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Should having children be regulated?

  
  

Page: 123(4)5

 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
07:59 / 06.02.03
You know, fred, I never thought there could be an alternative to forcible sterilisation, supported by the threat of violence or other punitive measures. But now you've got me thinking...would some of the same cash that we could take from the "sterilise the third world" kitty be able to be reassigned to provide people in our own countries with better educations and better prospects? Only I read somewhere that the higher one's level of education, the later and more sparingly you are likely to breed, not to mention that you are more likely to be able to take care of the child financially...
 
 
Jack Fear
15:32 / 06.02.03
Fred: Obvious, isn't it?

The entire premise of this thread astonishes me still—that, from the first post, which decries the "cycle of poverty and lack of education," we leap immediately to debating biological solutions for what is essentially a societal problem.
 
 
HCE
15:54 / 06.02.03
Haus, it's nice to see you're well again.

Obvious to Jack F. and Haus, but not, it seems, to Sharkgrin.
 
 
HCE
16:10 / 06.02.03
Haus writes: You know, fred, I never thought there could be an alternative to forcible sterilisation, supported by the threat of force.

I don't imagine you care, but I did in fact take you quite literally when you said it the first time. I don't put it past you.

Perhaps it would have been more useful for me to say that I don't think the ethics of controlling reproduction can be separated from the ethics of distributing wealth. But then Jack's made much the same point, earlier and more succinctly.

Too late and too murky once again.
 
 
HCE
20:04 / 06.02.03
Thinking back to the last question in the topic abstract, about whether reproduction is a right or a privilege. If it is a right, does that imply that people who are infertile should be getting some sort of government aid (I am thinking of the way in which there is a sort of 'right to work' and people who've been disabled sometimes get re-training or have their physical disabilities accomodated)? Should it be like the right to vote, and given only to citizens and adults (with sterilization of immigrants, and somehow, minors)? A negative right, like human rights (a right not be: tortured, mistreated, silenced)?
 
 
diz
20:53 / 06.02.03
Anyway, let's be serious here. Apart from bankrupting the responsible single parents of New Jersey, surely our *real* problem here is the developing world. Too. Many. People.

as far as gross numbers go, sure. absolutely. the developing world has too many people.

however, each person in the developed world consumes as much and produces as much garbage and pollution and other environmentally hazardous byproducts of our economy as a fairly large number of people in the developing world.

so, while we may have fewer people, we do more damage per capita.

i can definitely see the argument in favor of population control, but all the data seems to indicate that when given sufficient education and access to birth control, women will restrict their own family size voluntarily due to the economic incentives. this seems to be preferable to an involuntary regime of sterilization or what have you, for both ethical and practical reasons.

however, developing the health care and educational infrastructure in the developing world necessary to make this possible will require serious economic reform on a global scale. debt forgiveness and a global living wage might be good places to start.
 
 
Sharkgrin
23:40 / 06.02.03
Haus,
the first time you see me personally endorse sterilizations - put it on a billboard and send me the bill.

But I never, ever said that.

If you need to inject words into my argument, feel free. I guess you must be right and I must be wrong.

Never suggested sterilizing the whole world, either Fred. The Topic Abstract is America, and I agrued paying American taxes. You may have dragged my arguments into a whole different scope.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
03:55 / 07.02.03
So let's stick to America (and try to pay attention - nobody particualrly cares whether you argued for sterilization. We did that a page or two ago, and methodologies then moved to the thread in the Laboratory). The better educated people are, the later they have children, and the more likely they are to be able to take care of them. Yes? In particular, the longer women stay in education the less likely they are to have children young and the fewer children they have. I think that's one of those rules that seems to work everywhere. Worth exploring before we make a mad lunge for the tweezers?

Meanwhile, it occurs to me that Lurid has a very good point. African-Americans contribute a disproportionate number of the USA's prison population, and it certainly seems that..well, I'm just sayin'.
 
 
slinkyvagabond
19:53 / 10.02.03
CherryBomb -"I'd start when the kids are about oh, 4 or 5. Obviously you couldn' t explain EVERYTHING to kids that young, but you could start giving them an inkling of how their bodies work,"

Indeed. I knew all about basic penetrative (heterosexual) intercourse by the time I was about 3 and from when I was 8 or 9 and started asking more complicated questions my parents just answered them without getting all wound up about it.

