Tendo City

It seems recent studies show that if current trends continue, marine fisheries will no longer be commercially viable by 2050.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15532333/

So the oceans are being overfished, oil is being over consumed, and energy demands are higher than ever.

I think it's about time to seriously consider limiting the number of offspring humans make. It is time to rebel against our short-sighted genes or it'll doom us all. All they do is blindly build us at the start and from there they no longer have direct control. Our ability to rationally realize that our gene's best interests are pretty much irrelevent and overcome it is simply a happy misfiring that genes, shortsighted as they are, never could have seen coming. Nothing really physically impossible about "defying" them then.

My point is, I think we are reproducing far too much. Now laws are a tricky business. Who gets to decide which people get to reproduce after all? However, and I've said this before, it need not be legal limits on it, but practical ones. Changing the next generation may be enough to turn the tide. First of all, the taboo-ing of things like condoms needs to stop. That's always been dangerously ridiculous. Secondly, I really think that genetic research into making reproduction an opt-in procedure at the very least should be undertaken. If someone can willingly turn on and off ovulation and/or sperm production, that should cut down on unplanned events by a massive amount.

The last would be a bit of social engineering. I think people in general need to stop considering it their "right" to have children. Before you say anything, keep in mind that we ALREADY think this to a certain extent. If parents are abusive to their kids, we as a modern society have collectively agreed that they don't get to keep them simply by right, that children are not property. Further some people, myself included, think that someone who is clearly not capable of taking care of kids shouldn't be allowed to keep them even if they aren't actively trying to abuse them. Further still, it's finally starting to become clear that abuse can take the form of parents forcing children to take up a vegen diet (in which case some kids where this happened starved to death) and parents who's personal beliefs make them say their kids can't get life saving surgery, or who decide not to vaccinate their kids, are performing abuse (and in the latter case, endangering other kids as there's a needed critical mass of vaccinated people in order to hault the flow of a disease entirely).

Further, as a society we agree that if someone keeps a house full of pets and doesn't get them neutered, to the point where they have a household of 30 or 40 cats, the cats need to be taken away.

The next step is saying that perhaps people should be taught from birth that it's socielly irresponsible to just make kids repeatedly just for the sake of making them.

It'd never happen in any country that's remotely free.

That's merely an aside, though. The birth rate in developed countries is much less than it is in developing nations. So you fix the problem of exponential growth by fixing the social and economic problems in Africa, South American, and parts of Asia.

Indeed. The world's population is only growing because of the third world. The better educated the people of a country are (particularly women), the more the birthrate of that nation goes down. The countries with the lowest birthrates are all first-world nations. Really, in many first-world nations the problem is how to deal with the fact that the population is DROPPING, not how to deal with all the growth!

Even America would have about flat population growth if we didn't allow in more immigrants every year than any other nation on the planet.

For developing nations, however, education is really the best answer. Economic improvement will help a lot too, of course, but education is the key. It works.

Oh yeah, and full support for all methods of birth control is of course vital. Bush's actions on this matter have been incredibly destructive, hypocritical, and cruel. It needs to change, as soon as possible.

A Black Falcon Wrote:Indeed. The world's population is only growing because of the third world. The better educated the people of a country are (particularly women), the more the birthrate of that nation goes down. The countries with the lowest birthrates are all first-world nations. Really, in many first-world nations the problem is how to deal with the fact that the population is DROPPING, not how to deal with all the growth!

Even America would have about flat population growth if we didn't allow in more immigrants every year than any other nation on the planet.

For developing nations, however, education is really the best answer. Economic improvement will help a lot too, of course, but education is the key. It works.

Oh yeah, and full support for all methods of birth control is of course vital. Bush's actions on this matter have been incredibly destructive, hypocritical, and cruel. It needs to change, as soon as possible.

birth control will not do any good, If the culture firmly rejects it on religious grounds.

Those who do not reproduce get replaced by those who do, There is a good chance the fading society will not pass on their culture to the new comers.

Until the day we can have genetically engineered humans with 300 year lifespans, I wouldn't go over board sterilizing populations, We will still need to replace the old with the new.

The first world only breaks even ,In some places like Spain their is more coffins then cradles coming out.

Quote:birth control will not do any good, If the culture firmly rejects it on religious grounds.

Sure, but this is only a problem in certain places, and it is one that can be overcome.

Quote:Those who do not reproduce get replaced by those who do, There is a good chance the fading society will not pass on their culture to the new comers.

Are you referring to the "do immigrants become part of the culture of the nation they join?" issue? In America at least, proof is that they do. In nations where nation means only one specific ethnic group, however, that is admittedly much less certain.

Quote:Until the day we can have genetically engineered humans with 300 year lifespans, I wouldn't go over board sterilizing populations, We will still need to replace the old with the new.

What... huh? Who suggested that?

Quote:The first world only breaks even ,In some places like Spain their is more coffins then cradles coming out.

I know, that was one of my points. Europe is shrinking overall; only the third world is growing.

