engaging in shocking historical naivety -- or worse, with facepalm-worthy apologetics like those corners of the commentariat that defend misogyny, slavery and other social aberrations that have rightfully been interred to the dustbin of history.
Because I'm pretty sure that would satisfy 90% of the historical proponents of eugenics, even if you refuse to call it such.
One is unfocused and hard to target genetic manipulation via reproduction incentives and force, the other is a choice for very targeted and obvious things.
That sort of licensing is ripe for abuse. What would happen if someone in power took that license away from you just because they didn't agree with your political views?
Most people would agree that mentally ill people should not have children.
But what constitutes mentally ill? The line is fuzzy - perhaps someone is just a bit "quirky", but still could be a good parent?
In order to have a license the criteria would have to be crystal clear and added to the Constitution (sorry, US-centric). And even if in the Constitution, someone could abuse it (see: NSA, surveillance).
Yes, not just political views. As you say, the mentally ill would be one targeted group, former criminals would be another, etc... The most divisive issue would probably be whether those living in poverty would be given the license.
> "In order to have a license the criteria would have to be crystal clear and added to the Constitution (sorry, US-centric). And even if in the Constitution, someone could abuse it (see: NSA, surveillance)."
At most, I could imagine the benefits of taking precautions against accidental pregnancies (vasectomies, etc...), but only as long as those measures would be reversible at any time. I could also see the need for encouraging single child families as the least draconian method of population control (should overpopulation ever become a big issue). Anything beyond that strikes me as a step too far.
It is vastly oversimplifying, and prejudicial, to say something like that.
Many more people than you seem to think have experienced, or will experience mental illness in their life.
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/prevalence/any-men...
> Most people would agree that mentally ill people should not have children.
Turns out the definition of mental illness covers far more than the most extreme/visible cases so it will be unclear where to draw the line since "mental illness" is too broad a set
Huh? They would? Are you sure about that?
Labels: Slippery slope.
I.e. If the license becomes a problem, it's because you've got bigger problems.
The license will still be administered by someone / some group. Whether you call those with the administrative powers a 'government' or not isn't really important.
The licensing proposal is odious even if we were to (naively) discount conventional eugenics. Licenses would likely be tied to "merit", which is rather inextricably linked to socioeconomic class.
What if the priorities of the eugenicists and other life licensers clash? For example, what if a known criminal was also the holder of some rare genes that would link up well with someone from the ruling class?
> "Licenses would likely be tied to "merit", which is rather inextricably linked to socioeconomic class."
So someone who is poor is of less "merit"?
With the word in quotes like that? Absolutely yes.
So they have merit in an absolute sense, but not in a societal opinion sense.
Also, excluding Nazis from arguments against eugenics is like excluding Bolsheviks from arguments against communism. Spare me your precious Godwin's Law, Nazism is eminently relevant here.
We're discussing limits on reproduction because this "fundamental right" is most likely going to fuck up the planet. Don't confuse basic capability with a "right".
> Also, excluding Nazis from arguments against eugenics is like excluding Bolsheviks from arguments against communism. Spare me your precious Godwin's Law, Nazism is eminently relevant here.
Yeah, I'd like to exclude Bolsheviks from arguments against communism too. It's not about Godwin's Law, but about having an actual argument other than "somebody tried that before once and it didn't work". How about exploring why it didn't work and how we can avoid that particular failure mode while reaping the rewards, without throwing the entire concept out?
Nazis are
Malthusian fallacy. The idea of a "population bomb" has been indoctrinated into the modern mind of certain political orthodoxies since the late 1960's. It has yet to pass, because it is wrong. The jeremiads of Malthus and Ehrlich are myopic and dangerously lacking in imagination.
We will engineer ways to feed ourselves, generate potable water, control our climate, clean our air, and thrive -- all with a human population that monotonically grows over long periods of time.
> Don't confuse basic capability with a "right".
What does that even mean?
The fact that the same people who fight for esoteric rights of privacy and free speech disproportionately flip their semantic switch to cast the most fundamental human right in scare quotes is difficult to fathom.
> It's not about Godwin's Law, but about having an actual argument other than "somebody tried that before once and it didn't work". How about exploring why it didn't work and how we can avoid that particular failure mode while reaping the rewards, without throwing the entire concept out?
Here's an "actual argument": modern history. Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics. Arguments that an idea is grievously misguided based on broad appeals to disastrous periods in recent history brought about by that idea are valid in matters of social policy debate, which this is.
We throw the entire concept out because it is intellectually rancid. The taboo is justified. We should not touch eugenics, just like we should not touch proposals for disenfranchising women or chattel slavery.
You're doing this again. Malthus was wrong with his prediction, but he wasn't wrong with noticing obvious limits to growth. It takes special effort to consciously stop noticing it.
> We will engineer ways to feed ourselves, generate potable water, control our climate, clean our air, and thrive -- all with a human population that monotonically grows over long periods of time.
You say that like you had any proof for it. Taken at face value, Malthus sounds much more probable than your "don't worry, future generations will somehow fix it".
> What does that even mean?
It means: just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
> The fact that the same people who fight for esoteric rights of privacy and free speech disproportionately flip their semantic switch to cast the most fundamental human right in scare quotes is difficult to fathom.
I don't flip any switch because I personally don't fight for privacy. I see the current levels of it as a historical anomaly, and generally something we need to outgrow as a society in order to progress.
> We throw the entire concept out because it is intellectually rancid. The taboo is justified. We should not touch eugenics, just like we should not touch proposals for disenfranchising women or chattel slavery.
No, this is dangerously irrational way of thinking. A hundred years ago you would taboo women voting. Two hundred years earlier you would taboo the concept of freedom of black men. What you're doing is just selectively tabooing your cherished belief out of fear your rejection may be wrong. If the belief is valid, it can stand on its own strength, it does not need protection from being discussed.
Malthus premised his hypothesis on an assertion that there were obvious limits to growth. Both the premise of obvious limits to growth and the conclusion of catastrophic resource scarcity due to population growth were wrong.
Our food supply is an obvious limit to population growth like an unlocked door is an obvious limit to leaving a room. Yes, if you do nothing, then you will be limited. That should not instill hand-wringing, existential dread.
> Malthus sounds much more probable than your "don't worry, future generations will somehow fix it".
History has proven Malthus and his modern incarnation Ehrlich to be wrong time and time again, which doesn't bode well for that probability of yours.
Again, "don't worry, future generations will somehow fix it" is a strawman. Pithy, but vapid. Firstly, I said we will engineer ways to overcome limitations. Our current generation is, and will continue to, engineer ways to feed ourselves, generate potable water, control our climate, clean our air, thrive, and grow our population.
Do I have proof that the engineers of future generations won't all squander their life and do nothing more than optimize sales funnels and click-through-rates? No. But I think it is much more probable that our society will continue to produce some engineers that have not only the talent but the focus we need to break through our current brittle limitations to population growth -- just like their parents, grandparents, and every generation before them did.
In the context of America this was already tried
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#...
Sterilization and licensing are the exactly same mechanism - the state holds veto right over who gets to procreate.