I still don't have a baby.

Contraception, sex education and giving women control over their own reproductive *destiny* (as they say) is surely the key. Sadly where I come from (and it ain't that far from Whitechapel) many women, whether or not they're practising Catholics, seem to feel that they have no control over having kids. They've been so inculcated to this bullshit that they don't even realise they HAVE a choice. That said, taking a fucking day trip to Britain and having a private abortion is certainly just too expensive for a lot of Irish women. I'm sorry to offend but I live in a nation of breeders and I take the hardline on this one: if you don't want kids or are unable to care for them to the best of your ability, just don't fucking have them in as much as you can help it. That goes mainly to all the fat, happy suburbanites who already have a few perfectly wonderful kids but just can't seem to stop churning them out. I really think that it's not just laziness or indeed religious practices with these people, it's a laziness of mind and a ravening egotism. There's no point in placing the blame for overpopulation solely on the poor and under-educated of this world.
 
 
Sleeperservice
15:27 / 28.02.03
I can't resist:

'your wacky insistence that Bengalis kill babies'

Well, well, well. Womans Hour on Radio 4 today... http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/24_02_03/friday/info1.shtml
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
16:05 / 28.02.03
That sounds very interesting, Sleeperservice. But, forgive my ignorance, but is there not a geographical, cultural and ethnic difference between "Bengali" and "Indian", the latter encompassing the former but the former not relevant to every member of the latter? Only the first interviewee says that he went to Bengal specifically to find a wife...this report appears to focus on the Punjab. Of course, a nation the size of a small continent with a population heading towards a billion is not likely to be culturally heterogenous, so I'm probably just splitting hairs.

Nonetheless, we also have to deal with the difference between India and Whitechapel. In case you are not native to the UK, Whitechapel is an area of London a little to the east and north of the financial centre. India, again to the best of my tragically limited knowledge, is not.

If you take a moment to read the thread, you'll notice that I objected to the statement, presented as fact, that doctors in Whitechapel were concealing the results of ultrasounds from parents whom they believed to be Bengali, on the grounds that female children would be aborted, and the assumption that this was necessarily the right course of action, as these poor unborn babies needed to be defended from their savage, infanticidal parents in a way that, for example, those of white parents didn't.

Just wanted to be sure about all that. I'm a bit of a giggling ingenue on these matters.

Meanwhile, we've got an interesting situation here, don't we? Presumably, as women can only be relied upon to turn out one child a year or so, as opposed to a single man's ability to impregnate a massive number of women, we might expect there to be a dent in population growth , and thus a reduction in population, yes? From the point of view of Jack's original post, this would be a good thing, presumably, as only the most highly competent men will be able to secure the chance to breed. Therefore, children will be valued, and will also not be the products of the lower class people, as there male children will not be able to snag one of the women who exist at a premium.

*But*, listening to that report, I notice that the better education is, the less likely people are to dispose of their female children, being presumably aware of the broader social problems inherent therein. So, better education means more women means more potential for babies. But, as we have just said, better education also reduces the likelihood of early pregnancy and the size of families, as educated women have more opportunities and other things to do than be kept under wraps as baby producers.

Tricky tricky. It seems we have two possible approaches to reducing population growth - encourage education or encourage infanticide. Both are probably cheaper than any of the wonder solutions so far offered by technologists, and infanticide (or abortion, the two things being rather different) cheapest of all. However, education, IMHO, would probably be a more sustainable solution in the longer term...but maybe not a sufficiently effective one.

Could we move closer to the Denfeld or Sharkgrin ideal by, say, instating dowry laws across the US?
 
 
Babooshka
20:10 / 28.02.03
Wow.

Having just trudged through the entirety of this thread, I have to say that there's a lot of insensitivity, heartlessness and highly judgemental attitudes going on with a lot of the ideas and opinions here. I realize that this is the Head Shop, where concepts are apt to be discussed a bit more abstractly, but that's no excuse for leaving your fucking humanity at the door.

What is wrong with some of you? Who do some of you think you are to judge poverty-level women with kids? Or indeed, anyone with kids? Do you know and understand the myriad realitites of their lives so minutely that you feel you have the right to look down on them and diss them? I personally choose to not have children for various reasons; that does not make make me smarter, better or superior to people who DO have children. And that goes the same for anyone else posting here.

