Continuing to increase the world population is absolutely nuts.
*I’m not interested in gradual natural declines from whatever factors. 2 max implemented now.
Hard disagree - you’re effectively controlling people’s body autonomy the same way as abortion bans. Let alone the confusion of differently structured families (what if the woman has two and a new husband wants one??).
Controlling wastefulness, development for the future and education on the other hand- absolutely. Side effect is that better education usually leads to smaller families, and that’s before you also include sex ed and access to contraception.
Agreed. OP is choosing the stick over the carrot. The truth is that increasing education has a direct negative correlation to birth rates, and has like a million bonus side effects too
My primary question is when do the needs of the many vs the needs of the few kick in?
All for body autonomy, but let’s say in the future, we do have food shortages and you know your future kids won’t be able to eat, and let’s say you know they will in fact starve - would you agree that it’s wrong to bring another child into that future?
If so, when is the line drawn? We already say in society that abortion is the moral choice if we know the child is doomed to die because of incurable diseases, does the same thought apply if you know your child will die of starvation?
Now, let’s say that’s happening but you’re the government. And just for this question let’s say the government is actually moral and useful, and basically infallible. I know, will never happen and our government couldn’t be farther from that, but just for the this here they are. As the government they see the problem and see that people having too many babies will cause most babies die of starvation. Is it formal for them to limit the rights of some people to not have more children if it means a larger amount of children will live?
If so, when is that line drawn?
Unfortunately government doesn’t work that way and people are cruel and have bias and so it would never work because it would be implemented in some horrible dystopian way. But I wanted to show my line of thinking, that I’m not someone who wants to be horrible, but in a backwards way to me I think it’s more compassionate
The best answer to that line is what society will accept.
I mean, we already have a way to decide where that line is - supply and demand. In a perfect world people would decide not to have kids because its not financially possible based on the price due to shortages - like you say though that wouldn’t be the case.
With realistic considerations - your support from society ceases at two kids. If you want to have more no govt support.etc. That’s a vote killer as for some reason the governments responsible when you can’t feed your kids, but that’s the best way forward imo.
Thats’s just the dumb way to do it, because that’s not how populations work. Educate people and allow them to thrive in society, they will have less children on their own.
Youre perpetuating a myth, not an unpopular opinion.
Developed nations are seeing declining birth rates. I don’t think we need to do anything.
Every time someone raised the alarm about population growth, some unforeseen innovation made it a non-issue.
Yet population explosion is worse than ever. Only some of the developed nations are improving, though they are suffering the delayed effects of old population explosion (boomers).
We have an absolutely unprecedented population that’s using resources at like 4x sustainable rates and still growing rapidly. Hand waving it away by talking about Malthus is just sticking our heads in the sand.
People get children without being a couple.
What even is the definition of a couple and why should that determine the number?
Good point. The obvious, and unpopular, take would probably be per uterus insteadnof per couple, since that is almost completely trackable, unlike paternity.
Ooo, do women have the power or are they a commodity valued on ability to have kids. Will this be a boon for feminine rights or a massive step backwards.
I smell a new post
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This is already a tracked statistic. It’s called the fertility rate. Yes, it’s tracked per uterus, and it’s actually been falling precipitously for decades:
yeah no, that’s discriminatory
Well, this will certainly be an unpopular opinion, so at least it matches the community! :-)
The top two responses are opposite - definitely sits right.
I think people shouldn’t have any kids.
The real right answer
All children should be kept secret until adulthood and then have to pretend to have been born before x year. It would build character.
Children aren’t the problem. Late stage capitalism is. We have the technology and resources to feed everyone in the world but we don’t. Because it’s not profitable.
We reward billionaires more wealth than they could ever spend in their lives. Why? For accidentally being in the right place and time to take advantage of an opportunity. We pretend they’re special, but it really comes down to mostly luck. That wealth could lift humanity out of poverty.
We need to make a new system that rewards people for doing what needs to be done, not for what’s profitable.
Humans are taking up too much land, it’s not just a matter of feeding everyone
Show me your data on that one
No. It’s working out fine. Limits cause odd knock on effects when people prefer one sex over the other, and population growth is moderating now, the reason population still grows is old people living longer, it’s not too many kids.
You need an average of 2 or less not a mandate.
If all women tomorrow said they were on strike, no more kids, at all, ever, are you going to mandate pregnancy? Who decides? Who is making these rules?
