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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
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).
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
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.
You may stay unpopular.
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.
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.
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
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.
Well, that certainly is an unpopular opinion. Do I upvote or downvote?
Just inform him that only a very few very poor countries still INCREASE IN POP. the rest are shrinking
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.
Maybe start by not making people who don't want babies have them...
Who animated this shambling, tired malthusian corpse
I already have two and cannot understand why anyone would want anymore...that said, no.
Well this sure is an unpopular opinion. Mostly because there is no way to define or enforce this and a draconian limitation of individual rights to a nonexistent problem, over population is a smoke screen. There is more than enough land and resources to support billions more people.
This is literally captilsism 101, if the rich have you angry at other humans that don't even exist yet you will spend less time on disturbing the resources they are hoarding.
Thinking it's easier to enforce humanity wide birth control than to tax and build houses in the empty areas is dillusional.
I have 1 bio but 6 total from other relationships that I became dad to.
Where am I on your pogrom?
Population control just ends up as trying to control marginalised bodies. Stop trying to mess with uteri.
It's almost always childless young men saying this.
For a truly contentious opinion I'd love to see a married woman with three kids say it.
I agree with this in theory, but the logistics of it is too complicated to put into action. How to prevent the third child, how to define a “couple”, what about single people who want to raise children, and the government having control of what you do with your body are all factors that would complicate things.
Already happening.
The only thing you need to do to accomplish this faster is educate girls (making women valuable for things other than childbearing), provide access to birth control and family planning education, and reduce child mortality (reducing the inclination to have "spare children" to replace all the ones you know will die).
Bangladesh provides a good example of these factors at play:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.GROW?locations=BD
"World’s population is projected to nearly stop growing by the end of the century"
And the collective human fertility rate (births per woman) has been falling for decades:
How, though? Without more specifics about how the "limit" would work, this statement is fairly meaningless.
(Not to say that I'm necessarily onboard with any single specific way I can conceive of that would establish a "limit" on how many children people can have.)
What's a "couple"? Would governments do something bad (a fine, jail time, etc) to people who had a third child as a punishment/deterrent? If jail time, what would be done with the two kids they ostensibly already have? Would some people who already have two kids be forced on threat of incarceration to undergo abortions and/or sterilization? Maybe all the governments on earth would just make it legal for any person to kill any child with two or more older siblings on sight, hmm? (There's a lot of sarcasm in this paragraph. I hope that's obvious, but maybe it's good to point it out explicitly anyway.)
There is a lot that governments can do to "encourage" a lower birth rate that wouldn't be draconian like throwing people in jail for having kids. Like free birth control, for instance. More funding for womens' healthcare organizations. The word "limit" in your post makes it seem like that's not what you're going for at all.
China.