Should a Child Limit be put in place??

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Practically everyone here is ignoring the Muslim problem. I work with Saudi soldiers that have 2 o 3 wives and 8, 10, or 12 children. Look at the Bin Laden (father to Osama) family. At least he can afford to take care of his family.
 
Maybe we just need to "thin the herd" the good old German way. Chuck all the Jews ,Gypsys, Homosexuals, Grandma, with her colostomy bag, anyone with-out blue eyes into a work camp. If the Russians sign on we can put the camps in Siberia on the foundation of the gulags. Oh yes no 4 eyed glasses wearing defectives allowed to breed either. Oh it will be a great leap forward and no one will cry a trail of tears for anyone who isn't them.
 
It's ironic how we try and stop animals like cats, dogs, rabbits, etc... from breeding uncontrollably, yet it's what we do. I'm a big fan of animals, especially many of those on the endangered list across the world. They have as much of a right to be here as us- nature and evolution has said so. Eventually though, there won't be anything left due to over population. Yet another casualty of our breeding habits.

Again, I'm not saying kill a bunch of people to make room for animals. The point is that the balance of the natural order has been thrown off. I suspect though that one day mother nature will find a way to restore the balance, whether we like it or not.

Not to mention things like asteroids, comets, etc... are always a threat. Remember, it's a big ass sky fellas.
 
No, politicians should not decide, nor do they have the right. Of course, the Chinese have done so, but that is wrong. It may be stabilizing their population, but most here would agree that abandoning baby girls just because the parents wanted a boy is wrong on so many levels (boys are prized in China).

I think it is a decision that all of us need to come to on an individual basis. It won't happen until the effects of over population hit home, but it very well may eventually. I suspect that no Western politician will even udder such words in this century- it would be career suicide. But to counter that, just like every other creature on this planet, we are programmed to proliferate our genes at any cost. It's very hard to counter instinct.

I don't have any kids (much less a girlfriend- hallelujah- I rather enjoy doing what I want, when I want right now). I've actually thought long and hard about whether it would be a good idea to introduce a new human to the world one day, much less in America where a single person consumes so many resources. I haven't really arrived a decision, but I would be satisfied with one child- good enough- the genes have been passed on.

And yes, I did hear about the asteroid that will be making a close approach in November. Evidently it will be closer than the moon at some point. It should make for an interesting night sky if it can be seen. It makes you think though, as it takes just one asteroid to end it all or most of it. It's a shame that Jupiter didn't grab it and give us yet another cosmic firework show, i.e. the 1994 comet, 2009, and 2010 impacts. Heck, without Jupiter's massive gravity grabbing every rogue object we probably wouldn't be here.
 
At this point I think a lot of the sustainability talk is about resources, energy, etc...- not life. Most Western nations want their populations to grow, not decline. Why do you think you get tax credits for having kids? Heck, the Russians were offering something like 20K rubles per kid or maybe still are due to their population declining faster than most industrialized nations. By 2050 it is estimated that their population will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 111 million- down from today's 143 million. They have Stalin and communism to thank for that. Stalin is estimated to have been responsible for over 60 million deaths during his tenure. With numbers that high, not to mention WWII losses, the Russians had to know that their population would decline in less than 3 generations.
 
Regulated population control is silly. You see the problem is that resources are limited and we are all in competition for those limited resources. If one group decides to limit its population growth is all it does is create a vacuum for another group to step into.
We see this today in Europe. The 'intelligent' Europeans decided that they would not make babies anymore. So what is happening? Is their population going down? Yes, the native European popultaion is shrinking and being replaced by the overflow from other parts of the world where they still have no problems with having babies. Go watch the movie 'Idiocracy' to see what the end result of pupulation control would be...
I am an ecologist. There are four main ways in which a natural population is limited in its growth.
1 - Predation - People have few predators, 'nuff said. Inter-species competition
2 - Disease - This could happen. Look up the Spanish flu pandemic that occured about 100 years ago. It infected one third of the world's populace within 18 months. Modern medicine is really good most of the dead could have been saved with a simple aspirin to bring down their fever. This is actually a sub category of predation. I guess we do have predators...
3 - Competition - One group of a species dominates another and takes the resources. We call this War. Ecologists call it Intra-species competition
4 - Niche Collapse - The resources needed for a species to survive run out. The population crashes and if there are survivors they either use what little remains of the required resources or they adapt to use other resources.

This is why population control can't work...
Scenario 1 - You decide to not have kids - your genes are removed from the gene pool. Then your resources are used by the guy next to you that decided to have 10 kids.
Scenario 2 - You decide to have a 1-2 kids. The guy with 10 kids comes over with his horde and takes your resources. Your genes are removed from the gene pool.