Just curious, you do know that such a rule would eventually reduce the human race to nill? Natural and unnatural deaths requires 2,X to remain at same level.
Btw, you should watch the British series Utopia
Such a good series.
You can help by having zero.
Attached is a graph of global population projections from Wikipedia. You can see the median projection forecast a plateau and drop this century and half project more significant drops. I find the drops more likely because they correlate the affect of development and human rights on the birth rate rather than the naive “assume nothing changes” of the continued growth projections
More development, human rights, education of women have a proven history of people choosing a reduced birth rate. We can approach a more sustainable population simply by making everyone’s life better
You may stay unpopular.
I’m mostly concerned at how many clueless people upvoted this dumb take
I think it should be upvoted as it’s a very unpopular opinion.
Violation of body autonomy is of the absolute most profound violations and the state has no right to do that. Whether or not people SHOULD have kids is irrelevant; even if they shouldn’t, there exists no acceptable power lever to prevent it.
It’s also a solution in search of a problem. Human population growth is already slowing and will likely plateau in my lifetime before starting a trend of retreat. Assuming we aren’t all dead by way of the collapsing climate already.
Real unpopular opinion incoming:
there is no bigger body autonomy violation than being forced into this world in the first place.
What about being forced to never come into this world? If we’re debating the autonomy of a nonexistent human then who’s to say that isn’t just as bad?
I’m honestly in favor of it. Before everyone jumps down my throat, I’m not saying how China did it was the right way.
But we are barreling towards a very unsustainable future. This century is going to be very dire for these next generations. We simply do not have the resources.
There are some great “hacks” I’ll call them. GMOs, urban farming, etc, but those just treat the symptoms.
I’m not having kids and this is one of the big reasons why. My family thinks I’m crazy but from my point of view I’m just bringing kids into this world to suffer, so if I do that then it’s only for selfish reasons. And with that line of thought I think people who willingly have more than, oh, let’s say 3 kids are selfish.
It’s harsh, but seriously look around. It’s unmaintainable, we can’t keep going at infinite growth.
Unfortunately it will never be implemented because there is no way to do it without bias. Sterilizations have always had bias, along race, class, religion, and those I’m against. This is more me yelling into the void “For the love of God stop having kids! You do not need 5 kids! We can’t continue with this exponential curve on this one tiny planet!”
The problem has never been the amount of resources. The problem is distribution of resources is heavily skewed to a few.
If the abundant resources are obtained through unbridled agriculture (deforestation) and excessive amounts of ecosystem-destroying pesticides, maybe they’re not sustainable
I mean, bias is a problem, but there’s an even bigger issue. What happens if a couple has a third child? It may not seem like it, but this is a major problem.
One of many problems unfortunately. How do you decide what to do? Forcibly remove the child? Relocate? Tax them more?
What if it was an accident? How do you prove it was? There’s no way to do it, and another reason it’ll never happen.
However if you have 5 kids and it happens again… Ehhh I’m willing to say that you did not have 6 accidents.
Yes, putting this into law would either require the government to pay for mandatory abortions or mandatory sterilization after the second child.
Or some serious financial repercussions. Maybe extra tax that goes towards more support for people with fewer children (or their children).
Then that’s class based bias, rich would simply pay for it while the poor get poorer. It’s a fair thought, but the waters get muddy all the way down
Yeah, the system would have to be changed by miles for this to apply evenly among classes, and by extension, races. Some assurance of equal levels of education, resources, and access to medical care to take care of all roadblocks to having exactly the amount of children you want to have. Edit: and that would mean free (as in uninhibited financially or by laws) access to abortion regardless of situation.
You get a max of two, after that benefits are split between the number of children?
And yet the population graph is curving toward a plateau and new generations are so much smaller than previous that many places are more in danger of a rapid drop in population (in a few decades, assuming nothing changes). This is a solved problem: our best bet is to rucsh the developing world toward development
Not having kids works on an individual level, but without worldwide implementation/cooperation we just continue on and on growing the population. Thus this post.
No, there aren’t too many kids, there are too many of us older people. The fertility rate has already dropped, the unpopular opinion that would be effective would be don’t let people live past 65 or something like that. If you cut fertility so low, it just makes the population skew even older than it already is. Better to get the average below replacement (it is headed there soon without your mandate) and then hopefully to replacement level at a better population size.
