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China to begin two-child policy

bbc.co.uk

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Re: China to begin two-child policy

#361

Post by TeMPOraL »

vectorjohn wrote: post #353
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.

Am I the only person who thinks population control policies like this are a great thing? This strange notion people have that they should be able to breed without bound is baffling to me. People talk about the dangers of overpopulation as if they're theoretical. They're not, numbers don't lie. At some point people have to stop having babies, whether humanely by a government mandate, or by the inhumanity of war and po…

You're not the only one. I'm in that camp too. Yes, I can imagine perfectly well the happiness a parent gets from having a child, and maybe I will want to have a child of my own in the future. Nobody says we can't breed. When the population levels off, everyone will be able to have two children.

If you want more, then there's only one solution - push harder for science and technology, so that we may use our resources in a more efficient way (Earth has a lot of carrying capacity on the surface, and we haven't even begin to colonize oceans). And then we may move to other planets.

But people need to grow up and realize they're not free to do anything they like, not yet. Freedom to breed is just another one we need to collectively decide to restrict for now. And then, like with every other coordination problem, you have to punish the defectors, because coordination is not a statically stable state.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#362

Post by zhemao »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #337
zhemao wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Singapore started the Stop at Two campaign in the 1970s. China's one-child policy was instituted in 1981. Granted, the effects of Singapore's program wouldn't have been clear at that point, but there was already a precedent for population control measures that didn't involve heavy-handed government control and quotas.

A lot of the negative effects of the one-child policy were due to uneven enforcement and perverse incentives. Though female infanticide, forced abortions, and gender-based abortions were made illegal, they still happened in rural or poorer urban areas where there was less scrutiny from the central government.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#363

Post by superuser2 »

lotharbot wrote: post #345
Retric wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 -> WOR…

Yes, it follows a logistic curve because it hits carrying capacity. The top of that curve is not a pleasant place.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#364

Post by TeMPOraL »

fineman wrote: post #266
grecy wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iteresting. It follows then the person that kills a death row inmate is responsible for their death, not the inmate for committing a crime in the first place.

Right, because if nobody killed the inmate they'd still be alive. Your "need" to kill them because they crossed some line is your need, and you're the killer. (For better or worse...)

You have to punish the defectors if you want to have a stable society. If you set up a law that says "X is punishable by death" and someone does X, then you have to deliver death to that person, or else the law loses all its coordinating power. If the law itself is not just, then you're responsible for unnecessary deaths, but a person committing X in full knowledge of the consequences is responsible for their own death.

It's really similar to jumping out of the 10th floor window. It's the dv/dt that actually kills you, but it's you who is responsible for your own death.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#365

Post by zhemao »

Keyframe wrote: post #72

Are there any psychology/sociology studies how one-child policy impacted China's society? It has been documented how having one child vs siblings impact one's psyche. I wonder what kind of impact it has on a culture/society as a whole if most are from single-child families.

Yeah, I wonder if there's been any studies done on the validity of "Little Emperor" syndrome. That is, the fear that the generation of single children would grow up spoiled and socially maladjusted.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#366

Post by TeMPOraL »

moistgorilla wrote: post #203
kailuowang wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to make it clear, these types of enforcement are not norms. The law never suggested such enforcement. The law is that you get a financial fine if you have more than one child, that's it. It's actually against the law to force any kind of abortion. That being said, in some rural area, some officials maybe so greedy to make achievement for their "career" that they "enforce" this policy by breaking the law. Some of…

> Just to make it clear, these types of enforcement are not norms Back up your statement with a citation please. Considering that they explicitly made forced abortions of these kinds illegal (although this is hardly enforced) implies that it was a big enough problem the government needed to step in.

> Considering that they explicitly made forced abortions of these kinds illegal (although this is hardly enforced) implies that it was a big enough problem the government needed to step in.

The officials are not dumb, they probably saw the incentives structure and decided to ban this proactively.

GP has a good point. Singular events in few decades in a population of over a billion? That's either bullshit or random fluke, depending on how charitable you want to be towards the report, but it's definitely not something a reasonable person should care about.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#367

Post by TeMPOraL »

zhemao wrote: post #362
TeMPOraL wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Singapore started the Stop at Two campaign in the 1970s. China's one-child policy was instituted in 1981. Granted, the effects of Singapore's program wouldn't have been clear at that point, but there was already a precedent for population control measures that didn't involve heavy-handed government control and quotas. A lot of the negative effects of the one-child policy were due to uneven enforcement and perverse in…

Thanks for the information on the timeframes.

> Though female infanticide, forced abortions, and gender-based abortions were made illegal, they still happened in rural or poorer urban areas where there was less scrutiny from the central government.

From the subthread under [0]:

"Some of the examples you listed have only one report. And it's policy that lasted almost 40 years in a country with a billion people."

It's a good point. Makes me wonder how much the negative opinion about China's one-child policy is just overblown and/or pure propaganda.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10470733

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#368

Post by bilbo0s »

tormeh wrote: post #221
bilbo0s wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rape was the major contributor to population growth in Eastern Kivu back when Nkunda was running rampant. And, to keep everything honest, it still is. (Particularly in Goma). It's not like rape and massacres went away because the Rwandans decided to replace their warlords. The Rwandans still do what Rwandans do I'm sure. I'm only saying that you ascribe certain properties to the populations you are dealing with. And…

You can have sex with an infertile man. Vasectomy does not make the man lack lust, it just makes the man infertile.

And what if a human female "gets off" on the ejaculation???

This is the point I'm making... you are asking that human females satisfy themselves with that which YOU deem it acceptable to provide them. What happens if a human female, indeed many human females, decide they want something different???

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#369

Post by TeMPOraL »

Retric wrote: post #121
brlewis wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps nobody's denying that China doesn't value personal freedom as highly as the west does, or that you can have a beautiful, rich and fullfilling life with 2 children or less. Some, myself included, do deny that it could benefit the earth if more governments would enforce limits on children. I think humans are important to the future of the earth, and treating them in a cruel and brutal fashion will cause more pr…

US, Japan, and EU have negative population growth if you exclude immigration. What more do you want?

Africa and India to play ball. The wealthy West limiting its procreation doesn't buy much for the Earth when somewhere else, poor families are pumping out children by the dozens.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#370

Post by TeMPOraL »

bko wrote: post #175
pwm wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While in essence I agree, I think it is much more nuanced and complicated. Inequality seems to be deeply encoded in the system. Capacity, in my opinion, only makes sense if you extrapolate from an average human, but there is no such thing as an average human being. However, I don't think it is an exaggeration that our western way of life is not sustainable on a global scale. I wish the fruits of human ingenuity could…

In what year was the average, or even marginal person better off? Yes, there may be more income distribution, but would you prefer to be born into a different time under the veil of ignorance? Even the poorest in our society have incredible access to goods. Just to list a few: Wikipedia Ability to talk to relatives from across the world to little or no cost (Skype and alternatives) Ability to send money and store wea…

That is, if the population growth doesn't destabilize the economies and make us revert back to the old times. That's the crux of the issue. The rising tide is lifting all the boats, but we need to make sure the tide keeps rising.
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