"Controlling" world populace - Page 3

Baneblade · 2012-07-17, 08:09 AM

Originally Posted by Figment

Yeah let him have his chance at wanton murder killing sprees before his life is over!

There's a little serial killer in all Libertarians, just waiting to get out to protect their freedoms at the cost of that of others? xD

Libertarians are all about freedom, at any cost. It was Libertarians that ignited Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Granted they weren't called Libertarians back then. In the case of the Civil War they were Republicans actually.

ItsTheSheppy · 2012-07-17, 08:35 AM

Originally Posted by Baneblade

Libertarians are all about freedom, at any cost. It was Libertarians that ignited Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Granted they weren't called Libertarians back then. In the case of the Civil War they were Republicans actually.

Can you perhaps understand why we might recoil at your invocation of 17th-century ideals when we're having a 21st century conversation? Oh, and protip: you did buy your AR-15 for nothing. Well, not for nothing. You bought it for your penis. You certainly didn't purchase it for any practical sense. We pay taxes for a defense force full of people who are trained to use assault rifles in the event that they become necessary.

I swear I can practically hear your heavy breathing from here. Nobody's coming for your freedoms, Baneblade. And if they do? You're welcome to a seat on the plan next to mine on my way to one of the 100+ other countries that have freedoms. I'm thinking maybe England or New Zealand. Or Denmark? I'd need to invest in Rosetta Stone first.

Slipping back into the 21st century for a bit...

Emancipating women's reproductive rights as a step 1, step 2 would have to be the removal from all practical discourse the role of religions and religious thinking. The sort that sees abstinence as the only education worth teaching, ignoring in full the myriad other birth control options that are available.

We are not going to solve the population problem by culling the herd, because people are too good at repopulating, and also it makes you sound like a sociopath to suggest it. Instead we should focus exclusively on regulating birth rates, and the best way to do that is through education, and shifting the societal zeitgeist to a more sexually progressive mode of thinking.

Mutant · 2012-07-17, 08:52 AM

This is now tending a bit off topic

"Libertarians are all about freedom, at any cost."

Libertarians always seem to value their own freedoms and not all freedoms. Freedom at any cost including someone else's freedom, this is why i consider most Libertarians to be hypocrites.

Freedom A: Be able to swing ones arm.
Freedom B: Not to be punched in the face.

With the population question Access to Heath Care and Education really is the key.
I highly recommend Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet by Jeffrey Sachs for a nice look at the problems the world faces and how to fix them.

Baneblade · 2012-07-17, 09:04 AM

Originally Posted by ItsTheSheppy

Can you perhaps understand why we might recoil at your invocation of 17th-century ideals when we're having a 21st century conversation? Oh, and protip: you did buy your AR-15 for nothing. Well, not for nothing. You bought it for your penis. You certainly didn't purchase it for any practical sense. We pay taxes for a defense force full of people who are trained to use assault rifles in the event that they become necessary.

Semper Paratus

I swear I can practically hear your heavy breathing from here. Nobody's coming for your freedoms, Baneblade. And if they do? You're welcome to a seat on the plan next to mine on my way to one of the 100+ other countries that have freedoms. I'm thinking maybe England or New Zealand. Or Denmark? I'd need to invest in Rosetta Stone first.

Nobody's coming for my freedoms indeed... that is why we have the Patriot Act, NDAA, and 50% higher taxes.

Slipping back into the 21st century for a bit...

Emancipating women's reproductive rights as a step 1, step 2 would have to be the removal from all practical discourse the role of religions and religious thinking. The sort that sees abstinence as the only education worth teaching, ignoring in full the myriad other birth control options that are available.

We are not going to solve the population problem by culling the herd, because people are too good at repopulating, and also it makes you sound like a sociopath to suggest it. Instead we should focus exclusively on regulating birth rates, and the best way to do that is through education, and shifting the societal zeitgeist to a more sexually progressive mode of thinking.

Sexually progressive is what some abortionists call themselves. Pardon if I don't think more of those is a good thing.

Figment · 2012-07-17, 09:14 AM

Originally Posted by Baneblade

Sexually progressive is what some abortionists call themselves. Pardon if I don't think more of those is a good thing.

Every sperm is sacred. How dare you play bias and let millions of your sperms never see their chance at life by having sex with a woman and getting just one baby, maybe two from one day of sex, maybe 8 if you're "lucky"?

xD

Pro-Life have such a lovely biased concept of what potential life is.

Anyway, that's for another topic.

ItsTheSheppy · 2012-07-17, 09:15 AM

Originally Posted by Baneblade

Semper Paratus

Nobody's coming for my freedoms indeed... that is why we have the Patriot Act, NDAA, and 50% higher taxes.

