Hacker News Reader

Comment by buboard | Hacker News Reader

One-child policies could solve the problem and it's as taboo as bug-eating, yet it receives barely any coverage

Did you know that Iran of all places was able to drastically lower their birth rate by providing free birth control and education? No forced abortion/sterilizations like China, just providing options to people.

Indeed, the fast drop in fertility rates is strikingly similar: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?contextu...

That drop in birth rate isn't unique to Iran. It's one of the most well-studied phenomena in sociology. It has a name, too, the demographic transition. As you pointed out, educating women is considered a key part of ushering in the demographic transition.

The Wikipedia page is pretty good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition

(Not a sociologist, but used to be married to one.)

They're taboo because they're abhorrent. I don't suppose you've spent a lick of time thinking of the implications of enforcing such a ban?

Why is it abhorrent to not have your own kids? There's plenty of them already that need families if you want to scratch that itch.

Plus you can solve climate change AND road traffic!

> Why is it abhorrent to not have your own kids?

Please explain to me how you plan to enforce your ban on people having more than one kid.

Taxation

If somebody chooses to have as many kids as they want to have, you're going to force them (and their children) into poverty?

If it comes to a point where overpopulation is equated with environmental pollution, yes

One child policies where? Most of the developed world has stagnant population growth.

Do you suggest imposing those restrictions elsewhere? Via what means, and how do you intend to enforce this within those countries?

That solves one problem and creates another, as our current economy assumes at least as many new young people to support the elderly as now.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the problem is insurmountable, but it does actually need to be dealt with somehow rather than just hoping tech will save us when we need it — that approach works fine right up until it fails catastrophically.

In most developed countries birth rates are dropping on their own. I would try decent sex education and access to free contraception before this route

Agreed. Why is our vision of the future 50 billion people crowded nuts to butts, eating beans and bugs, riding rusty bicycles to work? We need to control the population.

What predictions? If you believe in scientific modeling at ALL. AKA you think global climate change is scientifically sound, then you should probably look at the population growth predictions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow...

I just clicked that link and all of the projections were aimed up, even if slowed. Current projections still put 11.8 B people by 2100.

Most likely global population figures are reflecting the sign of the times. There was a period of 'irrational exuberance' between 1998 and 2004 where the 2100 projections suddenly dropped to as low as 8.4 billion, but after that we have been reverting to the projections of the 1980's and 1990's of 11B+.

I find it hard to believe we would reach 50 billion people within the next millennium without new and incredible resource extraction technologies that would make current food shortage problems look like a piece of cake.

Resource extraction... sure, but I think the issue is more that there will be no resources left to extract at some point. We are already wasting a lot of things, even something as basic as water.

What water? None of it leaves the planet. If you want enough clean water, build a nuclear reactor and hook it up to desalination plants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_scarcity

We do waste water, but this is besides the point. The point is that you could have the best resource extraction technologies, but if there are no resources left to extract due to depletion, then you are pretty much borked.

There's plenty of places where you can live pretty much on your own, even in the US. Crowded cities isn't caused by too many people on earth.

China ruined their future for the next few decades through 1 child policy. It's a demographic time bomb.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com