That's the irony, really. Or the tragedy of it, more like. The nations that can most afford to deal with the problems of growing populations and the challenges of global warming and the strains of what is perhaps peak oil have mostly steady or decreasing populations, while the nations that can least afford it are growing, rapidly. It's really a recipe for disaster, sadly...

This is true of many European countries, but not all of them. It's also true of Japan, but China's population continues to rise dramatically.

One thing to distinguish is there's a difference between population decline, and population GROWTH decline. Population growth rates can shrink and still result in a rising overall population.

I think concerns that reducing reproduction is a sure path to extinction are pretty silly. No one's saying it should be reduced to zero, and realistically I doubt that's even attainable.

As for the US...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

It would appear we aren't in the same situation as Europe. This is anecdotal, but just looking around me "not having kids" is not a high priority of my peers... neither is going to college... Part of this may put the lie to "abstenence only" sex education. The main problem is in interviews with people taught that saying that "if they did have sex, they probably wouldn't bother with protection because they're already messing up as it is".

(As an aside, that's a disgusting line of thought. You're already "doing something wrong" so you might as well do MORE things wrong? Seriously, you mean to say that if you started torturing someone, you've already "messed up" so CONTINUING to torture them is now perfectly fine as you are already "in the wrong"? Well gee maybe the moral quesion isn't ABOUT you and your guilt! Maybe it's about the person in pain! Maybe even if you already screwed up the only moral course of action is to reduce the harm as much as you can from there! Seriously, how the heck do people get a mindset like that? This by the way should not be taken as saying that defying abstenence is wrong or anything so much as that this mindset is pretty evil.)

Anyway, that's a rather simple answer to the issue but it stands to wonder where the source of America (and Canada's) population growth comes from when we're in the same boat as many European nations. Also of note is that while overall Europe has lowered population, there are small pockets where it's still growing, such as Italy. This also may be true in the US, where overall there's growth but there may well be many pockets where it's dropping (just not enough).

Immigrants are one explanation, that's a good point ABF, but I'd like to see some good data to back up the idea that it's just due to immigration that our population is growing and not due to reproduction.

GR, I think I have to point out that once again, my idea would not, and I would never even want it, to be FORCED on a population. Rather I just want the option to exist and for people to be made aware there would be nothing immoral about such a choice. The fundamental thing is simply that someone would be opting into being fertile, not opting out, and that alone would shift a lot of issues around.

Quote:Part of this may put the lie to "abstenence only" sex education.

Actually, abstinence-only sex education is proven to do nothing to reduce pregnancy rates, while doing a lot to hurt people's understanding of what contraception is and when they should be using it. It's a horrible, horrible concept that the Bush administration has pushed hard... hopefully when they are gone so will abstinence-only sex ed. :(

Quote:One thing to distinguish is there's a difference between population decline, and population GROWTH decline. Population growth rates can shrink and still result in a rising overall population.

Sure, but if the population growth rate keeps going down, the population itself is sure to follow eventually. This is exactly what is happening in China -- for now their population may still be going up, but if they hold to their population limits (one-child policy; some are allowed a second child or have one anyway, but overall it has worked amazingly well), China WILL eventually start declining in population. Already the population size increase difference between China and India is extreme -- India is continuing to rapidly, and uncontrollably, increase in population, while China is not thanks to their repressive, but effective, one child policy. This will only become more distinct as time goes on.

Quote:Anyway, that's a rather simple answer to the issue but it stands to wonder where the source of America (and Canada's) population growth comes from when we're in the same boat as many European nations. Also of note is that while overall Europe has lowered population, there are small pockets where it's still growing, such as Italy. This also may be true in the US, where overall there's growth but there may well be many pockets where it's dropping (just not enough).

Italy? Italy is not increasing in population. The map you want is this one (and this article):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth


Note how all of Europe except for Ireland, Bosnia, Turkey, and a few tiny city-states are either barely growing or are shrinking. Most of the rest of Europe, as well as Japan, should join the purple areas (negative growth) in not too long... Most of Africa, except for the most AIDS-affected parts, is very rapidly growing. And as I said, Africa is least able to deal with the effects of global warming, while Europe is probably most able to deal with it...

This chart is also relevant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cou...ility_rate


US fertility rate: 2.04, right about replacement. So why is it, then, that our population is growing so much? As I said, it's because of immigration. America allows in a LOT of immigrants.

And again, the point about which countries are growing and which are not is clear.

I think religion and culture effect fertility, Moslem's are big baby makers. The poorer and undeveloped a nation is , The more babies they make.

There was a fantastic population article recently in the New York Times Magazine.

Link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/magazi...gewanted=1

Parts of the article, though you really should read it all!