(I don't even like children, dammit...and here I am defending them. THAT'S how fucked up this thread is.)

Yes, overpopulation is a serious problem. Yes, education (sex ed and increased education in general) is probably the smartest, safest, most humane way to get people to be more conscious about their conceptions. It would be NICE if we could stop talking about NONSENSE like enforced sterilization, hormones in drinking water and "welfare hand-outs" and put our minds to thinking about ways and means for governments to allocate funds for education, as well as how diverse communities can be more open to the types of education that people on the poverty level (and below) need to get out of their vicious cycles. Instead of harshing on people (poor or otherwise) for not being educated and not "knowing any better", we could be utilizing this thread to discuss various ways of exposing them to the information they need so they can make more informed choices about what bringing children into this world will entail.

Come on people... the issue of reproductive rights and how to exercise them is a big, meaty, complex subject, and we can do so much better than this.
 
 
Sleeperservice
22:27 / 28.02.03
Well, Babooshka, the Headshop is for the more wayout ideas & concepts. Suppose for a moment that we *have* to do this. It is physically impossible for the world to support a certain number of people. Six billion? 10 billion? My guess is we're somewhere near the limit. Do we just let people breed as they want & face extinction? Or do we swallow the pill & see what we can do about it?

I live in London Haus. You seem to imply that anyone who moves to London instantly takes up the social & cultural values of Londoners (as if there is such a thing) and instantly forgets all their previous cultural traits. This plainly doesn't happen. If people move in large enough numbers to retain their cultural identity they will continue to live as they were doing for at least a generation or so. I think we can justifiably expect similar behaviour in the population that migrates when compared to the population that remains in place. At least for a while.

40 million fewer females than males in India? And that happens where? Everywhere else in India except Bengal I suppose? Culturally heterogenous? No culture can be totally heterogenous. Cultures don't stop at the lines men drawn on maps.
 
 
Torquemada
23:06 / 28.02.03
Time to clear a few things up, before Haus invents even more -

Whitechapel has a higher bengal birth rate than any other 'race'. Anyone that's a nurse check the PAS system - it's all there. Oh, but of course - I worked there for ten years, whereas you've obviously never been, so you just pretend I heard all this down the pub I apparently go to. Whitechapel has a HUGE indian/ asian/ bengal/ etc. population. And as these are mostly first or second generation immigrants, it is also very very poor. It is *not* somewhere you aspire to move to (unless, like Haus, you have no apparent experience on the subject whatsoever).

The info about aborting I was told came from one of the best Fertility G.P. consultants in London, who worked at both the Royal London and St. Barts Hospitals. it is important to know that they also used the word 'some'. Not 'all', or 'one', so I have no idea exactly who was doing this 'hiding of results'. Other facts he told me - his NHS waiting list for IVF was six months, private was two weeks. Now, let me think, should I believe the G.P. I knew for ten years or the moderator with a degree from Oxbridge? Should I go down the pub (as I apparently do) to think about it? Read the daily mail (as I apparently also do) perhaps?

I certainly wouldn't talk to any of my friends (such as Naveed, Kurti or Harbinder) - oh, did I just stop you from carrying on insinuating I'm racist as well? Or shall I consult the gay member of my family? Oh, dear, dear, you're not having much joy, however will you sterotype me now?

I also like to think that most people *would* prefer to try and prevent people aborting because of a childs' sex. If a 'gay gene' was discovered, and people started aborting because their child 'might be gay', would you agree? I would personally try to stop people mutilating their children...oh, sorry I mean circumcising them, but hey, we wouldn't want to upset people now, would we?

Sleeper posts proof, Haus dismisses it - so how come flimsier reports have been used as 'proof' against my points in other threads?

And as for the thread-rot. Pot. Kettle. Guess.
 
 
Babooshka
16:56 / 02.03.03
For crying out loud, Torquemada...is this thread about reproductive issues or your personal issues? Sheesh!

