Also, I think it could benefit the earth if more countries would limit children.
Brutal and cruel acts include:
* Killing of child immediately after birth
* Killing of child whilst being born, e.g. in birth canal during birth
* Termination of pregnancy as late as 8.5 months
* Forced abortions (incorporating kidnapping and assault)
All of these things have happened routinely as part of enforcement of the "one child" policy in China and have been widely reported on by human rights organisations. See for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy#Human_rights_...
The policy has also encouraged infanticide/gendercide, corruption, child abandonment, neglect, and abuse.
Some of the examples you listed have only one report. And it's policy that lasted almost 40 years in a country with a billion people.
Back up your statement with a citation please. Considering that they explicitly made forced abortions of these kinds illegal (although this is hardly enforced) implies that it was a big enough problem the government needed to step in.
The officials are not dumb, they probably saw the incentives structure and decided to ban this proactively.
GP has a good point. Singular events in few decades in a population of over a billion? That's either bullshit or random fluke, depending on how charitable you want to be towards the report, but it's definitely not something a reasonable person should care about.
I spent a summer in Beijing in 1998 and knew a young lady whose unborn baby was forcibly killed. So I don't buy "in some rural area".
you have to understand that laws here usually range from completely unenforced to strong discouragement with possible financial implications.
it wouldn't surprise me if there were incidents of the stuff you mention, but doesn't seem like any of it was ever common place.
friends actually said the opposite: people in rural areas would tend to have a lot of kids trying for a boy (something about boys getting to go to school and being able to work the farm), though i guess that's getting better with the education and gender equality stuff.
did you grow up in one of those areas or something? or know people that did? which areas are you talking about?
The main contention is that people who work in the public sector (which is giant in China) does not have the option because it is still, technically, illegal and will ruin your chances of promotion within the party or any state-owned enterprises. The law change merely levels the playing field for public sector workers so they have one less incentive to leave.
Most of the brutal and cruel acts you listed are a result of carrying a child to birth. Surely they would have noticed that they were pregnant and had the opportunity to abort at an earlier time. Better yet, why couldn't they just... not have children? Do they not have access to contraception?
Some, myself included, do deny that it could benefit the earth if more governments would enforce limits on children. I think humans are important to the future of the earth, and treating them in a cruel and brutal fashion will cause more problems than it solves.
Larger creatures, and those higher on the food chain, having greater access to resources and higher survival rates, invest more in fewer children. Smaller creatures, with lesser access to resources and higher mortality rates, invest less in more children.
A rabbit doe can theoretically have 480 offspring, at 12 per litter, 10 times per year, over 4 years. That's the kind of thing you might do if 98% of your kids get eaten, because you will still have 10 left. Rabbits can also abort their litters when stressed.
An elephant might have one calf every four years, over 55 years, or a maximum of 14 children. That's what you might do if only one other species can reliably kill any of you, and you expect all of your babies to survive to adulthood.
With humans, the observed historical behavior is that poor or uneducated humans are relatively fecund, producing 8-30 children per pair, occasionally with multiple births. As wealth and education increase, and particularly when child mortality drops and elder care becomes socialized, birth rate drops down to the population replacement rate (or below). Middle-class first-worlders usually have 0-4 kids.
I'm starting to think it's in our best interest to start building nuclear reactors pro bono all over Africa - you don't want them all to rise their standards of living by burning coal.
I am also pro child limit laws. I would suggest nothing too strict, just impose a tax on the third child and up. We know from psychology that little restrictions and the mere fact of a 'cost' would reduce the intrinsic desire of people to even take an action, in this case child bearing. Furthermore, I think a tax is a not an extreme measure, considering the fact that you would still be allowed to have children if you want. But do keep in mind that the poorest, less educated are often the ones to have plenty of children, which ends up harming the family, this might be good for them.
Some believe we should limit growth now, thus potentially preventing the problem before it becomes, well, a problem.
Nobody is suggesting nobody has children. People will still be born, discoveries made etc.
Inequality seems to be deeply encoded in the system. Capacity, in my opinion, only makes sense if you extrapolate from an average human, but there is no such thing as an average human being. However, I don't think it is an exaggeration that our western way of life is not sustainable on a global scale. I wish the fruits of human ingenuity could be enjoyed by every single one of us, but unfortunately it seems utopian.
Even the poorest in our society have incredible access to goods.
Just to list a few:
Wikipedia
Ability to talk to relatives from across the world to little or no cost (Skype and alternatives)
Ability to send money and store wealth cheaply (low cost ETFs, bitcoin, free checking)
Social acceptance of previously marginalized lifestyles
Access to wide variety of foods and entertainment
There has never been a better time to be alive, and I expect that to continue, despite greater inequality.
What will need to change is the efficiency of how we as a species make use of the earth. We can feed many times the current world population easily. We can house many times the current world population easily. What we can't accomplish is doing those things the same way we do things now.
Advances in agriculture, energy and housing are needed. Advances which are happening as we furiously type at each other.
Either we all die horribly or we'll all be fine.
Example:
> In a 1994 study titled Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy, David Pimentel and Mario Giampietro estimated the maximum U.S. population for a sustainable economy at 200 million
The dangers of over-population myth assumes a naive view of a static society. For instance, we can reasonably have X land for food production, from that we can grow Y food and that can feed Z people so anything above Z would be harmful. The problem is that Y is dependent on human innovation and technology. Same can be said for most resources. We never did reach peak oil.
These predictions of inevitable decline have been wrong for a long time. I don't know why you put so much faith into the modern day equivalents.
I've noticed here in the USA young girls getting pregnant and not being able to pursue higher education. I've also met some of my family in the Philippines who had many children by age 14. The husband's salary would pretty much all go to the children, and the wife would spend all day taking care of them. They are just trying to survive day to day-- little thought was given to trying to reach for anything higher.
Most people with access to birth control have children-- just when they're more ready for it. Not only does this make them more financially steady, but they are happier, and the same goes for their children.
"I find suggestive evidence that individuals’ access to contraceptives increased their children’s college completion, labor force participation, wages, and family incomes decades later." - Martha J. Bailey, an economics professor at the University of Michigan. Here's the article and link to her work. http://freakonomics.com/2013/10/09/the-long-term-effects-of-...