Quote:The spiritual concerns aside, though, the main threats to Europe are economic. Alongside birthrate, the other operative factor in the economic equation is lifespan. People everywhere are living longer than ever, and lifespan is continuing to increase beyond what was once considered a natural limit. Policy makers fear that, taken together, these trends forecast a perfect demographic storm. According to a paper by Jonathan Grant and Stijn Hoorens of the Rand Europe research group: “Demographers and economists foresee that 30 million Europeans of working age will ‘disappear’ by 2050. At the same time, retirement will be lasting decades as the number of people in their 80s and 90s increases dramatically.” The crisis, they argue, will come from a “triple whammy of increasing demand on the welfare state and health-care systems, with a decline in tax contributions from an ever-smaller work force.” That is to say, there won’t be enough workers to pay for the pensions of all those long-living retirees. What’s more, there will be a smaller working-age population compared with other parts of the world; the U.S. Census Bureau’s International Database projects that in 2025, 42 percent of the people living in India will be 24 or younger, while only 22 percent of Spain’s population will be in that age group. This, in the wording of a Demographic Fitness Survey by the Adecco Institute, a London-based research group, will result in a “war for talent.” And the troubles for Europe are magnified by other factors in the existing welfare states of many of its countries. Europeans are used to early retirement — according to the Adecco survey, only 60 percent of men in France between the ages of 50 and 64 are still working.

Then there is the matter of what kind of society “lowest low” will bring. How will the predominance of one- and two-child families affect family cohesion, sibling relationships, care for elderly parents? Imagine a society in which family reunions consist of three people, in which nearly all of a child’s relatives are in their 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. Laviano’s empty streets echo with something strange and seemingly new. As the social scientists Billari, Kohler and Ortega put it, Europe is entering “an uncharted territory in demographic history.”

The issue of immigration is related to “lowest low” as well. The fears on the right are of a continent-wide takeover by third-world hordes — mostly Muslim — who have yet to be infected by the modern malady called family planning and who threaten to transform, if not completely delete, the storied, cherished cultures of Western Europe. And to venture into even-deeper waters, no one knows how Europe’s birthrate might play out globally: whether it will contribute to the diminishing of Western influence and Western values; whether, as Steyn’s book title suggests, America will have to go it alone in this regard.

Quote:The broad answer to the “Where are all the European babies?” question thus begins to suggest itself. Accompanying the spectacular transformation of modern society since the 1960s — notably the changing role of women, with greater opportunities for education and employment, the advent of modern birth control and a new ability to tailor a lifestyle — has been a tension between forces that, in many places, have not been reconciled. That tension is perfectly apparent, of course. Ask any working mother. But some societies have done a better job than others of reconciling the conflicting forces. In Europe, many countries with greater gender equality have a greater social commitment to day care and other institutional support for working women, which gives those women the possibility of having second or third children.

This is a crucial difference between the north — including France and the United Kingdom and the Scandinavian countries — and the south. The Scandinavian countries have both the most vigorous social-welfare systems in Europe and — at 1.8 — among the highest fertility rates. To better understand this north-south divide, I met with two sociologists who personify it: Mencarini and Arnstein Aassve, a Norwegian who last year took a position at Bocconi University, a university in Milan that is becoming a center of demographic research in Europe. Demographically speaking, the two make an interesting contrast. She is a small, dark, fiery woman from southern Tuscany, given to spicing her analysis with passionate invective toward policy makers. He is a tall, reserved Scandinavian who speaks in calm tones and with precise British diction, tending to smooth his colleague’s edges with scholarly qualifications. Over lunch of linguine with walnuts and arugula at an airily modern neighborhood trattoria in Milan, they dissected their cultures. When Aassve moved from Norway to Italy last year to study fertility issues, he said, he found himself with a case of culture whiplash. As women advanced in education levels and career tracks over the past few decades, Norway moved aggressively to accommodate them and their families. The state guarantees about 54 weeks of maternity leave, as well as 6 weeks of paternity leave. With the birth of a child comes a government payment of about 4,000 euros. State-subsidized day care is standard. The cost of living is high, but then again it’s assumed that both parents will work; indeed, during maternity leave a woman is paid 80 percent of her salary. “In Norway, the concern over fertility is mild,” Aassve told me. “What dominates is the issue of gender equity, and that in turn raises the fertility level. For example, there is a debate right now about whether to make paternity leave compulsory. It’s an issue of making sure women and men have equal rights and opportunities. If men are taking leave after the birth of a child, the women can return to work for part of that time.”

What Aassve found in Italy was strikingly different. While Italian women tend to be as highly educated as Scandinavian women, he said, about 50 percent of Italian women work, compared with between 75 percent and 80 percent of women in Scandinavian countries. Despite its veneer of modernity, Italian society prefers women to stay at home after they become mothers, and the government reinforces this. There is little state-financed child care, especially for new mothers, and most newlyweds still find homes close to one or both sets of parents, the assumption being that the extended family will help raise the children. But this no longer works as it once did. “As couples tend to delay childbearing,” Aassve says, “the age gap between generations is widening, and in many cases grandparents, who would be the ones relied upon for child care, themselves become the ones in need of care.”

