over population

Evo

On income tax, only the first two children can be claimed as dependents and a tax penalty for each additional child. That way people can still pop them out, but there won't be a financial incentive for it.

Or no tax break for any dependents.

This would act as both a deterrant and would also increase tax revenue.

drankin

That's a start. Or how about doing away with such a credit altogether?

Pattonias

Even though it is a long way off, space will become a more and more viable solution as time progresses. Honestly we don't really have to worry about conservation once we are no longer confined to the planet as we will have raw materials available to us from the solar system. The real problem is conserving the planet until we reach that point. We don't want to enter space because we turned the planet into a dead wasteland. We want to do it because we knew that it was the logical next step.

Unfortunately, I think humanity will enter space once we turn this planet into a wasteland.

It's hard to justify to a politician why he should spend money on space exploration when some of his constituents are starving or homeless. Its remarkable that NASA has a budget at all given the current economic situation.

mheslep

While we're infringing on freedoms I'd go for a tax penalty on anyone who say's "we're doomed." Then, I'd fund some philanthropic programs out of wagers won in bets with doomers about the future.

Pattonias

I'm not doomed, a few thousand more years and humanity may be. Unless of course we are killed by Mayan zombies in a year or so.

Evo

And I'd impose an even higher tax on those that can't see how population is increasing at an alarming rate, which has created an unprecedented, huge, world population that has resulted in widespread starvation, lack of water, unemployment and the homeless, to pay for the current overpopulation problems.

Ken Natton

Yes, this is quite a simplistic view of my point. Firstly, I would point out that while there are always those who will ignore sensible advice, at a demographic level, smoking is much less prevalent today than it was thirty years ago, and many people have changed their dietary habits in response to public education programs, but that is not really the point I was making.

Feminism is still largely a Western phenomenon. Many societies around the world remain patriarchal and male dominated. Such societies are set up to keep women compliant. Does that mean that I am suggesting that most children are born of rape? Well no, that would be too extreme to suggest that. But the point about educating women is not simply to teach them about contraception or to teach them about the health problems associated with endless pregnancy, it is to give them an opportunity to make a different choice. I don’t agree with those who advocate forcible limits to numbers of children. Such a scheme is unlikely to achieve much beyond widespread unhappiness. My way, you won’t need to impose limits, a reduction in the birth rate will follow quite naturally.

mheslep

Some 2010 unemployment rate, population density per sq mile figures:

Singapore: 2.1%, population density 18,176, third highest in the world
Hong Kong: 3.5%, population density 18,645, forth highest in the world
US: 9-10%, population density 84
Haiti: 41%, population density 781

Wild hypothesis: not population, but cultural, political and economic factors are overwhelmingly responsible for the misery of this world.

pascal12

Would it be fair to compare a place like Singapore or Hong Kong to the US and say that they have a comparable standard of living even though their population density is so much higher? I thought they import most of their food, while much of midwest US is dedicated to crops.

Evo

It depends on how unemployment is counted in each country. Here in the US women and even teenagers can be included among the *unemployed* in coutries where women traditionally stay at home and are not counted as part of the workforce, it skews the numbers. If a family owns a small garden that they live off of, and they aren't part of the workforce, they are not counted among the unemployed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemplo...ent_definition

Proton Soup

assuming we could freeze the population where it is now, i see no reason we couldn't meet everyone's needs. but we all know that the nature of man is such that it will not happen. we're just too competitive for that.

mheslep

If it were not for Africa, the world's population as forecast by the UN would be falling at ~5 million per year by 2100 instead of leveling off with Africa. So it would seem that concentrating on problems intrinsic to Africa would be an appropriate response to global population. Western fertility treatments, for example, are utterly irrelevant.

*On the list of the world's 40 highest fertility rates, I count 3 not in Africa.

mheslep

Please explain. Yes they have a comparable standard of living.

In the global economy everyone imports a large share of their *something* from somewhere else.

Proton Soup

yeah, but africa actually does have plenty of room for expansion. now, we may want to limit their population growth so that they don't use up all of our resources.

mheslep

My point from some of the above is that room is not the issue, at least not a primary one. Culutral, political, and economic systems are the issue from what I can observe. Given the woeful state of those factors in much of Africa I'd say the continent has nothing close to enough room or resources to prevent disasters, the same goes for (say) Haiti. I see the one million killed in the Rwandan massacre and the unnecessary misery in Haiti caused by the earthquake despite large foreign (attempts at) donations as evidence of this.

ThomasT

I have to agree with Evo that the solution to the problem involves decreasing and minimizing fertility rates to replacement and subreplacement levels. We're not going to be living on or under the water in any great numbers, and we're not going to colonize any planets. Sufficient clean, fresh water, and food, and shelter will continue to be increasingly huge problems for the world's poor.

Most of the growth will be in impoverished and underdeveloped countries. At present there are over a billion people who are malnourished and lack access to safe drinking water. This number will probably increase greatly before it decreases ... if it ever decreases. But this doesn't have to affect the developed countries to any great extent unless they admit large numbers of impoverished immigrants. Wrt this, problems for the US are its immigration policies and its 'porous' borders. With current immigration levels it's estimated that the US population will grow to about 400 million by 2050, and without immigration to only about 330 million during the same period.

WhoWee

my bold
How might this be achieved through incentive or force - or some other less obvious (to me at least) choice?