...the Headshop is for the more wayout ideas & concepts. Suppose for a moment that we *have* to do this. It is physically impossible for the world to support a certain number of people. Six billion? 10 billion? My guess is we're somewhere near the limit. - Sleeperservice

I don't think there's any "suppose" about it - of course there are too many people on this planet. That's not a fantastical or "wayout" concept; it's real. That's why the issue needs to be dealt with realistically and humanely. We're not dealing with abstractions, we're dealing with human beings who need information. How can we get it to them in ways that are understandable and easily assimilated by a myriad diversity of cultures? How can we show people that having less children is in everyone's best interests?

Otherwise, this conversation is just hot air. And the world doesn't need more hot air - overpopulation is creating enough of that already, by various ways and means.
 
 
thedude
20:10 / 02.03.03
Rather than the more direct approach of putting birthcontrol hormones in the water, I think we should just get people to sit an exam if they want to have children.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
22:31 / 02.03.03
Sleeperservice: Quite. But what you have offered is evidence of behaviour in India, and more specifically in the Punjab. If there is evidence to support the idea that the same thing is happening in statistically significant numbers in Whitechapel, I would love to see it. Until then, it might be more profitable to ask what the causes and effects of this behaviour are where we have the data, and the implications it may have for population control. I asked some questions in my last post - any thoughts?

Viewers please note - the rest of this post is a protracted and largely recreational smackdown of Torqsidriver, who clearly believes that his self-excusing wittering is somehow relevant or worthwhile, a belief that from now one I suggest should not be entertained by the moderators, as he has no subject to discuss other than himself and his fart-like grudges. This will be brought to you by the number 5, the letter H and the insult "Doomlord", an affectionate reference to the Eagle character and subsequently of anyone whose face bespeaks no process of cogitation. In Doomlord's case, of course, this was because, in the original and mighty photostory, his face was a rubber mask. We must hope the same applies elsewhere.

Whitechapel has a higher bengal birth rate than any other 'race'. Anyone that's a nurse check the PAS system - it's all there. Oh, but of course - I worked there for ten years, whereas you've obviously never been, so you just pretend I heard all this down the pub I apparently go to. Whitechapel has a HUGE indian/ asian/ bengal/ etc. population. And as these are mostly first or second generation immigrants, it is also very very poor. It is *not* somewhere you aspire to move to (unless, like Haus, you have no apparent experience on the subject whatsoever).

Enough experience to know that "Bengal" gets a capital letter and describes a place or a tiger rather than a people. Apart from wonderment that you believe "many Bengalis are born in Whitechapel", "abortions occur in Whitechapel" and thus "many abortions are performed by Bengalis to prevent female offspring in Whitechapel" is a logical chain, I see little to detain us here.


The info about aborting I was told came from one of the best Fertility G.P. consultants in London, who worked at both the Royal London and St. Barts Hospitals. it is important to know that they also used the word 'some'. Not 'all', or 'one', so I have no idea exactly who was doing this 'hiding of results'. Other facts he told me - his NHS waiting list for IVF was six months, private was two weeks. Now, let me think, should I believe the G.P. I knew for ten years or the moderator with a degree from Oxbridge? Should I go down the pub (as I apparently do) to think about it? Read the daily mail (as I apparently also do) perhaps?

Levering the mighty chip that has fallen from your shoulder off my prone body, I ponder. So your friend the fertility GP, who makes the rains come and the crops grow, actually gave you no statistically significant information whatsoever? Glad you admit that, even if you are too Doomlord to understand what you just admitted.

What this rambling about IVF waiting lists tells us except that people who pay get treated faster I know not, but I would like to apologise sincerely for accusing you of reading a daily newspaper. This is a calumny I shall not again repeat in voice or heart.

I certainly wouldn't talk to any of my friends (such as Naveed, Kurti or Harbinder) - oh, did I just stop you from carrying on insinuating I'm racist as well? Or shall I consult the gay member of my family? Oh, dear, dear, you're not having much joy, however will you sterotype me now?

You mean, some of your best friends are Asian? Wow. That may be the most original line of argument ever. I am crushed.

Except...hang on. I don't seem to recall insinuating that you were a racist (although you are clearly not bright enough to understand that this does not disqualify me from suggesting that you espouse or support what could be argued as racist views), only that you were, and should perhaps be stereotyped as, a simpleton. Which, for the sake of keeping myself amused, I now amend to Doomlord. Doomlord.


