Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

China to begin two-child policy

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 455 posts

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#331

Post by somebehemoth »

hodwik wrote: post #284
saryant wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You elect district leaders ...from a list of candidates approved by the Communist Party.

Which actually means you have more choice. In the US you generally get one Democrat and one Republican. When you have only one party, it's as though you have no parties, you get to elect from many different candidates.

Look at the unrest in Hong Kong over China pre-approving candidates for political office. In a place that had democracy and is transitioning to Chinese rule it is obvious that very many people don't think they are getting "more choice" with their locked in list of candidates. I am not championing the US system (it has many flaws) but at least Democrats and Republicans have vastly different ideologies that people can choose from. That citizens from both parties tend to pick moderate candidates (that are closer in ideology) does not lessen the real choice the people are given when voting in elections.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#332

Post by TeMPOraL »

emergentcypher wrote: post #223
funkyy wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China managed to succeed in increasing people wealth and loosening laws (still bad for Western standards, but huge step comparing to China 30 years ago). Only because West thinks this is "brutal and cruel" dosent mean our laws would ever worked there. Some tried giving Arab countries democracy and it turned out they never really wanted it and most of the dictators were much better alternative (still bad, just better…

There is a lot more at play in the middle east than "they never really wanted it". As I wrote elsewhere, it's hard enough in a vacuum to overthrow a dictatorship and start a free and functional democracy. It's even harder when there are a multitude of foreign powers interfering in your country preventing this from happening. Democracy is failing in the middle east because there are a lot of powerful people and nation…

> And finally, how does anybody know "what they really want" unless you ask the entire country in a free and fair manner? This is the big fallacy behind "the people prefer the lesser evil of dictatorship." You can't say that. You don't have a clue what the people prefer. This is the whole point: if the people want a dictatorship, give them a free, fair, democratic vote and let them choose dictatorship.

It's not even that easy. Ask the entire country in a free and fair manner and you'll quickly discover that people's opinions are not independent and do not exist in a vacuum. They may say to you they prefer living in a dictatorship because of a combination of not knowing anything else and pro-dictatorship propaganda. Or they may say "democracy!" because they drank the kool-aid.

I'm starting to believe that the only way to reach democracy as a stable state is for a society to naturally evolve towards it. Just leave it alone, let them figure things out; after a few generations they will probably sort out their culture and then they'll have a democracy that's sustainable because it'll be backed by decades of cultural growth. Trying to speed this transformation up is a dangerous game. Trying to speed it up with tanks and guns is just crazy.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#333

Post by TeMPOraL »

humanrebar wrote: post #295
Animats wrote: post #293

Before commenting on this, there are two things you need to read. "China - total fertility rate (graph)"[1] "List of famines in China."[2] "China - Population 1950 - 2015" [3] In 1970, the fertility rate (babies born per woman) was 6. That's huge but not untypical for an undeveloped country, where a lot of people die young. Once some basic modern medicine was deployed, the number of people surviving went way up, and…

> The one-child policy worked. If you ignore the invasive health monitoring, gender selective abortions, forced abortions, and other human rights violations, sure. But I'm not sure this cure wasn't worse than the disease. Especially, as you point out, since fertility rates seem to regulate themselves in developed countries. I guess if you're a pure utilitarian, you could try to make the case that it all was a net ben…

The point is, a country growing like crazy and hitting into famine after famine doesn't have a chance to stabilize and actually develop without ensuring deaths of countless millions over many decades. It's not hard to make a case that China has made the right choice. They developed so well because of the policy.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#334

Post by TeMPOraL »

Animats wrote: post #293

Before commenting on this, there are two things you need to read. "China - total fertility rate (graph)"[1] "List of famines in China."[2] "China - Population 1950 - 2015" [3] In 1970, the fertility rate (babies born per woman) was 6. That's huge but not untypical for an undeveloped country, where a lot of people die young. Once some basic modern medicine was deployed, the number of people surviving went way up, and…

Makes me wonder - is there any work being done on making the desert areas arable? It would probably take big geoengineering effort and one has to be pretty damn sure it doesn't disturb some important climate regulation mechanism, but doubling their arable/habitable land area would sove a lot of problems for China, as well as humanity in general.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#335

Post by justicezyx »

sethbannon wrote: post #56

From the article "All couples will now be allowed to have two children". So it seems China isn't so much ending its one-child policy, as augmenting it by one to a two-child policy. This means the brutal and cruel enforcement will continue, only it will kick in at the third child instead of at the second.

LMAO From a country that could not even control their gun problem, comes a comment saying an effective policy is a brutal and cruel enforcement...

