Framing overpopulation as an issue to be solved is pointless and gross, amirite?

eh, china's one child policy is not a policy against overpopulation. it's a policy against population disparity between urban and rural. the policy only applies to those with urban hukou and not towards rural hukou. also, ethnic minorities are exempt from this policy regardless of where their hukou are registered.

by Anonymous 1 month ago

But then you get Japan where the birth rate is far too declined

by lyricdach 1 month ago

I feel like the trend isn't really a matter of wealth. It's not just western countries. Countries like Japan are having the same issue. We might be more "wealthy" in theory but the cost of living has become really high. That and a lot more rights and social independence for women (which I support) which has led to a lot of people moving away from traditional family structures, but you can say that that's related to education. You need 2 incomes in many major places in the world at this point to survive / especially support children, and 2 full time working parents are struggling to justify children, and women are struggling to justify giving up their careers for children as well in situations even where the man makes enough.

by Anonymous 1 month ago

Nobody thinks overpopulation is an issue… it's the opposite. But yeah, you're right. Do nothing to support people having kids. Work 80 hours/week with no social security. Sounds fun

by Anonymous 1 month ago

Wow you found the hypertext easter egg where I said I love technofeudalism! I love false dichotomies❤️ I only said I'm against direct governmental dictation of birth rates, but I'm not opposed to economic incentives. The fact is this decline is inevitable for developed countries and the best we can do is try to mitigate the impacts, as much of Europe has been relatively successful in. They have a surprisingly high elderly employment rate, but more as a sustainable function of individual drive & productivity as oppose to the U.S. and Japan where much of the elderly are still trying to survive amid insufficient social security programs. Lack of democracy in corporate structures, stagnating wages, lack of manufacturing jobs, inaccessibility to skills training, little-to-no benefits, these are the real problems on the individual level that are exacerbated by declining birth rates — We should address them the best we can as oppose to trying to delay the inevitable

by Anonymous 1 month ago

In Europe 1/5 older people are still in the workforce. Doesn't sound like they're thriving to me.

by Anonymous 1 month ago

Overpopulation literally is an issue, if we want to preserve any wild spaces. Apparently a lot of people don't. They'd rather let billions of animals die so breeders could keep on popping out kids. Of course I don't blame developing nations because in that stage they're always going to have high population growth, but in developed nations it's a massive issue.

by Maleficent_Goal_9480 1 month ago

The overpopulation is not pointless. First, not every developing country has the same rates. That is simply wrong. But, environmentalists are sounding the alarm every day. Our planet is crumbling in multiple ways. Every domain - global warming, erosion, pollution, food resources, etc, is impacted by overpopulation. The known fact- the planet cannot sustain 8B people (and the numbers are on the raise). If there's one theme that connects all environmental problems is the overpopulation. The planet (and human kind) have no future with growing population numbers.

by Anonymous 1 month ago

Malthus was debunked long ago — but I agree that giving women more agency, access to bc, and other opportunities are all good things with multiple benefits.

by Wild-Landscape-6018 1 month ago

People made your argument in 1950. Billions more people and much related environmental destruction later, here we are, headed towards an environmental apocalypse.

by Anonymous 1 month ago

The funny part? Overpopulation isn't even the problem. It's a symptom of the real problem, the cancer of delusional infinite-growth economies.

by Anonymous 1 month ago

this is not an unpopular opinion, it's a well established fact. "overpopulation" is just first world ecofascist myth. we literally produce more food than the entire world population needs and we have enough land to house everyone on the planet. but corporate interest and profit motive dictate that discarding food is more profitable than making it accessible to everyone, and that people owning way more properties than they'll ever use is better for them to consolidate wealth by inflating their nett worth and taking loans.

by Anonymous 1 month ago

It's disgusting. People aren't farms

by Keaganmoen 1 month ago

Overpopulation is a myth.

by Classic_Reach_7398 1 month ago

Several countries have proposed benefits to families who have a child due to declining birth rates. The overpopulation fear is a thing of the past.

by MentalCandidate98 1 month ago

There is an ethical way: educate them about the long term effects of multiple pregancies. Give them knowledge about and access to contraceptives. Give them quality healthcare to decrease infant mortality rate and, thus, the want to have 10 kids in hopes that 3 will make it into adulthood.

