The issue isn't whether that's true. The issue is who gets to decide what the right number is and what we all do about it. To most of us, the moral hazards (and realities!) of coercive birth control are severe.

Not only more humane, but more fair. Why should the people who provide the least resources to their children be the ones to create the most human progeny?

And again, who decides which is more humane? If you and your cohort wants to stop reproducing as a good example, nobody is stopping you.

Your elected government? Isn't that what you elected it for? Or just hold a referendum or something.

The "who decides" question is a problem here. It doesn't matter who, it only matters that the decision has to be made and then carried out. The coordination has to arise or be enforced, but happen the coordination must. What you're implying by asking this question has many names. In politics, it's "total anarchy". In biology, it's "cancer". In infrastructure projects, it's called NIMBYsm. Imagine trying to run a large company with the rule "we're all equal, who gets to decide?" - how long would it survive?

Like it or not, Earth will have to have a "top management" layer. Run it top-down, run it co-op style, whatever - but after some size, you can no longer ignore the looming coordination problems and their deadly consequences.

Yes, as with everything, there are failure modes. Coercive abortion and gender selection happen mostly because of misalignment between "one child rule" and the economics, so the people selfishly prefer to spawn an offspring that will give better economic payoff. But incentive structures we can manage. We could manage it better if we stopped just asking "who gets to decide?" and instead picked someone to decide.

Also, the only problem with "coercive abortion" is the "coercive" part; if you believe that abortion is ok, then gender selection via abortion is also ok. If you don't believe gender selection via abortion is ok, then you also must disagree with general abortion as a practice.

EDIT:

Also2, we have a "who gets to decide?" problem when it comes to inconvenience ourselves and spawn less children, but we do not have that problem when it comes to decide who to bomb the living shit out of, killing their children, along with parents, grandparents, livestock and future. Strange, isn't it?

Not at all. The entire point of this line of discussion centers around limiting an implied personal right to reproduce for the good of society. A one-child policy might serve society's needs as a whole. A one-child policy that allows prospective parents to, say, flood the world with a supermajority of male children does not serve society's needs.

I think that gender selection via abortion is ok in the general sense, absent perverse incentives that cause society-crippling gender imbalances, but if those incentives exist and are abused, I can certainly understand a desire to make that illegal, while still allowing (and supporting) gender-blind abortion.

Even this thread is hopeful to me, a decade ago there wouldn't have been near as much disagreement about whether you have the right to burden society without limit.

>And again, who decides which is more humane? If you and your cohort wants to stop reproducing as a good example, nobody is stopping you.

This argument is such a canard. If someone is blaring loud music throughout a neighborhood, the solution is to force them to stop, not to tell everyone else who finds it annoying to just be quiet.

EDIT: I can't reply to the below comment, except to question whether it is equating fines for extra children with being a murderous dictator. That is quite a hyperbolic comparison. The road to hell is already being paved by those who advocate a cancer-like approach to human population growth.

or in other words: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I implied the justification of "its for the good of society" in removing/restricting human rights (reproduction) and mutilating woman (forced abortions), is no different to the justification historical dictators used when they did the exact same things ... like for example the terrible things a totalitarian dictator did to Jews and homosexuals in your country during the 40s. In fact this same philosophy would have been used to ban your grandparents, and mine, from breeding had they been successful.

Adopting a policy of "anything goes because it is for my perceived good of society", without regard for society's wishes, allows for any manner of evils to be 'legally' imposed on that society by the ruling classes.

PS. To address the point you made: the US does in fact ban the export of arithmetics (cryptography, software) to a number of countries ruled by dictators (not that I think this is a good policy or that it has the intended effect).

> I implied the justification of "its for the good of society" in removing/restricting human rights (reproduction) and mutilating woman (forced abortions), is no different to the justification historical dictators used when they did the exact same things ... like for example the terrible things a totalitarian dictator did to Jews and homosexuals in your country during the 40s

That's my point - the philosophy may or may not be sound, but the fact that evil dictatorships used such philosophy doesn't matter. It doesn't reflect on its soundness.

There are reasons that humans shouldn't generally be allowed to go for "ends justify the means" though. Like you correctly observe, historically it ended up with people abusing the power to promote one group over another. But the philosophy is not in itself repulsive.

Earth doesn't have too many people. The people inhabiting it are just, currently, quite wasteful with resources.

What's the goal here? We could have many more people each living in misery, crowding, and poverty. Or we could have fewer people with each one being rich and free and having access to parks and open space to breathe and relax.

More people isn't somehow good in itself. Children are great but one or two is enough.

A false dichotomy. The latter experience can be given to the former's population.

More people isn't somehow "good", but it's not bad.

How? Keep in mind only a small fraction of the world's population is even capable of being a tourist. Imagine how that changes when everyone is well-off enough to travel at will. Imagine your favorite beach, favorite museum, or your favorite national park and multiply the number of visitors by 10, 20, 40, etc. Waiting-lists for years to visit the Louvre. Prices so high that only the 1% of the 1% can afford to visit Maui.

Maybe you are assuming that VR will solve these issues? Perhaps a Matrix-like future awaits us.

Our wellbeing probably does rely on technology like VR and automation, but with so many mentally ill, I would say our current situation is already unacceptable (and has been for thousands of years). Adding billions more to the equation isn't going to help.