I am not saying it's not brutal or cruel, it is. But please, I dont want to hear it from a country people literally are killing each other everyday...

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#336

Post by mikeyouse »

nickbauman wrote: post #283
superuser2 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ecosystems have carrying capacities. There is only so much water and arable land. There are only so many resources in the mines/oil wells waiting to be extracted. Technology (like GMOs) can help you make incrementally more efficient use of those resources, but not as fast as unbounded exponential population growth. At some point, the average standard of living has to come crashing down. The biologically necessary qua…

Arguably 1/2 of the molecules in our bodies come from the artificial nitrogen extraction process developed during WWI. Without that, Earth's human population would have been limited to half of what it is now back in the 20th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Haber_process

If you haven't read it, I'd highly recommend the book, "The Alchemy of Air" about the invention of Haber-Bosch.. It was unbelievable what they went through to fix nitrogen, they literally invented new fields of study in materials science and chemistry. The perils of a Jewish inventor creating a new method for making explosives under the Third Reich is a side story in the book but another fascinating historical anecdote.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#337

Post by TeMPOraL »

zhemao wrote: post #312
Animats wrote: post #293

Before commenting on this, there are two things you need to read. "China - total fertility rate (graph)"[1] "List of famines in China."[2] "China - Population 1950 - 2015" [3] In 1970, the fertility rate (babies born per woman) was 6. That's huge but not untypical for an undeveloped country, where a lot of people die young. Once some basic modern medicine was deployed, the number of people surviving went way up, and…

The absurdly high birth rates of the 1960s were due in no small part to government policy. The communist leadership under Mao Zedong encouraged people to have lots of children, believing that a large population would power economic growth. While I agree that controlling population growth is necessary, it could have been done without the draconian and invasive measures imposed by the one-child policy. With proper gove…

Isn't this a case of hindsight being 20/20 though? Maybe when China was first considering population control, there was no one there to think of applying just economic pressure? Or maybe the voice got lost in the usual $politics?

Fortunately, future decisionmakers now have competing examples of China, Hong Kong and Singapore to learn from.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#338

Post by TeMPOraL »

mikeyouse wrote: post #336
nickbauman wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably 1/2 of the molecules in our bodies come from the artificial nitrogen extraction process developed during WWI. Without that, Earth's human population would have been limited to half of what it is now back in the 20th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Haber_process

If you haven't read it, I'd highly recommend the book, "The Alchemy of Air" about the invention of Haber-Bosch.. It was unbelievable what they went through to fix nitrogen, they literally invented new fields of study in materials science and chemistry. The perils of a Jewish inventor creating a new method for making explosives under the Third Reich is a side story in the book but another fascinating historical anecdo…

HN is becoming the single source responsible for most of my total book spending... Anyway, just purchased it. Thanks for the recommendation!

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#339

Post by justicezyx »

funkyy wrote: post #299
bhouston wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some tried giving Arab countries democracy and it turned out they never really wanted it and most of the dictators were much better alternative (still bad, just better - to clarify) That is highly contentious statement.

Some parts of the world are not grown up to handle democracy or make social decisions. Those worlds usually have only three options, forced dictator, forced democracy or domestic war. We could go in to the detail but I assumed my point was clear on this one.

When did you got the illusion that "there is some parts of the world can handle democracy"?

Or when did you got the illusion that "human are capable of handling democracy"...

Dont tell me USA is a democratic country... There is hardly anything people can control in this country, let along democracy...

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#340

Post by Retric »

TTPrograms wrote: post #320
Retric wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The earth could probably support 100+ billion people at reasonable comfort levels with slightly better technology as long as we give up the idea of life outside of zoo's. That said, past experience has demonstrated the Human population can easily grow at 5% per year. At that rate it's doubling every 15 years. Trying to double the universes food supply every 15 years is just not possible indefinitely. PS: 2^n is crazy…

Uh, the current growth rate is around 1% per year, and it's decreasing as countries enter the first world. That's a doubling every 70 years. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth We've got a lot of efficiency left in terms of agriculture as well, so there isn't much reason to think reaching the carrying capacity of the planet is a particularly pressing issue. The amount of food that we already grow that…

I don't disagree with what your saying.

The counter argument goes something like this. Let's double every 1,000 years for the next 1,000,000 years that sounds easy.

Let's see that's only 7billion * 2^1,000 or err ~7 * 10 ^ 310 people. Hmm, there are only ~10^83 atoms in the observable universe. I guess they must be really tiny people.

So, yea it's not a problem in right now and probably not for a long time yet. But, as soon as you start doubling something has to give.

Post reply on HN