China to begin two-child policy • Hacker News Board

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#341

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 8:48 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#342

Post by Panoramix » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 8:52 PM UTC

Idontagree wrote: post #176

Bill_Dimm wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 20 years ago, when I was a grad student, I attended a colloquium where the speaker (a physicist, for better or worse) had computed the number of people that the planet could support if everyone consumed natural resources at the rate that Americans do. His number was 2 billion. I don't remember who the speaker was and I don't know what assumptions he made -- I don't know how much error there might be in his resu…

Which is a calculation based on current technological standards, which is also not proof that we will not become more efficient and better able to manipulate our resources as needed.

Ah, the good old "future generations will solve it, so let's trash this place"

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#343

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 8:53 PM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #164

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…

>Same with China - imagine them exploding with an extra 1 Billion people over next 20 years. Who will feed them? What would be social implications of such a move? Well for one thing, you'd have a billion more potential farmers... Population growth is a pretty old problem, and if recent developed nations' demographic reports show, it solves itself once you reach a certain level of development. China's success is not n…

Development is not something that happens naturally if you just leave people alone. Overpopulation hinders development. They most certainly wouldn't be as developed as they are if they had grown faster than their economy could sustain.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#344

Post by steve19 » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 8:53 PM UTC

jquery wrote: post #315

humanrebar wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that coercive abortion and gender selection are realities and the problems of overpopulation are more theoretical, I wonder what your definition of humane is. And again, who decides which is more humane? If you and your cohort wants to stop reproducing as a good example, nobody is stopping you.

What's theoretical about the high and unsustainable cost of living in high-population areas? >And again, who decides which is more humane? If you and your cohort wants to stop reproducing as a good example, nobody is stopping you. This argument is such a canard. If someone is blaring loud music throughout a neighborhood, the solution is to force them to stop, not to tell everyone else who finds it annoying to just be…

.... Said every murderous dictator when he decided a certain segment of the population was polluting the gene pool and he no longer wanted to see or hear them.

or in other words: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#345

Post by lotharbot » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 8:55 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #340

TTPrograms wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

population doesn't keep doubling over and over again. It follows a logistic curve (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function ). Human population probably reached the midpoint of the curve around 1980 (http://www.growth-dynamics.com/articles/Kurzweil_files/image... ) and is expected to become fairly level between 9 and 13 billion (http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Graphs/ select Population -> Total Population -> WORLD)

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#346

Post by jquery » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 8:57 PM UTC

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #311

WildUtah wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earth doesn't have too many people. The people inhabiting it are just, currently, quite wasteful with resources. What's the goal here? We could have many more people each living in misery, crowding, and poverty. Or we could have fewer people with each one being rich and free and having access to parks and open space to breathe and relax. More people isn't somehow good in itself. Children are great but one or two is e…

> We could have many more people each living in misery, crowding, and poverty. Or we could have fewer people with each one being rich and free and having access to parks and open space to breathe and relax. A false dichotomy. The latter experience can be given to the former's population. More people isn't somehow "good", but it's not bad.

> The latter experience can be given to the former's population.

How? Keep in mind only a small fraction of the world's population is even capable of being a tourist. Imagine how that changes when everyone is well-off enough to travel at will. Imagine your favorite beach, favorite museum, or your favorite national park and multiply the number of visitors by 10, 20, 40, etc. Waiting-lists for years to visit the Louvre. Prices so high that only the 1% of the 1% can afford to visit Maui.

Maybe you are assuming that VR will solve these issues? Perhaps a Matrix-like future awaits us.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#347

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 9:00 PM UTC

funkyy wrote: post #146

mkaziz wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is typically a thing that is grown at home, not a thing that is "given".

It should be that way. But some cannot understand that some countries do not want Democracy. Its not that they don't matured - they just don't want it. Even in some European countries we can see the move to shift much more power to presidents (Hungary, Slovakia, Poland).

Oh hell like anyone wants to shift power to president in Poland. Or as if anyone believed presidents have any power over anything (even the US president doesn't have any real power; you don't get to be in that position if you're a wildcard that is likely to do things against your party or the rest of administration).

If anything we have a conflict between people who want the country to be more Catholic and the ones who want it to be less Catholic, and a secondary push against any government because people seem to believe that entrepreneurs are force of good that is being murdered by the Evil Government through means like taxation.

Democracy is strong here - people are being indoctrinated in it since early childhood, and it's especially effective since we have the boogeyman of comunist USSR to scare them with.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#348

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 9:03 PM UTC

steve19 wrote: post #344

jquery wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's theoretical about the high and unsustainable cost of living in high-population areas? >And again, who decides which is more humane? If you and your cohort wants to stop reproducing as a good example, nobody is stopping you. This argument is such a canard. If someone is blaring loud music throughout a neighborhood, the solution is to force them to stop, not to tell everyone else who finds it annoying to just be…

.... Said every murderous dictator when he decided a certain segment of the population was polluting the gene pool and he no longer wanted to see or hear them. or in other words: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Reversed stupidity is not intelligence. "2+2 = 4" said every murderous dictator ever, and yet we don't ban arithmetics for being a tool that Stalin used.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#349

Post by mazerackham » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 9:07 PM UTC

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…

Human rights are not some global constant, but something that evolves from culture & economics. China has experienced unprecedented growth in the past 30 years, never before seen in history. Hopefully its concepts of human rights will evolve with time, but to judge it now by the same measure we do for the West is unrealistic and impractical

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#350

Post by jquery » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 9:10 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #314

humanrebar wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that coercive abortion and gender selection are realities and the problems of overpopulation are more theoretical, I wonder what your definition of humane is. And again, who decides which is more humane? If you and your cohort wants to stop reproducing as a good example, nobody is stopping you.

> who decides which is more humane? Your elected government? Isn't that what you elected it for? Or just hold a referendum or something. The "who decides" question is a problem here. It doesn't matter who , it only matters that the decision has to be made and then carried out. The coordination has to arise or be enforced, but happen the coordination must. What you're implying by asking this question has many names. I…

You have decades, if not centuries of propaganda, that people need to have more children, that having as many children as you want is somehow a human right. Even recently in the past, there were yet vast undiscovered countries awaiting the world's population. The notion that one could have "too many children" and that this selfish behavior is intolerable will take time to catch on.

Even this thread is hopeful to me, a decade ago there wouldn't have been near as much disagreement about whether you have the right to burden society without limit.