I also like to think that most people *would* prefer to try and prevent people aborting because of a childs' sex. If a 'gay gene' was discovered, and people started aborting because their child 'might be gay', would you agree? I would personally try to stop people mutilating their children...oh, sorry I mean circumcising them, but hey, we wouldn't want to upset people now, would we?

I wouldn't, but since any comment on this is going to reveal that I clearly believe you to be a simpleton (or vide Doomlord), I'm afraid I may have to. Before rambling off onto gay genes and circumcision, Torqsbutrarelylistens actually flirts with the on-topic here. Yay Doomlord!

Unfortunately, he fails to understand the difference between the ethical question of "trying to prevent people aborting on the grounds of their unborn child's sex" and "witholding information from dark-skinned people that you would happily give to white people, because by looking at their dark skin you have decided that the risk that they are going to abort their child because of that information is too great for them to be trusted, and the danger of this, and the wrongness of doing so, is great enough to short-circuit their right to equal treatment by the medical profession". This is a very different question, although I doubt that Doomlord with the pointy hat over there is going to grasp that, since he has not yet, and because he does not really have the chops to understand distinctions like this anyway, nor the time while there are straw men to battle. With his Doomlord disintegrator ring.

Thus, the briefly on-topic thought flits without purchase across Doomlord's unclouded brow, bounces once on the big chip on his shoulder, and plummets floorwards.

Sleeper posts proof, Haus dismisses it - so how come flimsier reports have been used as 'proof' against my points in other threads?

Because we have now gone four or five times over why statistics on the Punjab do not count as "proof" of the behaviour you describe in Whitechapel, and have no bearing whatsoever on the broader ethical questions raised, which you appear neither interested in nor equipped to identify much less discuss, I leave this aside. Why TorqslikeanEgyptian is not discussing the very interesting questions raised by the reports from India, rather than obsessively trying to apply them to a London borough which may have similar but apparently unrecorded problems stuck in one of his A-is-for-Apple rambles earlier, is and will no doubt remain beyond me.

On this index of Doomlord, it may well be the case that your fine points in other threads have been, not to put too fine a point on it, shit. But that's life.

Sorry about that, folks. Normal service will now be resumed.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
22:36 / 02.03.03
Rather than the more direct approach of putting birthcontrol hormones in the water, I think we should just get people to sit an exam if they want to have children.

Hi, trumanbuckley. I'd like to ask you, if you haven't already, to read over the thread so far, and the topic abstract. I know it is quite long, but it would help us to avoid repetitiously going over old ground. The idea of the exam was pretty much the first thing Jack Denfeld proposed, and the water supply modification an enabler to prevent people having babies without permission, as it would be hard to enforce except perhaps by regular searches and euthaniasia.

If you still believe that a test would be the right way to control population growth, or prevent unwanted or "unprofitable" births, could you throw down some ideas on what sort of questions should be in that test? Are we talking about academic testing, or psychological evaluation, or tests of childrearing skill, and is the plan only to ensure that children have technically able and/or willing parents, or to impose a limit on the number of children being born?
 
 
Neville Barker
06:49 / 04.03.03
yes.
(birth sould be regulated. Look around and if you dont see people that make you propigate this view, then just think of the number of people and what the planet can withstand. Not much more.
How many people do you think would have kids if they didnt just make a mistake? pessimist? maybe. but is it the truth.....?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
07:32 / 04.03.03
Hi, Neville. I'd like to ask you, if you haven't already, to read over the thread so far, and the topic abstract. I know it is quite long, but it would help us to avoid repetitiously going over old ground.
 
 
Jub
13:17 / 04.03.03
Slightly unrelated but - Next
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:56 / 04.03.03
Having seen the error of my ways, we can tie this in. at present we are talking about taking away the right to breed. The flip side of that coin is enforced breeding, for purposes of population growth or "breeding in" traits. is this part of the same question? Is the right to breed the same as the right not to breed unwillingly?
 
 
gingerbop
21:05 / 04.03.03
You need the unplanned pregnancies and offspring of dumbasses. If everyone was produced to be offspring of educated parents and their life was set ahead of them like university, then brainsurgen, then who is going to clean our streets and work in our supermarkets?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
03:15 / 05.03.03
I think, gingerbop, that Jack Denfeld was originally talking about the class of people *beneath* the road sweepers and the shit shovellers. Certainly sharkgrin talks about the people ze would like to restrict the conception of in terms of those who were causing a financial drain to hirself rather than collecting his garbage.