by Standard-Meat-3631 1 month ago

You're missing social engineering I think as a solve. And not in the brainwash everyone way. Education is a big one. Better education trends towards lower birthrates. Grants and funding play roles too. Less aid for children after x number, more money into contraceptives (make them free for example), those kind of things could play a part too.

by Anonymous 1 month ago

just one moving at half the speed So cutting the population in half is a good first step that isn't going far enough?

by Anonymous 1 month ago

Not really. Even if you wanted to lower the population in a un-authoritarian way (for example through contraceptives or abortion) by the time the population reached half of what it is today, the ecosystem will already have experienced massive and irreparable damage. This is why I think "de growth" is mostly a pipe dream

by Unhappy-Mention-5184 1 month ago

It's sad that this is an unpopular opinion. Overpopulation has been proven over and over again to be racist nonsense.

by Cryan 1 month ago

I actually don't understand how there being too many people on this planet is racist or nonsense. Care to elaborate?

by Anonymous 1 month ago

There aren't too many people. The guy who started this over population nonsense in recent history was saying there were too many of x race and not enough y race. It's literally just racist nonsense.

by Anonymous 1 month ago

there aren't too many people Sure there are. Humans are bad for the environment and nearly every other species. The most effective way to turn around the current mass extinction and environmental change would be every human disappearing. Obviously that isn't a choice we are willing to make, but fewer humans would correspond with a slower planetary disaster.

by Anonymous 1 month ago

No there isn't the planet could easily support 10 times our current population while maintaining the environment. At the population density of Chicago you could fit the entire human race into an area the size of Texas

by Anonymous 1 month ago

ok i'm from the most populated country in the planet and a lot of people in my country have to struggle for resources because population density is too high to support the number of people per sq km. i assure you, there is an optimum number of people per unit (depending on terrain, resource availability etc) and we are far beyond it. source? lived reality of literally over a billion people

by enitzsche 1 month ago

Overpopulation is racist? What?!

by Anonymous 1 month ago

There is a strong overlap of people concerned about overpopulation, and people who think that [INSERT ETHNIC GROUP HERE] are having too many children. Like didnt Macron literally make a trip to Africa at one point and say that African women need to have less children? There was also the white supremacist Christchurch shooter who said in his manifesto "if we kill enough people, our way of life will become sustainable." When he talked about "killing enough people" it probably wasnt white people he had in mind

by Unhappy-Mention-5184 1 month ago

Overpopulation has nothing to do with eugenics

by DigAcrobatic 1 month ago

Thomas Malthus was a British economist from the 19th century who argued that eventually the world will become overpopulated. Combined with the racist pseudoscientific belief in social Darwinism (which was promulgated by anthropologists and scientists), and the birth control movement in the early 20th century… yes, they absolutely are connected.

by Salvatore86 1 month ago

Did you mean rich people in power worrying about low birth rates and encouraging white people to reproduce to avoid being "replaced" by minorities is racist?

by Anonymous 1 month ago

Over population is very real. There is a limit to how much the planet can sustain. The issue is that it gets used as a hold for the eugenics lot. Eugenics is wrong. Doesn't mean overpopulation isn't a problem. The thing with overpopulation is defining it. It becomes a bit of a grey area open to dispute. For example, you could pull enough data together to argue that given that there's not enough houses or jobs that a lot countries are overpopulated. You could also claim that that's a social issue created by the uneven distribution of wealth. Likewise, you could say that regions of Africa are overpopulated, as there is widespread famine, lack of access to utilities, lack of wealth, lack of resources. You could again argue a social issue, there is enough food if you moved it around a bit, but there's lots of politics in the way. You could say that the whole world is overpopulated, look at the mess we've made with climate change, trash everywhere, massive changes to the planet that have come about since the industrial revolution. It's not sustainable.

by Anonymous 1 month ago

1) people talk about all sorts of political issues that they can't personally do anything about 2) plenty of people WOULD do something about overpopulation if they were powerful. A one child policy or something like that, in parts of the world where the birth rate is well over 2 births per woman. Considering the effects of human contribution to climate change, it's hard to argue with.

by Sanfordgabriell 1 month ago

I read this as underpopulation at first

by skylar73 1 month ago

Actually we aren't populating enough; this is an old issue.

by Anonymous 1 month ago