Meanwhile, the same economic forces are at work in both northern and southern Europe — it’s just as hard to make ends meet in Madrid or Milan or Athens as in Oslo or Stockholm — which gives the predominantly two-income families in the northern countries an edge. This in turn leads to another disparity between north and south. In Scandinavia, thanks in part to state support, the more children a family has, the wealthier it is likely to be, whereas in southern Europe having children is a financial sinkhole, which drags a family toward poverty. Such an analysis flies in the face of social conservatives, who argue that simply encouraging people to have more babies will raise the population and add fuel to the economic engine.

If this reading of southern European countries is correct — that their superficial commitment to modernity, to a 21st-century lifestyle, is fatally at odds with a view of the family structure that is rooted in the 19th century — it should apply in other parts of the world, should it not? Apparently it does. This spring, the Japanese government released figures showing that the country’s under-14 population was the lowest since 1908. The head of Thailand’s department of health announced in May that his country’s birthrate now stands at 1.5, far below the replacement level. “The world record for lowest-low fertility right now is South Korea, at 1.1,” Francesco Billari told me. “Japan is just about as low. What we are seeing in Asia is a phenomenon of the 2000s, rather than the 1990s. And it seems the reasons are the same as for southern Europe. All of these are societies still rooted in the tradition where the husband earned all the money. Things have changed, not only in Italy and Spain but also in Japan and Korea, but those societies have not yet adjusted. The relationships within households have not adjusted yet.” Western Europe, then, is not the isolated case that some make it out to be. It is simply the first region of the world to record extremely low birthrates.

Quote:“Europeans say to me, How does the U.S. do it in this day and age?” says Carl Haub of the Population Reference Bureau in Washington. According to Haub and others, there is no single explanation for the relatively high U.S. fertility rate. The old conservative argument — that a traditional, working-husband-and-stay-at-home-wife family structure produces a healthy, growing population — doesn’t apply, either in the U.S. or anywhere else in the world today. Indeed, the societies most wedded to maintaining that traditional family structure seem to be those with the lowest birthrates. The antidote, in Western Europe, has been the welfare-state model, in which the state provides comprehensive support to couples that want to have children. But the U.S. runs counter to this. Some commentators explain its healthy birthrate in terms of the relatively conservative and religiously oriented nature of American society, which both encourages larger families. It’s also true that mores have evolved in the U.S. to the point where not only is it socially acceptable for fathers to be active participants in raising children, but it’s also often socially unacceptable for them to do otherwise.

But one other factor affecting the higher U.S. birthrate stands out in the minds of many observers. “There’s much less flexibility in the European system,” Haub says. “In Europe, both the society and the job market are more rigid.” There may be little state subsidy for child care in the U.S., and there is certainly nothing like the warm governmental nest that Norway feathers for fledgling families, but the American system seems to make up for it in other ways. As Hans-Peter Kohler of the University of Pennsylvania writes: “In general, women are deterred from having children when the economic cost — in the form of lower lifetime wages — is too high. Compared to other high-income countries, this cost is diminished by an American labor market that allows more flexible work hours and makes it easier to leave and then re-enter the labor force.” An American woman might choose to suspend her career for three or five years to raise a family, expecting to be able to resume working; that happens far less easily in Europe.

So there would seem to be two models for achieving higher fertility: the neosocialist Scandinavian system and the laissez-faire American one. Aassve put it to me this way: “You might say that in order to promote fertility, your society needs to be generous or flexible. The U.S. isn’t very generous, but it is flexible. Italy is not generous in terms of social services and it’s not flexible. There is also a social stigma in countries like Italy, where it is seen as less socially accepted for women with children to work. In the U.S., that is very accepted.”

By this logic, the worst sort of system is one that partly buys into the modern world — expanding educational and employment opportunities for women — but keeps its traditional mind-set. This would seem to define the demographic crisis that Italy, Spain and Greece find themselves in — and, perhaps, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other parts of the world. Indeed, demographers have been surprised to find rapid fertility changes in the third world, as more and more women work and modern birth-control methods become standard options. “The earlier distinct fertility regimes, ‘developed’ and ‘developing,’ are increasingly disappearing in global comparisons of fertility levels,” according to Edward Jow-Ching Tu, a sociologist at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. According to the United Nations, the birthrate in 25 developing countries — including Cuba, Costa Rica, Iran, Sri Lanka and China — now stands at or below the replacement level. In some cases — notably China — the drop is explained by a concentrated effort at containing the population. In the rest, something else is happening. The lesson of southern Europe is perhaps operative: embrace the modern only partway and you put your society — women in particular — in a vise. Something has to give, and that turns out to be the future.