So, what if the population levels get out of whack? Too many middle-class children getting educations, not enough epigonai of the dumbasses to collect the litter? Woudl it be fair to force some couples to breed even as others were forced to abstain?
 
 
gingerbop
21:43 / 05.03.03
Yeah... its kinda off the topic but iv always thought it was a bit wierd who whole middle class graduates thing. Because of where i live, almost all my friends are *kinda* middle-class-ish i suppose, (tho none of us would want 2 b classed as that) and it seems like absolutely EVERYONE is going to Uni, and its just something i feel iv always been expected to do. I didnt really realise that there were many people any more who DONT go.

That was untill my friend who lives in Inverness told me that out of her group of about 20 girls, she was the only one staying on past the minimum leaving age,and that was only because her parents were making her. I think thats really wierd. I think its more to do with the kinda friends she has compared to the kinda friends i have, but i never thought that 25 miles would make SO much difference. Well they can all sweep my streets,i dont care. SO long as they arent, as Haus said, a financial drain on us uni-people.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
22:03 / 05.03.03
OK. So, we have established that we need a certain number of people, in a capitalist model, to produce, who themselves consume, and people who consume the goods and services produced by the people further down the rung than they, and so on. Yay us. We have also established that a major objection to the existence of human beings is that they may cause us some financial encumbrance.

It strikes me that any attempts to regulate these systems has the enormous problem of 20-year lead times before the changes wrought by governmental agency can come on-stream, as it were, making it hard to predict the ultimate situation.

There are, however, apparently certain levers. Making sex education available lowers the age at which women have their first child. Provide secondary and tertiary education for women again raises the age at which they have children, and affects the number of children had. Better medical technology ultiamtely leads to lower birthrates as child mortality becomes less of a threat and redundancy less of a requirement.

Where do these levers move into unacceptable social engineering or coercion? Tax breaks for large families, as in Fascist Italy? Forcible implementation of breeding patterns, as in jub's link? Enforced sterilisation, as proposed by many people so far? What are the acceptable limits of conception engineering?
 
 
Sharkgrin
22:12 / 05.03.03
Wrong, worng, wrong, Haus.

All I said was make every male get a vasectomy, and If they want to have kids, they can get it undone for free.

At least potential fathers will have put thought into the act, not dump on society. I said if everyone in society will suffer from unwanted, neglected kids, then reduce that chance through vasectomies.

If you need someone to argue with or point out, try pointing out their whole argument, not snippets you can villify or JUST argue with, while avoiding anything else they say.

VR
The Shark
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
22:22 / 05.03.03
Sharkgrin, do you see your name mentioned once in the post I have just made? You do not. This is because I did not type it. This is because this thread is not All About You. Doomlord.

I was not, in fact, thinking in particular of your suggestion. If it would make you happy, I will amend the phrase to "enforced, reversible infertility", which seems to describe your "make every male have a vasectomy" and Jack Denfeld's hormones and Torquemada's nanobots and so on.

I would be delighted if you felt you had something further to add to the discussion, but to be honest if we want to know what you said thirty posts ago we can look it up, along with the discussions of it at the time. Care to move the discussion on?
 
 
Nietzsch E. Coyote
18:07 / 06.03.03
Haus are you moving the discussion along? Are you merely quashing anyone's attempt to add to it and adding clever insults? Doomlord.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
18:51 / 06.03.03
Well, I asked a series of questions above with the intention of moving the discussion along, which you now join the Doomlord queue by failing either to address or to supplement or replace.

If you'd like this thread to be a playground rumble, please do PM me, and if enough of you do this I will move it to the Conversation. Otherwise, I already know that you are bright enough to talk about yourself, and am quite happy to take on trust that you are bright enough at least to muster a few sentences about me, regardless of their accuracy. Are any of you bright enough to contribute to the question in the topic abstract, rather than trying to engineer a personality clash, because it's easier and doesn't mean having to read the whole thread or defend your statements?

If so, why not try the revised version of the last questions asked?

