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China to begin two-child policy

bbc.co.uk

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Re: China to begin two-child policy

#251

Post by jdavis703 »

erispoe wrote: post #248
vinceyuan wrote: post #244

One-child policy began in 1979. In 1980, My mother hid in her relatives' houses and finally delivered her second child - me. I was very lucky because if my mother was caught, I can't sit here to type these sentences. I do understand the one-child policy because there are too many people in China, especially in cities. The population should be under control. (However, as far as I know, one-child policy never really wo…

Why is there too many people in China? What is the standard to determine the right population?

The kinds of socio-economic figures measured by NGOs like per capita GDP and infant mortality and life expectancy. If you increase GDP you can give your people healthier/better lives.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#252

Post by triangleman »

gjm11 wrote: post #200
code4life wrote: post #156

"A Christian Manifesto" by Francis A. Schaeffer gives a reason why. Our creator inspires freedom and love. When we follow him we seek to spread freedom to not only ourselves but to others as well. A population willingly adopting the new testament Biblical principles will spread freedom willingly. The humanist world view on the other hand has no moral absolutes and must enforce the popular or elected rules onto the ma…

If this account of things were correct, then we would expect to find that less-religious (or specifically less-Christian) nations have less freedom. It doesn't look to me as if this is true; for instance, the nations of Scandinavia are distinctly less Christian than the US (they often have established churches, but the rate of actual religious belief and commitment in the population is low) and they seem no less free…

But the OP was not talking about "religion" per se, he was saying that freedom is a natural result of following Christ, specifically following the words of Christ as found in the Bible.

Your example of the Middle Ages is a case in point: During this time, scripture was taken away from the people and mainly transmitted between clergy in a dead language (Latin). How could society develop an attitude towards freedom in such a climate of religious oppression?

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#253

Post by BookmarkSaver »

erispoe wrote: post #248
vinceyuan wrote: post #244

One-child policy began in 1979. In 1980, My mother hid in her relatives' houses and finally delivered her second child - me. I was very lucky because if my mother was caught, I can't sit here to type these sentences. I do understand the one-child policy because there are too many people in China, especially in cities. The population should be under control. (However, as far as I know, one-child policy never really wo…

Why is there too many people in China? What is the standard to determine the right population?

There are too many people on the planet to start with, and 1/6 of them is in China. The effect that they are having on the environment (both in "nature" and in their own living spaces) is atrocious, but there are too many people to reasonably switch to a sustainable model. Additionally, if you account for the fact that a gigantic portion of their land is basically uninhabitable (the Gobi Desert), they have an unreal population density (among non-trivial sovereign nations). If their population keeps expanding unchecked, they'll stop being able to feed everyone.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#254

Post by toomuchtodo »

jdavis703 wrote: post #251
erispoe wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is there too many people in China? What is the standard to determine the right population?

The kinds of socio-economic figures measured by NGOs like per capita GDP and infant mortality and life expectancy. If you increase GDP you can give your people healthier/better lives.

> If you increase GDP you can give your people healthier/better lives.

Sort of. You'll still bump up against physical system constraints, at least until we're swimming in an excess of renewable, clean energy.

It would take many Earth's worth of resources to have the quality of life American's have. Clean energy goes a long way to solving that, but again, physical systems have limitations.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#255

Post by superuser2 »

erispoe wrote: post #248
vinceyuan wrote: post #244

One-child policy began in 1979. In 1980, My mother hid in her relatives' houses and finally delivered her second child - me. I was very lucky because if my mother was caught, I can't sit here to type these sentences. I do understand the one-child policy because there are too many people in China, especially in cities. The population should be under control. (However, as far as I know, one-child policy never really wo…

Why is there too many people in China? What is the standard to determine the right population?

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 quantity of food and water is not available for everyone. Even with unlimited labor to supply factories, there are no more raw materials to make gadgets and medicine out of.

A country in that situation has basically one reasonable course of action: kill the neighbors and take their resources.

China is arguably being a good world citizen by trying not to put itself in that position.

You may find this statist interference with a natural process distasteful, but consider the alternative: only the fittest get to survive.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#256

Post by vlehto »

crdoconnor wrote: post #237
funkyy wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

TIL some people actually believe the things Mubarak says.

"Royalists" have been a phenomena everywhere. Then again population of a country is able to change it's mind.

Just before WWI lot's of European intelligentsia favored communism. Same happened before WWII with fascism. It is still completely possible that spread of democracy is just multinational fashion trend. And something else will come after it.

For any given moment, it's even probable that majority of some country does not want democracy. There are ~200 countries and several somewhat convincing ideologies.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#257

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

erispoe wrote: post #248
vinceyuan wrote: post #244

One-child policy began in 1979. In 1980, My mother hid in her relatives' houses and finally delivered her second child - me. I was very lucky because if my mother was caught, I can't sit here to type these sentences. I do understand the one-child policy because there are too many people in China, especially in cities. The population should be under control. (However, as far as I know, one-child policy never really wo…

Why is there too many people in China? What is the standard to determine the right population?

The problem isn't really population per se, it's population growth. China instituted the one-child policy so they could slow down their population growth to more manageable levels.

We could have 10 billion people on this planet and we'd be fine, so long as we were resource-efficient.

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#258

Post by [deleted] »

code4life wrote: post #224
fsloth wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A population willingly adopting the new testament Biblical principles will spread freedom willingly." I think you need to specify which principles exactly one wants to adopt in a society. All the european states were devoutly christian for 2000 years and I would not call e.g. 15th century Spain the epitome of human rights and freedom. "America has been slowly transitioning from a Bible believing nation to a humanist…

Our founders did that hard work for us. The Bill of Rights and the constitution explain what freedoms we are granted and as well why we are granted them (inalienable rights from our Creator). Previously throughout history, rights were granted to people from their government, through laws. These concepts were flipped upside down, and if you study why, you'll see the reason is Biblical principles. All you have to do is…

[deleted]

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#259

Post by joeclark77 »

[deleted] wrote: post #247
paublyrne wrote: post #7

This has been expected for a while. Hopefully it can help address the increasing gender imbalance. It has reached 6:5 male to female births, resulting in huge numbers of Chinese men who cannot find marriage partners.

[deleted]

>spouses?

wives

Re: China to begin two-child policy

#260

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

BookmarkSaver wrote: post #253
erispoe wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is there too many people in China? What is the standard to determine the right population?

There are too many people on the planet to start with, and 1/6 of them is in China. The effect that they are having on the environment (both in "nature" and in their own living spaces) is atrocious, but there are too many people to reasonably switch to a sustainable model. Additionally, if you account for the fact that a gigantic portion of their land is basically uninhabitable (the Gobi Desert), they have an unreal…

> there are too many people on the planet to start with

Earth doesn't have too many people. The people inhabiting it are just, currently, quite wasteful with resources.

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