Quote:FOR $100 OR SO YOU CAN buy online a Third Reich “Mother’s Cross” (officially, a Cross of Honor of the German Mother). The medals were struck, beginning in 1938, in bronze for women who had four children, in silver for mothers of six and in gold for women who gave birth to eight. They were given out annually on Hitler’s mother’s birthday to heroines of the cause of fertility, which the Führer referred to as “the battlefield of women.” Natalism — the state-sponsored policy to increase the birthrate — has a rather tainted pedigree. Nevertheless, in the age of “lowest-low fertility,” it has made a comeback. If your population is falling, one logical, or seemingly logical, way to build it up again is to encourage people to have more babies.

Quote:Then again, for the past several decades France’s fertility rate has been about the same as that in the United Kingdom, which has much more limited pro-natalist policies. Claude Martin notes an adjunct to child-related subsidies that may be more of a factor: 80 percent of French women between ages 25 and 50 are employed. It seems that money in itself isn’t a sufficient lure to get couples to have babies. They may want another child, but adding a few euros to their bank accounts doesn’t solve the underlying problems. As Alasdair Murray of CentreForum put it, “Structural problems in the labor and housing markets are the biggest barriers to fertility.” The crux, Murray says, is that countries with low fertility “are still geared toward a male, single-wage-earning model. Women are expected to exit the labor market when they have children.”

Quote:Besides natalist strategies, there is another obvious approach to increasing the population. If you can’t breed them, lure them. The population flow largely went the other way during the first half of the 20th century, but immigration is quickly transforming European societies. Some are looking to Canada or Australia as models: there, the focus is on selective immigration — opening the door for those who have knowledge and training that will benefit the economy.

The United Kingdom is going through a radical transformation in its social makeup, largely as a result of immigration. Where a few years ago people were worrying about birthrate and falling population projections, a government report in late 2007 projected Britain would have 11 million more people by 2031 — an increase of 18 percent — and by one estimate 69 percent of the growth would come from immigrants and their children. Liam Byrne, Britain’s immigration minister, called earlier last year for “radical action” to manage the system.

The British situation today seems a far cry from “lowest low,” but it doesn’t mean that immigration is the answer to low birthrates. The actual numbers, according to several authorities, are discouraging over the long run. By one analysis of U.N. figures, Britain would need more than 60 million new immigrants by 2050 — more than doubling the size of the country — to keep its current ratio of workers to pensioners, and Germany would need a staggering 188 million immigrants in the same time period. One reason for such huge numbers is that while immigration helps fill cities and schools and factories in the short term, the dynamic adjusts over time. Immigrants who come from cultures where large families are standard quickly adapt to the customs of their new homes. And eventually immigrants age, too, so that the benefit that incoming workers give to the pension system today becomes a drag on the system in the future. A European Commission working document published in November 2007 concludes that “truly massive and increasing flows of young migrants would be required” to offset current demographic changes. Few Europeans want that. Immigration already touches all sorts of raw nerves, forcing debates about cultural identity, citizenship tests, national canons, terrorism and tolerance, religious versus secular values.

Quote:Eisleben, another of the cities in the consortium, has a picture-perfect 16th-century downtown but is losing people fast, and many of its historic buildings have been long unused and uninhabitable. Eisleben’s shrinkage strategy centers on history: it happens to be the birthplace of Martin Luther. The city is laying out a tourist route — from the house in which Luther was born to his first church to the church in which he gave the last sermon before he died — that shows off its old center and turns its many derelict buildings and empty lots into art installations related to the father of Protestantism. The idea is to attract more tourists and money and build up the locals’ pride in their history. There is a certain paradox here: thanks to its Communist heritage, this part of Germany has the distinction of being one of the least religious places on earth. Eisleben gets 100,000 religious pilgrims a year, but only 14 percent of its population are churchgoers, and hardly anybody expects a turnaround.

But while few locals themselves may feel religiously inclined, the thinking is that if religious pilgrimage is the best card in your hand, you play it. This notion — embrace shrinkage in order to revitalize your economy, rather than trying to coax women to have more babies — is, according to more than a few observers of the European scene, the right tack. Or better said, it is one part of the best overall strategy — one that embraces population decline. For there are those who argue that low birthrate in itself is not a problem at all. Paul Ehrlich, the Stanford scientist who warned us about the “population bomb” in the 1960s, is more certain than ever that the human race is catastrophically straining the planet. “It’s insane to consider low birthrate as a crisis,” he told me. “Basically every person I know in my section of the National Academy of Sciences thinks it’s wonderful that rich countries are starting to shrink their populations to sustainable levels. We have to do that because we’re wrecking our life-support systems.” Low birthrates and an aging population, according to Vladimir Spidla, director of employment, social affairs and equal opportunities for the European Commission, “is the inevitable consequence of developments that are fundamentally positive, in particular increased life expectancy and more choice over whether and when to have children.”

Alasdair Murray of CentreForum made the case this way: “There is an error whereby birthrate is being blamed for future economic woes. The European population is declining, and I don’t see that you can do much about that. But the real question is: How necessary is population growth to economic growth? I say not much. A huge number of people in Europe are underemployed or out of work. Get them back in the labor force, and some of these problems are mitigated. That should be the first target, rather than getting people pregnant.” To this end, there are efforts afoot to increase working life at both ends of the spectrum. In the Netherlands, for example, where thanks to early-retirement plans, only 20 percent of people over age 60 are working, the government has recently mounted a campaign to get people used to the idea of working to age 65.

