A/V Fridays – An Optimistic Look at the World in 2200
Posted on July 3, 2009 by
Pete Alcorn posits that declining population will lead to a bright future in 2200. How do you feel about population and our current state of affairs?
Do you think Alcorn is right about the correlation between a smaller population and a better quality of life? Do you think there should be a push to control population to get to this point sooner? If so, what methods of population control do you think are okay? Education? Tax incentives? Legislation? If not, what are your objections to population control?
It’s a touchy subject, isn’t it?
It’s funny you bring this up now. I just finished listening to Ken Follet’s excellent novel, “World Without End” which takes place during the plague and the beginning of the middle class. In that scenario, the decline of population was a tragic, but overall good thing.
And then last week, I took a trip to a place called Kiryas Joel near where I work. It’s a Hasidic community, growing exponentially, because the women have an average of 10 kids each. 10 kids! A huge number of families are on welfare because the moms don’t work and they can’t afford to have all the kids. There isn’t enough water for everyone, and there’s no town center, just condo upon condo.
I’m curious why he thinks population will go down. My biggest fear is that progressives aren’t reproducing anywhere near as much as people who look back to “the good old days.” It is a touchy subject indeed.
Very touchy subject. I firmly believe it’s wrong to have more than two kids, because any more than that is contributing to population growth. I don’t talk about that with many people, though, because people assume I’m either a loony hippie or a child-hater when I say things like that. I learned that the hard way.
If people want big families, I wish they’d adopt.
I’ve heard about population decline too. I think a lot of it is due to women gaining more rights around the world, so more of them aim to have careers rather than a houseful of kids. A good thing, I think, because I do agree that a smaller population means a better quality of life for all of us.
On principle, I don’t like China’s law that only allows families to have only one child, but in practicality, I think it was necessary. I shudder to think what life in China would be like today if that law had not been enacted. Still, I think other countries (including the United States) should heed the warning and install campaigns encouraging people to limit the number of kids they have so our government isn’t forced to enact similar legislation. Pushing birth control is another good idea.
I think population control should be one of the things we should talk about, but I doubt it will be. But it really isn’t the governments job to choose how many kids people can have or not have. We have the right to choose how many kids we want to have and whether or not we want vaccinations or not and what we want to eat. I also don’t think the gov’t should encourage people to have more kids with tax breaks & more entitlement money (but then how would social security work if people stopped having kids?). That’s the beauty of living in a country like the U.S., with freedom and choice comes many issues!
But that being said, we could all have fewer or no pets and that would also make a huge impact environmentally.
It would seem as if such a common sense issue would not be touchy. The world has finite room and finite resources- fewer people improves the chances for species survival, more people makes extinction more likely. That would happen after a long, slow and very painful death throe for humanity.