What do you guys think of population control? While I don't believe it is necessary right NOW, there will come a time when our modern society (or future one) will need to limit the amount of offspring a family has. I read a recent book my anthropolgist friend of mine lent to me (Collapse by Jared Diamond) which goes into some detail about techniques ancient societies used to keep numbers down so as to make sure everyone else was fed and could continue to survive and prosper. Such techniques included placing hot stones on a pregnant woman's belly, keeping younger sons from fornicating, and even straight-up infanticide. As horrific as some of it sounds, it was necessary so the rest of the civilization wouldn't starve.

The author also goes into detail about societies that failed and (un)surprisingly the ones that failed all held onto deeply conservative religious convictions which failed them to adapt to their changing environments and circumstances. Of course there was much more to it than that, but it played a major factor.

So I suppose the question is, when is enough, enough? I would like some of our mountains to be kept from being mined or some of our forests to be kept from being cut down - but we need to create jobs. Why should we not limit the number of children a family could have to 5 or 6? Why would one need to have more children? It's asking to be put in poverty. Then of course there is the debate of how to punish those who don't abide.

Again, I don't know if it is necessary now, but perhaps in the coming centuries or even with the next generation, the issue might need to be recgonized.

We're so far overgrowing our carrying capacity on a planetary basis I don't see this being an issue in the next few centuries. I think the earth will control human population before people do, granted, it'll be with our help...

Yeah, and what's scarier, government-sanctioned population control or mother-nature sanctioned population control?

Mother nature, by far. Hello Yellowstone Caldera!

my wife brought this up the other day, and she firmly believes nature itself is controlling it by causing natural disaster.

- tsunami
- hurricanes
- earthquakes

i tend to agree with her, though its very unfortunate because it seems nature is not taking kindly towards Asian and Middle Eastern regions as of late.

AIDS is controlling the population in sub-Saharan Africa.

I think any "natural" control of human population from disasters is illusory. We'll control our population ourselves, either through war or something more palatable. Like a million other problems we're not dealing with, it's gonna be a question of how many people can have enough foresight without enough ignorant intransigents getting in the way.

Wouldn't you agree however that we have indirect natural control? Meaning global warming, which can lead to tsunamis?

ehn, I don't think it'll ever be as big of a problem as it is right now. Current estimates say the world's population will peak in about fifty years at around 9.2 billion. That'd be manageable, especially since it'd probably go down after that.

The real emerging problem is aging populations.

Which tsunamis have been caused by global warming? The only one I recall was the boxing day one, and that was caused by an earthquake, so those two are really one in the same problem (goddamn plate techtonics ).

I agree with PD. Any unintentional population control that takes place will likely be from a large scale war, accident or virus. Any natural population control like earthquake, volcano, asteroid, etc is just plain shitty bad luck.

Not really. There is no direct link between our existance and the way planets behave. The earth isn't "thinking" to itself about how to control us. Tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthwuakes are NOT the result of the earth controlling our population. They would exist whether we were here or not (as they have for billions of years before we did exist).

to touch on what eric stated, the earth does do natural population control, its called the plague, AIDS, cancer etc...

as sad as it is to say, once a major disease is cured, a new one will step up in its place

i don't think natural disasters kill nearly enough people to keep the population under control... cancer, AIDS, and the like are where it's at.

yup

you two just cant bring yourselves to agree with me eh

just be right for once, and we will

If we can make people live longer, why can't we make them not live at all? Aren't they both unnatural and playing god?

I don't necessarily believe it's ok, but I'd like to hear what people think.

that's a cool thought... interested to see the responses... i tend to agree w/ it though, even if it is a little bit "creepy"

maybe if you weren't such an arrogant prick we would