At present we are talking about taking away the right to breed. The flip side of that coin is enforced breeding, for purposes of population growth or "breeding in" traits. is this part of the same question? Is the right to breed the same as the right not to breed unwillingly?

***


So, we have established that we need a certain number of people, in a capitalist model, to produce, who themselves consume, and people who consume the goods and services produced by the people further down the rung than they, and so on. Yay us. We have also established that a major objection to the existence of human beings is that they may cause us some financial encumbrance.

It strikes me that any attempts to regulate these systems has the enormous problem of 20-year lead times before the changes wrought by governmental agency can come on-stream, as it were, making it hard to predict the ultimate situation.

There are, however, apparently certain levers. Making sex education available lowers the age at which women have their first child. Provide secondary and tertiary education for women again raises the age at which they have children, and affects the number of children had. Better medical technology ultiamtely leads to lower birthrates as child mortality becomes less of a threat and redundancy less of a requirement.

Where do these levers move into unacceptable social engineering or coercion? Tax breaks for large families, as in Fascist Italy? Forcible implementation of breeding patterns, as in jub's link? Enforced reversible infertility, as proposed by many people so far? What are the acceptable limits of conception engineering?

Go on. Show me how clever you are. Crush me with your ability to stay on topic and make interesting and thought-provoking points about the topic in the subject header. Really. I don't mind.

Incidentally, something else that has occured to me is also related to the nanobots/hormones/vasectomy/sterilisation thing, which people seem to be bouncing off rather...in most situations, I suspect the average Barbeloid, if such a thing there be, would be highly suspicious of giving a government department the power to compel them either to take a dietary supplement (although we have flouride in the water supply in the US and increasingly the UK, so would contraceptive hormones be all that different?) or submit to what would normally be an elective process of surgery. Are we assuming a utopian model where the people administering these hormones or these treatments are above question, or is it only that the surrendering of another chunk of our bodily liberty is a necessary evil that must be endured in order to prevent the yet greater evils of uncontrolled procreation? Is the universality of it a defence against corruption?
 
 
Quantum
10:08 / 07.03.03
Where do these levers move into unacceptable social engineering or coercion? (Haus)
I am with Jack F and Babooshka, I am amazed at this thread. I have resisted so far but that last taunt by Haus (Are any of you bright enough to contribute to the question in the topic abstract) pushed me over the edge. Sterilisation by whatever method is ethically wrong to many people, if you don't think it's wrong think on this- will you volunteer to be the first person sterilised? Would you let a government agent sterilise your child? Personally if anyone tried to sterilise me or mine they would pull back a bloodied stump, and I don't think I am alone in this.
My main point was to be that the state is the last agency I would give that kind of power, but Haus then brought it up so no need.
To respond to the abstract NO chemicals should not be introduced into the water supply, NO there shouldn't be a parenting test (see the spike milligan thread linked earlier). Reproduction is not a privilege granted by the state, it is a right equivalent to the right to breathe clean air. The problem of overpopulation is just one facet of the global environmental issue of sustainability- I'm all for the suggestion (pages back) of a Kyoto style agreement, and the UN's free school lunches etc- policies that help control population growth without resorting to Fascist eugenic policies.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:53 / 07.03.03
The Kyoto-style agreement thread is quite an interesting one - maybe if we combined it with the UN education programmes then we could have something along the lines of heavily-funded education and birth control provision, run by the UN or through local government, combined with a series of benefits to governments who successfully kept population growth at a sustainable level in conjunction with other initiatives.

We've got a couple of questions running here simultaneously, I think:

1) Is government intervention in conception justified by the poor quality of potential parents?
2) Is government intervention in conception justified by the financial costs to responsible, employed members of society incurred by letting the poor reproduce without control?
3) Is government intervention in conception justified by the increased consumption of the Earth's finite resources resulting from population growth?

Is this right? I'd say that all three of these points are probably ones that a responsible government should be looking at, but it seems to me that there is a big leap between that and the idea that government should start instituting compulsory means of creating an infertile population, which some people seem to be seeing as a small step. Especially if you make that process reversible on request, as one of the points about points (1) and (2) is that they presuppose a population group not equipped to make rational decisions about the wisdom of reproduction...so either you have to take people's right to decide when they are fit to reproduce away and only give it back if you feel they are competent to use it responsibly (the parency test idea), or resign yourself, as a government, to a very complex logistical process that will not necessarily have the desired effect in the desired demographic (stupid people and/or poor people).
 