Those inclined to see the glass as half-full include some people who are closest to the numbers. James W. Vaupel, founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, looking in particular at Germany’s demographic status, is downright sunny on the future. He, too, says that the shrinking and graying of European societies is inevitable, but he suggests that “on balance, the future will probably be better than the past. People will probably live longer, healthier lives. Continued economic growth, even if at a slower pace than in the past, will further raise standards of living.”

I put this to Carl Haub of the Population Reference Bureau, who monitors global fertility on a daily basis from his perch in Washington. Is it possible that these are basically “good problems,” that Europeans, having trimmed their birthrates, are actually on the right path? That all they have to do is adjust their economies, find creative ways to shrink their cities, get more young and old people into jobs, so that they can keep their pension and health-care systems functioning?

Haub wasn’t buying it. “Maybe tinkering with the retirement age and making other economic adjustments is good,” he said. “But you can’t go on forever with a total fertility rate of 1.2. If you compare the size of the 0-to-4 and 29-to-34 age groups in Spain and Italy right now, you see the younger is almost half the size of the older. You can’t keep going with a completely upside-down age distribution, with the pyramid standing on its point. You can’t have a country where everybody lives in a nursing home.”

There is plenty I could say, but for now I will let the article speak for itself.

Thats why people who think like DJ are part of the problem.

Excellent article , Thanks ABF.

I agree with you about the abstinance-only education. That's what I meant by "put the lie to".

ASM, you tend to never even understand what I'm actually saying. I actually think overpopulation IS an issue. How does that make me "part of the problem"? You lack certain reading comprehension skills that make half my conversations to you an effort in correcting your misreadings of what I say. There's a reason I tend to ignore your posts half the time.

I'm reading the article as I go, but that guy is frickin' racist. He's actually afraid of the noble line of Europeans being destroyed by horders of foreign devils breeding like rabbits? Seriously? That's seriously one of the most biggetted things I've heard in a long time? THAT counts as a "concern"? He's afraid european "culture" is going to be replaced? Ugh! How disgusting! It's just how things go you idiot!

As for his concerns about "the family" it comes off sounding a lot like the "nuclear family" nonsense American right wingers are always spouting. So the family structure will change. Big deal! This idiot thinks it's some cardinal sin to not "provide" a bunch of siblings to a kid? Ugh!

I'll read the rest of the article now, but that first part is really truly disgusting.

Having read the rest, here's my thoughts on it. The article goes on and on about what certain nations are doing to address the population decline "crisis", and the end finally actually introduces scientists who have the only opinions that actually matter. What do they have to say? The same thing most scientists who have chimed in have to say, population decline is a GOOD thing, and these financial woes only matter because the previous generation was so frickin' large relative to the declined one. The idea that someone would guilt trip someone else for deciding they'd rather not have kids is rather disturbing.

I'm with the scientists on this one. Population reduction in Europe and Asia, well certain parts, is a good thing. The article also points out that America doesn't actually have this going on. Yes if population growth decreases, it'll eventually result in population decline, but it isn't quite there yet and really I'm not sure we can expect a continued trend in the US.

However, world wide it is still on a massive rise, and we will likely pay the price for other nation's silly levels of reproduction.

Yeah, I was wrong about Italy though. Sorry there. I read wrong. China's forced reduction of reproduction rates seems to have done a good job but I'm against legal requirements where a social engineering and financial bettering could do a better job.

I think we need to take all the redneck crack whores / ass holes who live and Salem, and require under federal law that there vagina / penis be coted with a substance that burns the skin so no one will fuck em.

It's a simple formula for the child to avoid vaginal / penal coting...

• Your parents must be middle to upper class in a full time job making atleast $8 dollars an hour.
  
• Both parents must have a college education or equivalent work experience and a mandatory high school diploma.
  
• One or Both parents must have a clean criminal record (excluding minor traffic offenses)
  
• Both parents must pass mandatory drug screenings.
  
• When the child turns of age 18 he / or she must meet all the above requirements.
  

She illustration of the proposed world....

Dark Jaguar Wrote:Having read the rest, here's my thoughts on it. The article goes on and on about what certain nations are doing to address the population decline "crisis", and the end finally actually introduces scientists who have the only opinions that actually matter. What do they have to say? The same thing most scientists who have chimed in have to say, population decline is a GOOD thing, and these financial woes only matter because the previous generation was so frickin' large relative to the declined one. The idea that someone would guilt trip someone else for deciding they'd rather not have kids is rather disturbing.

I'm with the scientists on this one. Population reduction in Europe and Asia, well certain parts, is a good thing. The article also points out that America doesn't actually have this going on. Yes if population growth decreases, it'll eventually result in population decline, but it isn't quite there yet and really I'm not sure we can expect a continued trend in the US.

