Is it normal that i believe that people should stop reproducing so much?

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17 Comments

I believe that our planet is overpopulated and that alot of people should not have kids. If alot less people had babies or atleast limited their families to 1-2 kids, it would solve our overpopulation issue. Education, affordable and acessible birth control (including abortion and selective reduction), and incentives to not breed (like tax breaks) should be given to more people so our planet wouldn't be in the population crisis it's in. It may not effect everyone now, but it will if people keep having 3+ kids. Due to people having larger-than-average families, it's really putting alot of strain on our already over-taxed planet as it lowers our amount of food, water, and other resources and decreases the amount of livable land across the globe, not to mention how peoples' unneccesary over-breeding is messing with the ozone layer and the habitats of animals causing more species to become extinct. This is a serious threat to not just today's generations, but future generations as well. If alot more people don't limit their families to just replacement value (two kids for two-parent families and one kid for single-parent families) or don't have any kids, there won't be anything left for future generations and it will lead to massive famine, war, climate damage, and disease.

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82% Normal
Based on 62 votes (51 yes)
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Comments ( 17 )
  • regisphilbin
    8 years ago

    babies suck, literally

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  • FloridaCalm
    9 years ago

    Sex is to overrated, but as Deepak Chopra said: "The birth of a child is proof that god has not yet given up on human beings" I TRIPLE DOG DARE YOU to have a infant fall asleep after being rocked in your arms and you to come back and say that again

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  • NeuroNeptunian
    11 years ago

    Yes, this question has been asked here over 9000 times.

    Me? I mostly agree with you. However, I don't have a problem with people who would make good parents and can afford kids having more than 2 kids. I see the problem with selfish, uneducated, broke ass dispshits having even 1. If only the people who could sustain kids and a good family would have kids, we wouldn't even have to worry about this. 51% of pregnancies in the US are unplanned. That's little over half of the country's population (theoretically speaking). We need better birth control education and accessibility. There's no excuse for a grown woman not knowing what a Plan B pill is in this day and age. Not in any developed country, anyway.

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  • dappled
    11 years ago

    I agree but there are downsides. Provision for the old is made by people who are still of working age (in terms of pensions, health care, etc). If people stop reproducing, you eventually end up with a society with lots more old people than young people and the burden of support becomes too great.

    However, there's another solution. When I was born the life expectancy in my city was 69.1 years. The age of retirement (when I retire) will be a minimum of 67 and, if you extrapolate, probably be around 70. Basically, the best solution is for me (and everyone else) to get close to completing their useful working life and then drop dead without claiming even a single week of their pension back.

    It's frightfully unpopular, though. :)

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    • VioletTrees
      11 years ago

      Yes, yes! Er, that's to the first part. I was partway through a comment about ageing populations when I saw that you'd already done it.

      It's already something of a problem in Japan, China, and, I believe, Fiji.

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      • dappled
        11 years ago

        Yeah, it's a problem in Japan because their life expectancy is much higher than in China (something like +10 years). Much smaller population, though, and the GDP per capita is about four times that of China.

        And like any problem of this type, it was fifty years in the making and takes fifty years to fix.

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        • VioletTrees
          11 years ago

          I wonder what the median age in China actually is. It's difficult to get good demographic data about China, because there are so many undocumented people there, and the Chinese government isn't particularly thrilled about people knowing that, much less studying details of the undocumented population.

          The professor who taught my introductory Mandarin class in college lived in China for over a decade. I asked him about population control in China, because I'd read that it wasn't actually as successful as the Chinese government would have us believe. He told me that when he was first in China, he visited a rural town and asked someone he met there how many siblings he had. He said "Ten." The professor was surprised at the time, but, he told me, he quickly learned that that isn't unusual at all in rural areas. The government officials turn a blind eye in towns like that, or, as they say in China, "close one eye and open the other."

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    • suckonthis9
      11 years ago

      I agree with the poster, mostly.

      I do not buy the argument that there will not be enough young people to look after the old.
      A few young people can look after the elderly. The persons who created the mess we're in will simply need to give up on the notion that their retirement will be some fairy-tale wonderland. Basic amenities, potable water, food, shelter, medicine and a few luxuries (possibly). An efficient system will need to be devised.

