

American billionaire club wants to curb overpopulation - soundsop
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6350303.ece

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frisco
Wow that's misleading linkbait. The actual article describes it as
philanthropy targeted at availability of contraception, female education, and
higher standards of living world wide, things that are correlated with lower,
more sensible, birth rates. This title makes it sounds like there's a secret
organization trying to kill us all.

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graemep
The secrecy does not make them look good.

The best way to slow population growth is simply by making the poor more
prosperous. What about some re-distribution of wealth....

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SwellJoe
_What about some re-distribution of wealth...._

Which merely exhibits a superstition about money, as though it is separate
from what it represents. Merely redistributing money does nothing about the
disparity in wealth. Modern wealth is a derivative of education, natural and
human resources, ambition, hard work, the rule of law (wealth won't exist for
long where the nearest thug can walk away with it unhindered), and other
factors.

Merely telling governments to force people to "redistribute wealth" won't
solve the problems that lead to the wealth inequality between third and first
world nations, and the money will merely evaporate, as most aid money
evaporates today...into the pockets of local banana republic leaders and their
supporters. Fix what's broken about government, education, and ideology, in
those third world nations, and you'll solve the wealth gap.

There is no way to "redistribute wealth" without redistributing the engines of
wealth. And most first worlders, particularly those most successful at
creating wealth, aren't going to jump at the chance to live in third world
nations.

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nazgulnarsil
everyone wants to curb overpopulation, these people are just in a position to
act on it.

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stuntgoat
What is it about Japan that is curbing population growth?

[http://www31.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+growth+in+...](http://www31.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+growth+in+japan+)

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markerdmann
Why Japan instead of Ukraine?

<http://www86.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+growth>

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stuntgoat
Good question. Because I thought of it first ( then Italy ).

What is it about the Ukraine that is curbing population growth? Also, what
seems to increase population growth inside countries?

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elai
At first I thought it was american billionaires not wanting more billionaires
to share the status with.

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patrickg-zill
War usually does the job.

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TriinT
WW2 killed "only" 60 million or so. Population control would require having 2
billion or so killed. Unless one goes for nuclear warfare, I don't see war
solving the overpopulation problem.

Unfortunately, there are not enough resources to guarantee everyone a high
standard of living. Poverty is the result, and poverty leads to people
breeding like rabbits. We are doomed.

~~~
mahmud
Wanna end over population? Offer free, unhindered family planning services.
Curb the rampant influence of organized religion on private matters. Foster a
healthy appreciation for one's children, male or female, so families aren't
forced to get rid of their daughters through early marriage. Remove the stigma
around condoms; we all fuck and it's a beautiful thing, just be careful kids.
Empower women and give them equal employment so they have more time to reach
for their dreams and less time popping out kids to latch onto a single source
of income personified as a male patriarch. Develop family farms and
agriculture and introduce automation to the process, so farmers don't depend
on their offspring for labor.

etc.

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anamax
> Offer free, unhindered family planning services.

Seems to have little/no effect.

> Curb the rampant influence of organized religion on private matters.

Good luck doing that without coercion, substituting a different organization's
influence on private matters.

> Empower women and give them equal employment so they have more time to reach
> for their dreams and less time popping out kids to latch onto a single
> source of income personified as a male patriarch.

Nice theory, but there's plenty of "overbreeding" in societies where women
work as much as/more than men.

"X is bad" and "Y is bad" does not imply that X and Y have anything to do with
one another.

> Develop family farms and agriculture and introduce automation to the
> process, so farmers don't depend on their offspring for labor.

Wrong. Automation doesn't make kids useless. It actually makes them more
useful. A ten-year-old girl without automation can't do nearly as much as a 17
year-old boy. The more automation, the closer they are in productivity.
(Having actually worked on farms, I'm often amazed by what people say about
working on farms.)

If you want to keep farmers from breeding, don't have family farms.

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mahmud
Allow me to answer your suspicion about availability of family planning
service and its effect on reducing population growth. You probably have the
West, specially U.S. in mind when you say it has no effect. I think you're
forgetting the welfare-check incentive in baby-popping.

Family benefits as they're in the U.S. seem to be optimized for the maximum
yield of babies, and reduction of intact, 2-parent households. Single women
simply get more buck for their bang (sorry!) here. And the fact that said
benefits demand the removal of the father from the house, what you're left
with are women raising children by themselves, and children of single moms
becoming single parents themselves and going back to the system. Where
generations ago they might have gone to the family farm or shop, now they're
going to the family social worker to collect their own welfare checks.

~~~
anamax
The claim was that family planning services mattered. Pointing out that they
have no effect when something else is present, which wasn't mentioned in the
list of "what to do", doesn't support that claim.

I'm quite sympathetic to the idea that many "welfare services" are failures in
many ways, including population. Perhaps they should have been on the list
from the beginning.

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ThomPete
Let the conspiracy theories begin....

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mahmud
There is no conspiracy. Rich people want MORE people on the planet so they can
have more people to be richer-than ;-)