However, world wide it is still on a massive rise, and we will likely pay the price for other nation's silly levels of reproduction.

Yeah, I was wrong about Italy though. Sorry there. I read wrong. China's forced reduction of reproduction rates seems to have done a good job but I'm against legal requirements where a social engineering and financial bettering could do a better job.

China's draconian forced reduction program is what you call a fucking success?!! I think you should say that to the millions of Chinamen in their 18-20's who are damned for their entire lives to be single men who will never know the affection of a women and lose their virginity!! Bride snatching is big money in the Chinese criminal underworld because of the gender gap.

ABF Map shows you just were population control needs to be done, Everywhere that has a color other then Green,light green,blue,light blue.

All the reds,Oranges,purples,Yellow,pink need "planned parenthood" and the emancipation of women.

Overpopulation is not a problem in the developed world were universal suffrage and women in the work force and higher cost in living has caused a reduction in the birthrate, Most European nations have more coffins then cradles.

I don't think you really understand why immigration is a concern with people,If you read the article many from the Muslim world hold strongly to the belief that the "Islamic system" is the most ideal for mankind as they believe "Allah crafted it" there it is perfect,For the rest us who value the rights of the individual and not the dictates of someone else's religion,We are very concern about the future of our nation and its values as it demographics change by Immigration.You cannot simply rest your hope that they will all assimilate, They are tit knit community that has always been resistance to change, To many of the mosques are directly controlled and funded by Saudi Arabia.

In turkey the sole "secular democratic Muslim nation",
Political Instability in Turkey is entirely the result of Islamists who oppose the secular Kemalist state, You should see the myriads of coups that the army in Turkey has had to undertake to remove "elected" Islamist who tried to take power.

Cultural heritage , May mean zero to you DJ but not everyone else. Its true that some people have richer cultures their others, In Canada I think cultural pride is strongest in the French and first nations (red Indians), The rest of Canada has had a identity crisis since the collaspe of the British empire and some have called Anglo Canada a blander more liberal version of America.

You've also failed to comment on the pensioner crunch in ABF article, It is the greatest argument for why western nations need to boost their birthrate! Immigration doesn't solve everything,They get to bring their own elderly who is gonna pay for them? The immigrant workers will age themselves.

Some developing countries complain of a Brain drain, When all their best and brightest leave to the rich nations for employment, Causing a loss of valuable human resources further adding to the hardships of the poor countries.

ABF best puts into words all my views on this, Better and clearer then I ever could.

Quote:ASM, you tend to never even understand what I'm actually saying. I actually think overpopulation IS an issue. How does that make me "part of the problem"? You lack certain reading comprehension skills that make half my conversations to you an effort in correcting your misreadings of what I say. There's a reason I tend to ignore your posts half the time.

You are a very condescending person! Not surprising that I butt heads with you allot . You should stop attacking my reading comprehension skills and first take a look at your own, Its obvious you didn't read ABF articles in their entirety.

Quote:they use a thick rubber band on bulls here. They tie it as tight as they can, then leave it. After a few months the testicles rot away and fall off. When I heard this news, my first reaction was that it should be done to DJ. Immediately.

Lazyfatbum ~

Amen to that.

Dark Jaguar Wrote:I'm reading the article as I go, but that guy is frickin' racist. He's actually afraid of the noble line of Europeans being destroyed by horders of foreign devils breeding like rabbits? Seriously? That's seriously one of the most biggetted things I've heard in a long time? THAT counts as a "concern"? He's afraid european "culture" is going to be replaced? Ugh! How disgusting! It's just how things go you idiot!

Well first, of course, the article says that immigration is in fact not a long-term solution, because the longer most immigrants stay in European nations, the more their birthrates fall in line with European norms, and over time those people too will get top-heavy with far more old people than young.

I'm not sure if you were talking about it, but you perhaps do raise an important issue, though... do you mean the part where it talks about European fears of increasing Islamic minorities in their countries?

Actually, if you don't ever follow the news from Europe, that's a HUGE, HUGE continent-wide issue, with lots of justifiable things backing the side which wants to limit the amount of Muslims allowed in. Racist? Perhaps... but it would be more accurate to phrase it differently.

The problem is, essentially, that Islamic and Christian cultures are very, VERY different and do not get along well at all. In America, we have a very small Islamic minority... but I was talking about this article with my dad today, and he pointed out, what if Mexico was Islamic, and it was US getting millions of Islamic immigrants? If you think the Mexican immigration issue is big now... if things were like that, it'd be exponentially, EXPONENTIALLY larger. Because Islamic culture is so, SO different from Western culture that when the two come in close contact there IS conflict.

