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Comment by lvl102 | Hacker News Reader

Seems we need to reduce world population by 1/2 or more. Aren’t we at least contracting in developed countries? Anyway to ask India/China to stop growing so fast?

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Easy. Educate women.

As soon as that happens, the reproduction rate falls below the replacement rate.

The problem is that global society is actually not ready for a population that shrinks instead of grows. Many of our institutions are effectively pyramid schemes that rely on more people entering the bottom and paying for them than pull out money and exit from the top.

(Side note: I believe China is actually falling. There have been significant programs attempting to get women to have more children. Between education and "one child" (which is no longer in force) China has some demographic issues ahead.)

Educating women isn't enough.

Women also need reproductive rights -- something that just took a hit in the US -- and the ability to support themselves. I'm not remembering/finding the rest of that list of 4 or 5 items.

> Easy. Educate women.

Since men are physically more powerful, you also need a society with laws and people that will protect women and women’s rights. Women’s rights to mate with who they want, when they want, how they want, and earn income and be financially independent to be able to make those decisions independently.

Educating women is the most effective way of equipping them to protect their own interests.

To enlighten yourself, consider reading Federici's "Revolution at Point Zero" and Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed."

I wrote that women’s education is necessary, but not sufficient. All the women in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan can have PhDs, but it is not going to do them much good if the men collectively decide to oppress them.

Au contraire, the men can collectively decide to oppress them, but it is not going to do them much good if all the women in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan have PhDs.

What is it, I ask you, that makes a population difficult to oppress?

I tried to slap my wife, but my hand was repelled by her PhD force field

First of all, it's gross to use depictions of violence in a conversation in order to cow your counterpart.

Second, a woman with a PhD would have more opportunities to avoid marrying you.

easy. eat less meat.

That seems like a strange conclusion to draw from this article. It even says "But in fact, more than enough grain is already grown to meet humanity’s needs." Seems more like the number of people isn't the biggest problem, but the lifestyle of a part of those people is. To me it look like the problem will be solved if North America and Europe drastically reduce their meat consumption.

If we can cut our population by 1/2 or even 1/4 we would dramatically reduce pollution and increase resources per capita.

So someone gives an argument which involves less than 1/4 of the world population merely having to change their consumption patterns by eating less meat, but still you see a better solution in 'cutting our population' by more than that? Wouldn't it be better to first focus on the lowest hanging fruit in which we tackle the problem by focussing on those people using a disproportionate amount of resources, instead of indiscriminately reducing the whole population? Not to mention the fact that there are not really any ways to quickly 'cut our pupulation' to this level short of killing people.

Are you volunteering to be a part of that 1/2 or 1/4/? People always talking about reducing population usually don't mean white people in the USA.

Most places outside Africa are contracting or rapidly turning toward it, with only a few places avoiding that fate. As the other poster pointed out, this is certainly true (and disastrous) for China, who accelerated their own population crash through communism's attacks on traditional religion and policies against children.

Why would we need to reduce world population?

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