Scenario 3 - Your intellectual group decides not to have kids. The group that has no qualms with making babies uses your resouces and replaces you.
Scenario 4 - Your intellectual group decides that # of kids are limited to 1-2. Another group comes along with all their babies and takes your resources. They prosper, your group is removed from the gene pool.
Scenario 5 and 6 - Repeat Scenarios 3 and 4 on national levels. Baby makers win.
Scenario 7 - Utopian scenario - The world gets together as one and decides to limit the number of children born to sustainable levels. Alien race comes along and takes the resources. All removed from gene pool xP.
But seriously there can never be a utopian society because the guy in the cubicle next to me whacks off in the bathroom on his breaks. Someone is always going to do something that pisses someone off. Likewise some group will always piss off another group. You can't force ppl to like eachother even if it is for the greater good...
 
Guys we need to keep this pacioli guy on staff down here in the dungeon to help us with our wprld domination program.

Some very good points mate.

badge ... tie him up out the back with the marine biolologist and the snake charmer (oldmangamer).

:)
 
None of this is needed if we can figure out how to leave the planet like Hawking wants. Once we have new planet(s) to thrive on we won't have the limited resource problems anymore. Heck, we'll need people to have babies so that we can colonize the new planet.

I wonder. We spend time worrying about what happens if the aliens we find will be friendly. Has anyone wondered if we would be?
 
We have a pretty awful track record with aliens in movies ... we kill the bad ones and the good ones.

A few like ET and Paul get away.

If the aliens are viewing and listening to our communcations they will probably give us a miss and move on to another star system.

Alternatively ... they are likely to make contact with the Buddists first or the aborigines in the outback.

I'd steer clear of the the other faiths as they are busy squabbling over everything unimportant to the planet ... which is pretty sad.

Goodwill to all mankind isn't even a universal concept we seem to have worked out let alone goodwill to all.

 
We have a pretty awful track record with aliens in movies ... we kill the bad ones and the good ones.
Click to expand...

I meant have we decided what kind of aliens we'd be? If we found a way to travel to a planet and there were intelligent life form there, how would we treat them? Avatar or Star Trek (prime directive.)? Considering our issues and need for more space I'm ashamed to answer how I'm sure we would respond.
 

Why should a parent, regardless of how many children they choose to have, be able to receive any sort of government assistance? Kids cost money, if you can't afford 'em, don't have 'em. We need to eliminate the ridiculous tax deductions for having kids. That makes no sense at all and punishes people like myself that wait until we can afford kids so that we won't need any assistance to begin with.

A limit on how many kids you can have is an impractical idea that would never be implemented. However, teaching sex education so kids know full well the consequences of what early parenthood means is absolutely practical and is proven to reduce unplanned births.
 
Going to Mars and then teraforming it and then colonizing it has been on the table for quite sometime. Trouble is that no matter how much teraforming you do, things like oxygen will be lost to space due to its lack of a thick atmosphere. Not to mention it lacks a magnetic field, so protection from the solar wind would be minimal. If we do eventually colonize Mars, my guess is that it'll be via huge "habitats" like glass bubbles and such. That will be an expensive endeavor though, regardless of how off in the future it occurs.

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

 
LOL. Part of it is creating a greenhouse effect to trap heat to bring the global temps on Mars to a habitable range, i.e. the whole -125F at night would be a bit cold (it's a balmy 23F during summer though). Crank out the SUVs and send em over!
 
Serious question on this off topic for those who might be smarter then I. Wouldn't this make little difference? As I understand Mars, its too small to hold onto any atmosphere we can make there. Even if we left trillions of Suburbans running on Mars for X years, its to small and spins to slow for it to hold onto those gases. What we need to do is find a way to increase the mass of Mars (and spin it a bit faster) so that it will have enough gravity to hold onto the atmosphere. Yes?
 
From what I have heard, even the most ambitious amount of teraforming would lead to the new atmosphere being lost to space in roughly 100 years. It would have to be a continuous process, at least with the technology we have today. You are correct 47, we'd need to speed up its rotation in order to get it to hold onto the new atmosphere, which I think would help to the point where the mass issue wouldn't be such a problem, but I'm no physicist. Perhaps increasing the seismic activity of the planet would be a start. Getting a magnetic field going though would be quite the task if it were possible.

Another option would be to colonize a place like Europa- Jupiter's 4th largest moon. It is believed to hold a vast ocean of water beneath its surface, which is a heck of a lot more than Mars.

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

 


I like getting tied up. Just ask my wife.
Oh and by the way... The guy in the cubicle next to me really does whack off a lot. His chair is stained whitish right on the front edge with multiple layers :heink: . I don't want to be in the cubicle next to him much less being part of some utopia where I have to sing kumbaya while holding hands with that creep. Hopefully when the aliens come I can offer him up as a sacrifice and spare my 3 kids.
 
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