Christianity used to be a lot like Islam. The more you look at the medieval Christian church, the more you see parallels with modern Islam. The difference is, Islam never had a Reformation and never secularized. Chrisitianity did. The world would almost undoubtedly be a better place if Islam had done that too... but it didn't. And so, it is a very, very conservative religion. The Turks are one thing -- Turkey is one of the most moderate or the most moderate Islamic country, and Europe has enough problems with it -- but Arabs and North Africans and others... they come to Europe, but they refuse to integrate or agree with modern liberal Western cultures. This creates a huge disconnect and increasingly massive social problems.

England, France, and the Netherlands particularly are having the most problems with Muslim immigrants. This is, I am sure, largely because they are some of the very few European nations that actually allow significant amounts of immigration; most others allow in only token numbers of people, like Japan as well for instance. But what do you do with people who not only refuse to become part of your culture, they actively work to undermine it? Remember things like the killing of that Dutch filmmaker a couple of years ago, after he made an anti-Islamic movie detailing the horrible violence and murder Islamic women face daily (violence and murder at the hands of their family members, that is)?

Read this for some on that... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_van_Go...irector%29

What are you supposed to do with people who truly believe such radical things and refuse to modernize? Western thought says that all are entitled to their opinion, but what about people who refuse to acknowledge the truth of that concept... very challenging issues.

Anyway, to the subject of the thread...

This is the most important paragraph in the article, I'd say:

Quote:So there would seem to be two models for achieving higher fertility: the neosocialist Scandinavian system and the laissez-faire American one. Aassve put it to me this way: “You might say that in order to promote fertility, your society needs to be generous or flexible. The U.S. isn’t very generous, but it is flexible. Italy is not generous in terms of social services and it’s not flexible. There is also a social stigma in countries like Italy, where it is seen as less socially accepted for women with children to work. In the U.S., that is very accepted.”

Dark Jaguar Wrote:Having read the rest, here's my thoughts on it. The article goes on and on about what certain nations are doing to address the population decline "crisis", and the end finally actually introduces scientists who have the only opinions that actually matter. What do they have to say? The same thing most scientists who have chimed in have to say, population decline is a GOOD thing, and these financial woes only matter because the previous generation was so frickin' large relative to the declined one. The idea that someone would guilt trip someone else for deciding they'd rather not have kids is rather disturbing.

I'm with the scientists on this one. Population reduction in Europe and Asia, well certain parts, is a good thing. The article also points out that America doesn't actually have this going on. Yes if population growth decreases, it'll eventually result in population decline, but it isn't quite there yet and really I'm not sure we can expect a continued trend in the US.

However, world wide it is still on a massive rise, and we will likely pay the price for other nation's silly levels of reproduction.

ASM already covered a lot of good reasons why you are wrong, but I can say some things too.

First, as ASM says, you, just like those people in the end talking about how it's not so bad, completely ignore the first, most important issue with population decline in a culture with a long lifespan: What to do when you have twice as many old people who want to be retired than young people working!

Obviously, that is an impossible situation. You need at least as many or more people working than you have retired. America is actually growing and has massive problems funding healthcare... can you possibly imagine how hard that would be for a rapidly shrinking country with twice as many old people as young?

Essentially, there are only two solutions: Greatly extend required working years (60? 65? There's absolutely no way it'll be able to stop there, it'll have to keep going up), and cut benefits. Most European countries will probably have to do both... but they really want to care for old people and have socialized medicine that guarantees everyone the right to health care! They're absolutely right that in a modern state it should be a right, not a privilege... but it's incredibly hard to sustain in shrinking countries. It's a HUGE, HUGE problem which will hit Europe, Japan, South Korea, and any other major shrinking countries really, really hard in the coming century unless they very quickly modernize their views of women to allow for working mothers, and modernize their views of men to allow for them to do more of the housework.

Because if you read the article properly, you'd know that those are the two keys to the higher birthrates of the American and Northern European cultures' higher birthrates. The cultures which reject those two things, like Spain, Italy, Greece, South Korea, or Japan, suffer low birthrates as a result. Women won't have children when having them is too much of an economic burden and hurts your lifetime salary amount earned too much, as it would be if you have to quit your job and do all the housework (and childcare) as soon as you have children.

And yes, as ASM says you continue to completely ignore the facts of the maps I posted a month ago, or the fact that maximum world population estimates have been estimated down and down and down every time they are made... the days when people thought massive overpopulation would cripple the world are mostly over. Even if the entire world fully liberalized its views of gender to match their modernization of society and reduced the underpopulation crisis that is currently affecting all those East Asian and South European nations (and Eastern European too, for slightly different reasons), that would only nudge them up to maybe replacement level at best, not above. And as every nation modernizes its birthrates immediately begin to plunge; it is true that a few nations are still rapidly growing, but between increasing birth-control and family planning efforts and the (coming incredibly tragic) effects of global warming, that, I believe, is only temporary.

Perhaps some shrinkage would not be bad, as it is true that some countries are very highly populated, but at some point you MUST level off your population decline or your country will cease to exist.

Africa gettin bi-zay

lazyfatbum Wrote:Africa gettin bi-zay

Victory for the alliance!


DJ > ABF & ASM

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