Sexually progressive is what some abortionists call themselves. Pardon if I don't think more of those is a good thing.

This is going to be a long and painful conversation if you're going to insist on conversing not with me, but rather a purely imagined hallucinatory image of me slightly to my left.

I don't recall mentioning abortions. You might want to re-read my post; I don't see it coming up in there. More to the point, the sexual emancipation of women would, in my mind, make abortions obsolete. The idea of the 'unplanned' pregnancy should become a forgotten thing of a bygone era; with sufficient education, women should be able to manage exactly when to have children. And I'm not just talking about when they get the itch to have a kid, but rather, knowing when would be the most responsible time to have a child; not just for themselves, but for society.

Men are included on this as well. We need to establish the idea in our culture that a man's value derives not from the sheer quantity of women he has sex with. Perhaps with advances in men's sexual education we would see a decrease in rapes and, ergo, a decrease in your hated abortions.

(By the way, as nothing more than a cheeky aside, I find it very amusing that you're all about dem freedoms, except when it comes to a woman's freedom to have an abortion if she deems it necessary. Would you employ your mighty AR-15 to defend their freedoms, Hero of the Revolution?)

At no point should the killing of adults, the aborting of fetuses, or the surgical intervention of reproductive systems become policy to engage in effective population control. The key weapons here are education, access to pregnancy prevention resources, and a cultural shift towards more responsible sexual habits.

Baneblade · 2012-07-17, 09:48 AM

Originally Posted by Figment

Every sperm is sacred. How dare you play bias and let millions of your sperms never see their chance at life by having sex with a woman and getting just one baby, maybe two from one day of sex, maybe 8 if you're "lucky"?

xD

Pro-Life have such a lovely biased concept of what potential life is.

Anyway, that's for another topic.

I don't think abortions should be necessary in the first place. And my opposition to them is purely altruistic in any case.

Originally Posted by ItsTheSheppy

This is going to be a long and painful conversation if you're going to insist on conversing not with me, but rather a purely imagined hallucinatory image of me slightly to my left.

I don't recall mentioning abortions. You might want to re-read my post; I don't see it coming up in there. More to the point, the sexual emancipation of women would, in my mind, make abortions obsolete. The idea of the 'unplanned' pregnancy should become a forgotten thing of a bygone era; with sufficient education, women should be able to manage exactly when to have children. And I'm not just talking about when they get the itch to have a kid, but rather, knowing when would be the most responsible time to have a child; not just for themselves, but for society.

Where did I infer you mentioned abortions. I don't disagree with your suppositions incidentally.

Men are included on this as well. We need to establish the idea in our culture that a man's value derives not from the sheer quantity of women he has sex with. Perhaps with advances in men's sexual education we would see a decrease in rapes and, ergo, a decrease in your hated abortions.

Agreed. Way too many social paradigms that need shifting.

(By the way, as nothing more than a cheeky aside, I find it very amusing that you're all about dem freedoms, except when it comes to a woman's freedom to have an abortion if she deems it necessary. Would you employ your mighty AR-15 to defend their freedoms, Hero of the Revolution?)

'I hate the words you speak, but I will defend to the death your right to speak them.' ~Some dead guy.

At no point should the killing of adults, the aborting of fetuses, or the surgical intervention of reproductive systems become policy to engage in effective population control. The key weapons here are education, access to pregnancy prevention resources, and a cultural shift towards more responsible sexual habits.

Yes, but we both know that won't happen.

ItsTheSheppy · 2012-07-17, 10:07 AM

Originally Posted by Baneblade

Yes, but we both know that won't happen.

Well not if you're going to have that attitude.

That's part of the problem really. "It's too haaaaaard." Come on, Baneblade. Just because you can't shoot the problem doesn't mean it's insurmountable. The nice thing about something like this? If you do your part to shift society in that directions, and so do I, and we each convince people to do so as well, and then they do, and so forth, we eventually get there.

It's part of the reason why owning other human beings as property went out of fashion. Enough people looked at each other and said, "This is bullshit, right? I'm pretty sure this is bullshit." Eventually, over time, the idea spreads, brain to brain.

Nothing more is being asked than personal conviction. Why is it you fantasize about violent revolution, and yet lack the wherewithal to champion something as simple and effortless as an idea?

ziegler · 2012-07-17, 10:16 AM

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

The sad thing is, it has rather worked out well. It is estimated that the 1 child laws have lowered chinas population by 5-700 million people.

As bad as the law sounds, I cannot say it was entirely unwarranted, and it may have prevented more suffering than it caused.

Eugenics works as well. selective breeding. Just ask any farmer, and we're no different than any other animal on the planet.