 
Quantum
13:24 / 07.03.03
stupid poor people have the same right to reproduce as clever rich people- the problem is that clever rich people tend to have less children. This is true globally as well as locally- first world countries (like Britain) have a declining population while less prosperous countries have a booming population (for all the reasons given in the thread already, principally someone to look after you when you're old). This leads to discussions like this one where the rich clever people work out ways to cull the poor stupid people.

Why not gas them? It's a more immediate solution to the problem of overpopulation (a final solution if you will) and avoids the whole abortion/sterilisation issue. Alright, that's Swift talking, but can't people see the paralells between this sort of intellectual elitism and the racial elitism espoused by Hitler?

I think Haus is right about the simultaneous questions, my responses would be '1)Is government intervention in conception justified by the poor quality of potential parents?' NO. The government isn't qualified to judge potential parents. If you want to go down this route you need an International Eugenics Board, set up to judge potential parents.

'2) Is government intervention in conception justified by the financial costs to responsible, employed members of society incurred by letting the poor reproduce without control?' NO. I object to my taxes being given to 'poor stupid people' but nowhere near as much as I object to the (much larger) expenditure on, say, defence.

'3) Is government intervention in conception justified by the increased consumption of the Earth's finite resources resulting from population growth?' Maybe. If there were a world government this would be a viable argument, but a nation cannot unilaterally tackle world overpopulation- we need an international organisation (e.g. the U.N.) to confront these issues from a global perspective. But I am rabidly anti-government at the moment and if the question were phrased '..the current UK/US government..' I would scream 'No fuckin' way, look at the mess they're making of everything else'

(BTW there is a very cavalier attitude towards vasectomy in previous posts, they take scissors to your bollocks- unnecessary surgery is not the way forward. Try vasectomising me and see how far you get..)
 
 
Jack Denfeld
22:49 / 30.03.03
I'm trying to think of a solution that doesn't involve science fiction. But I still like the idea that you can use people's apathy against them. People who don't care if they get pregnant because they can't be bothered to think about these things. The water thing was a way that these same people couldn't reproduce because they couldn't be bothered to take the effort to call the water company and ask them to shut off the special water. And if they could be bothered, then hey, it looks like they matured at least that much. Can someone think of a more reasonable way to do this without using the special water?
 
 
*
00:57 / 31.03.03
The following might be somewhat disjointed, for which I apologize in advance.

From the evidence I have at hand, it seems more-educated people have a tendency not to want children, and less-educated people to want more children. Which might lead to the assumption that the human race as a whole will, through selection, get less intelligent. This assumes that intelligence is strictly a genetic thing and does not also depend on development, nutrition, personal effort, etc. It is my impression that, except in cases of mental disability, intelligence is mostly developmental, rather than inherited. People born to poor, uneducated parents can still, system allowing, become intelligent, educated, and successful adults. This is even assuming we use financial success as a measuring stick of some sort, which I disagree with on principle.

We seem to be taking for granted the veracity of the widespread belief that human life is overpopulating the planet beyond sustainability. It's important to look at whom this belief serves. While I adhere to the belief that we are using our resources unwisely and unsustainably, I don't automatically agree that this means we have to accept the dogma of lowered expectations, or that we need to massively cut back our population. Wise use of the resources we have, and responsible advances in science and technology, would allow this planet to comfortably support many more people than we have now. Buckminster Fuller demonstrated that enough power exists in a cubic centimeter of "nothing" (or rather, air) to meet the entire planet's energy demands for a year. Harnessing that energy safely and responsibly remains the challenge. Similarly, careful use of hydroponics, aquaculture, insect protein, and land management would allow us to feed all the world's hungry.

Given the above, my own feelings about reproductive rights aside, I see no reason to deliver into the hands of an already massively-bloated national government (of whatever nation) the power to prevent certain people from having children. I would rather see programs developed to educate people in strategies for better parenting, so they can raise children who think. People should not and need not hand over control of this decision to a fallible, if not evil, superpower.
 
  

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