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China to begin two-child policy

bbc.co.uk

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Re: China to begin two-child policy

#381

Post by TeMPOraL »

bigfudge wrote: post #97
throwaway_789 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be eugenics. The how-to gusto and historical tone-deafness of three commenters in this chain are flabbergasting.

You're being down voted, but I don't know why. The tone of the debate is surprising to me too.

Maybe because "it's eugenics, and eugenics is bad, just look at the history!" appeal to 'historic tone-deafness' is not a valid argument.

Yes, Nazi Germany did some shitty stuff for ideological reasons and tarnished the "eugenics" label, but it doesn't invalidate the basic idea of influencing human reproduction and/or selecting for preferred traits and/or direct DNA interventions.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#382

Post by Animats »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #334
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.

List of large dams in China.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dams_and_reservoirs_in...

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#383

Post by TeMPOraL »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #34
laichzeit0 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like the problem of telling people they can't just drive cars or own firearms and need to meet some competence criteria first, i.e. licensing? If so, I totally support the idea of licensing human breeding.

> "If so, I totally support the idea of licensing human breeding." That sort of licensing is ripe for abuse. What would happen if someone in power took that license away from you just because they didn't agree with your political views?

How about: every one gets an unconditional license for having one child. That is, pair up with someone and have two children. No need to select subgroups, but enough to stabilize the population.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#384

Post by zhemao »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #369
Retric wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Africa and India don't have widely available contraception, high levels of education, and low rates of infant mortality. Solve those problems and people will have fewer kids.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#385

Post by TeMPOraL »

throwaway_789 wrote: post #82
sugarcube wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, that quickly leads into fashist territory (eugenics)...

That wouldn't lead to eugenics, it would very much already be eugenics.

Explain to us what exactly is bad about eugenics in general, that is not related to Nazis doing their Nazi things because of their Nazi ideology?

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#386

Post by clock_tower »

nocman wrote: post #246
nsxwolf wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, forced abortions and drownings of infants are sometimes necessary in some cultures. We shouldn't judge.

No, forced abortions and drowning of infants is the result of a godless culture that does not believe in the sanctity of a human life. If you can accept these as being OK because they are occurring in a different culture, then my only response is "God help you".

I'm 99% sure that nsxwolf was being sarcastic with that comment.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#387

Post by lotharbot »

superuser2 wrote: post #363
lotharbot wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The top of the curve can be unpleasant. It doesn't have to be.

The worst is when population goes past carrying capacity and then crashes. That's when you get mass die-offs.

Population can settle down at carrying capacity simply through reduced birth rates matching up with death rates. That's the situation we see in much of the western world, with better availability of birth control etc.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#388

Post by TeMPOraL »

chriskanan wrote: post #112
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.

See this Science paper: https://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6122/953 Their main finding: "[We find that the one-child policy] has produced significantly less trusting, less trustworthy, more risk-averse, less competitive, more pessimistic, and less conscientious individuals."

Interesting.

> less trusting, less trustworthy (...) less competitive

I wonder how it goes together. "Less trusting" and "less trustworthy" should mean "less cooperating" and thus more competitive. Adding "more risk-averse", does this mean they just sit around doing nothing? I'd be interesting to read an additional analysis, as I notice I'm confused by those findings. But:

> less competitive

That's actually a good thing, isn't it?

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#389

Post by clock_tower »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #360
fineman wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some tried giving Arab countries democracy and it turned out they never really wanted it Does the presence of terrorists in developed countries prove "we" don't want democracy either? Because I didn't see the people (of the middle east) choosing, I saw the same thugs and warlords of the past continuing to make the decision for them.

Are you implying that all those middle-eastern countries were failed states, ruled by hordes of warlords? For instance, I vaguely remember Iraq being a pretty fine country; for decades, a lot of engineers from my country went there, and we had a pretty good economic cooperation. Then the US came and bombed the living shit out of it. As for Africa, isn't most of the mess the result of Europe coming there, destroying t…

Iraq after the invasion sort of was. No civil society existed, but there were plenty of bands of guerillas and local religious extremists who'd been fighting Saddam; they inherited the state when we destroyed the Baathists. (The CPA tried to create a civil society, but that can't be done artificially.)

_The Prince of the Marshes_ is a good book to read on this subject.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#390

Post by oska »

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.

and

> It would have been much, much worse without it.

I have my own graph that questions these two (widely made) assertions. It shows the decline in total fertility rates for two countries over the last 50 years. Those countries are China and Thailand [1]. You can see that both countries had almost exactly the same TFR in 1965 (just over 6.0) when both countries were still mainly agrarian societies. Since 1965 both countries' fertility rates have declined remarkably but Thailand did it without the authoritarian policy that caused such a lot of suffering in China. You can also see from the graph that the introduction of the One Child Policy in China in 1980 caused an interruption in the decline, while Thailand's rate continued to decline smoothly. And Thailand's TFR is now slightly lower than China's.

So why was it necessary to introduce the One Child Policy in China when the fertility rate had already been rapidly declining over the previous 15 years and when a country that was in exactly the same position as China in 1965, and whose fertility rate decline between 1965 and 1980 was less steep than China's, then brought their TFR down to below China's in 1985 and in 1990 brought it down below replacement level and now has a TFR slightly below China's, all without implementing such a drastic policy?

[1] https://www.google.com.au/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f...

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