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      • dappled
        11 years ago

        I agree with the poster (and you) too but I also see the problems. Ideally, we'd predict issues (I'll be honest and say I wasn't clever enough to spot them in advance). In the real world, we wait for them to happen and then observe them (I'll be honest again and say it only occurred to me when it was shown to me). If you want a real world example, visit present-day Shanghai and speak to the elderly there. It's a city of 23 million people which is tending towards an older population. A "few" young people can't look after the elderly.

        From the New England Journal of Medicine:

        Ratio of Old-age Dependency

        The rapid decrease in the birth rate, combined with stable or improving life expectancy, has led to an increasing proportion of elderly people and an increase in the ratio between elderly parents and adult children. In China, the percentage of the population over the age of 65 years was 5 percent in 1982 and now stands at 7.5 percent but is expected to rise to more than 15 percent by 2025. Although these figures are lower than those in most industrialized countries (especially Japan, where the proportion of people over the age of 65 years is 20 percent), a lack of adequate pension coverage in China means that financial dependence on offspring is still necessary for approximately 70 percent of elderly people. Pension coverage is available only to those employed in the government sector and large companies. In China, this problem has been named the “4:2:1” phenomenon, meaning that increasing numbers of couples will be solely responsible for the care of one child and four parents.

        References:

        Peng P. Causes and consequences of fertility decline in China. China Popul Today 1998;15:5-6, 10

        World Bank Health Nutrition and Population Division. Development data. (Accessed August 26, 2005, at http://www.worldbank.org/hnpstats.)

        Sun F. Ageing of the population in China: trends and implications. Asia Pac Popul J 1998;13:75-92

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        • suckonthis9
          11 years ago

          Why can't the young people look after the elderly?
          There are 1'000,000,000 (one billion) people who are living in abject poverty and many are unemployed, employed unsustainably or under-employed. Train them.
          Remember, it might be more beneficial to translocate some of the elderly, rather than simply importing workers. Yes, this might cause some degree of hardship on the families, being not able to visit them, but this could help to alleviate the crisis. After all, many elderly persons already choose to retire in warmer climes.

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          • dappled
            11 years ago

            At the extreme end of the scale, weight of numbers is the problem. Five people can look after thirty old people, but not three hundred million old people. There is a ratio where it's not physically possible. Prior to that point is one where it's not economically viable.

            Although you can technically import a billion people with subsistent lifestyles, have them learn Chinese, then educate them in geriatric care, it all needs paying for. They also need feeding and clothing during their training period and when they are learning a new language. Plus the facilities for a billion students at once. Although China has 1.3 billion people only about 35m of them attend university/college simultaneously. They would thus need a 2850% increase in the number of facilities.

            Judging by my own country (which is all I can do), it costs about £35,000 per year to educate someone who isn't working. Plus £10,000 for housing, £10,000 to pay for their children, and £15,000 other costs (bills). Multiply that £70,000 by one billion and you have a cost to the national purse of seventy trillion pounds (or 690 trillion Yuan). The Chinese GDP is 45.5 trillion Yuan. If they devoted 5% of GDP just to this project alone, it would take 300 years just to pay for the first year of the programme (and that isn't counting the cost of building the houses for them all, or the colleges for them to learn in, or retraining a percentage of the workforce as lecturers, administrators, etc.)

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            • suckonthis9
              11 years ago

              I don't mean to be mean (in a derogatory sense), but you are thinking like a brain-dead politician.
              We need to think out-of-the-box.
              That's why I suggested translocating (some of) the elderly people.
              We can fly them to a sunny and warm Less Developed Country (LDC).
              We can train the people there in Geriatric Care. This will result in huge cost savings.
              It will also provide Economic Opportunity for the people in LDC's, reducing trouble and strife.
              Children can help also, as they have an ability to absorb any language that they are immersed in. They can then help to translate for adults as well as doing simple chores.

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  • Riddler
    10 years ago

    You said so much. Yes, I agree.

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  • dexy77
    11 years ago

    many european countries and some asian countries (north america is just barely getting by) have birthrates that are too low to sustain their populations. soon their populations will start decreasing and they will need to rely on immigration. china is going to be facing a problem because they will have an excess of 60 million males. those males won't be able to find wives or have children due to the low value that china put on female children. their population will also shrink.

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  • anti-hero
    11 years ago

    Popular theory.

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