I read an article in USA Today not too long ago which talked about Ethiopia and how since their last awful famine (1984, Live Aid, all that), the total population has risen from 40M to 80M. Why was this allowed to happen? If they couldn’t feed forty million, how will they feed eighty million? Everyone is happy to chime in with solutions which are all along the lines of agricultural reform and providing aid when it happens again (and it will happen again) but no one will say the obvious: they’re having too many kids. That’s the real problem. People worldwide are having more kids than they (or the world and its resources) can reasonably support.
Is there something wrong with population control efforts? It seems to me that it’s the root of all the world’s problems. There really is no other problem. If there were only a half a billion people on this planet, we could all drive sports cars, eat the best fish in the ocean, and heat our homes with raging fires of tropical hardwoods with minimal impact on the environment. If we look at things seriously, how much of the current world population is completely redundant? How many millions of people do nothing but starve and beg in India and Africa? They have nothing to do and contribute nothing aside from many more mouths to feed with each new generation.
Who decides who dies? Who does the killing? What if you or your family members are chosen for death? Who sets up the new, minutely populated utopia? Who runs it? What rules are there?
It's not a simple solution, and it certainly isn't humane. Those people have lives, they have desires and friends and family just like you. They are not anymore "useless" than you or I or anyone else.
The people you are talking about are peasants. The majority of the population. They make possible everything in our life. Fresh fruit during winter, cars, computers, our homes... You would have them killed because you don't think they are useful? Ever heard the term megalomaniac?
...The real problem we have is anger, greed, arrogance, ignorance... not people. People are the most dynamic intelligent beings on this planet, we have the most potential of any creature. Our potential is vast and has produced many good things over the years. But, with the light there's the dark. If you want a solution to humanity's problems then start with yourself, your own mind. That's the basis for all of our contrivances.
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>>2
I wasn't suggesting killing people, I was suggesting birth control. If you want to get simple in this country (USA), rewrite tax code to reflect the actual costs of children on society rather than giving people credit for them (or at least stop giving credit after two children).
Anyway, greed, arrogance, and ignorance are never going to go away. These go hand-in-hand with being human and in fact are made worse by population growing out of control. People are fighting harder and harder for an ever-decreasing share of resources and think only for themselves in this struggle. Likewise, it's harder to provide a quality education for people when there are simply too many students crowding our classrooms.