Baneblade · 2012-07-17, 12:27 PM

Originally Posted by ItsTheSheppy

Well not if you're going to have that attitude.

That's part of the problem really. "It's too haaaaaard." Come on, Baneblade. Just because you can't shoot the problem doesn't mean it's insurmountable. The nice thing about something like this? If you do your part to shift society in that directions, and so do I, and we each convince people to do so as well, and then they do, and so forth, we eventually get there.

It's part of the reason why owning other human beings as property went out of fashion. Enough people looked at each other and said, "This is bullshit, right? I'm pretty sure this is bullshit." Eventually, over time, the idea spreads, brain to brain.

Nothing more is being asked than personal conviction. Why is it you fantasize about violent revolution, and yet lack the wherewithal to champion something as simple and effortless as an idea?

Your ASSumptions are silly. Just because I prepare for the worst case scenario coesn't mean I'm not actively working to avoid it entirely.

Figment · 2012-07-17, 12:36 PM

How often have you had to assume the worst case scenario where you had to actually almost use your AR-15?

Meaning, really, how likely is it that you're going to have to grab weapons?
(For the record, we don't have any and we never have had to come even close to it because our populace is well in control of our government...)

Baneblade · 2012-07-17, 02:09 PM

You can try to insult me all you want, that doesn't make me wrong, nor paranoid. I'd rather have it and never need it then need it and not have it. Same with everything else I buy for the purposes I spend my money for.

ItsTheSheppy · 2012-07-17, 02:25 PM

Originally Posted by Baneblade

You can try to insult me all you want, that doesn't make me wrong, nor paranoid. I'd rather have it and never need it then need it and not have it. Same with everything else I buy for the purposes I spend my money for.

You do come off as a little bit paranoid.

At the risk of digressing, I can't imagine a situation where a private citizen would find themselves in dire need for an assault rifle, where, say, a 9mm handgun wouldn't do the trick.

You do realize that if you told us you have it it "because it's cool" I, at least, would totally respect that, right? It's the Rule of Cool. It get's a pass as long as you cop to it. What we raise an incredulous eyebrow at is the supposition that it is some kind of necessary life tool.

Unless you're a mercenary who frequents tours in some of the more militant, inhospitable regions of the earth, I can't imagine what practical purpose it serves. When you imply that it's to ward off the coming revolution that you, in the same breath, seem eager for the arrival of, our natural tendency is to scoot away from what sounds to us like a crazy person.

Baneblade · 2012-07-17, 02:34 PM

Sanity sounds like lunacy in an asylum.

In any case, I don't have a bomb shelter or anything silly like that. I simply have knives, swords, machetes, sidearms, shotguns, and one. 308 chambered AR (which doesn't stand for Assault Rifle actually) that I can use for target shooting, hunting, or 'shit hit fan stuff'.

I'm a survivalist of sorts, though I'm in civilization, not a hermit, and am just as geeky as anyone else.

I just have a quirky hobby.

Sirisian · 2012-07-17, 02:59 PM

Originally Posted by ziegler

Eugenics works as well. selective breeding. Just ask any farmer, and we're no different than any other animal on the planet.

Works well for what? We currently use eugenics to detect possible defects in an offspring's genetic makeup for things like downs syndrome, cystic fibrosis, sickle cell disease, fragile X syndrome, etc. Eugenics isn't for population control. It's for human controlled evolution. This thread is more concerned with population control such as one-child policies.

Originally Posted by elfailo

I'm pretty sure you can also make them believe that kids are hideous monsters they don't want too many of.

You just need to wrap it up in a nice and trendy ideology.

This is what I was hinting about earlier with cultural changes. Spreading messages that small families are preferred is a huge part of population control.

Once population decreases a lot many problems become simpler also. Energy production being one of them. One of our huge problems is we have more people on the earth eating more food, creating more waste, and using more electricity over time.

Another big thing I've been for is centralizing people near cities. We have a huge problem in the US right now because of how spread out everyone is. As population decreases people should become accustomed to moving closer to one another. In the US we have 311.6 million people. If everyone began having only one child we could drop down quickly compressing education. In the short term social services for the elderly would be large, but it's something we'd have to get through. I think the US would be fine if we controlled our population at some arbitrary number like 200 million or whatever is decided upon to be easily sustainable without limiting infrastructure or the economy. Basically we don't want to run into the problem in the US of having too high of a population density. Land should remain cheap without exploding into a high price as time goes on.

The best possible scenario is for all countries to follow suit and agree upon a population that is sustainable and work towards it. I know England because of their small size debates about population and immigration control all the time so they can be sustainable. India also had issues with massive population and insanely high density cities. Targeting that country for reform would probably be very wise. China already seems focused on creating a sustainable population and has been well aware of their problems for a long time.