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Total Members Voted: 65

[MetalSlimeHunt]

tax rate is 100%. all money belongs to the government. but there is no bureaucracy or elected officials, everyone is a member of the government equally. the only action that the government takes is to sponsor whatever its citizens do at any given moment. every citizen carries the amount of money needed to accomplish their current task. if there is not enough money to accomplish all tasks, we pretend that there is.

God damn it, this is going too far! We're closer to a philosingulaity than ever! Shut it down.

...

I don't give a rat's ass what the director thinks, we are meddling in power beyond our control, so shut it down!

[Xantalos]

yes egan

tap into the singularity, unleash the power coiled within

[DJ]

Yeah, to clarify, it's not unethical to want a lot of kids, or to have them when it's socially beneficial. But if you're living in a post-industrial society with decent medical care, it's unethical to actually have more than 2-3, both because of the unnecessary weight on common goods and limited resources (both personally and societally). They're probably not going to die young and some or all of them will have children of their own.

Those kids will eventually contribute to the society, though. With the age pyramid getting inverted thanks to all those medical advances post-industrial societies are getting desperate to come up with enough taxpayers to support the ever increasing population of the elderly.

[Reelya]

It's not feasible to use making kids to keep the age ratios in tact. e.g. for Australia (currently ~23 million people) I saw an estimate that to maintain the proportion of over/under 65s would require an ever-increasing number of people, to the point that we'd have 1 billion people here by the end of the century if we want to "fix" things that way.

[DJ]

What's the alternative, leaving the elderly in the wilderness to die?

But yeah, the ratio doesn't have to stay intact, but it can't fall faster than worker productivity rises. And it seems to be doing just that in Western Europe at least.

[Reelya]

Well I think things will balance themselves out by people having to work longer. Right now we're seeing people retiring early because they worked during times when things were fairly "fat", i.e. there weren't too many elderly for the system to support. As those people retire, then the burden rises, meaning future generations won't be able to save such large amounts, and they have to work a bit longer to afford to retire.

[DJ]

The thing with elderly is that they tend to be riddled with chronic diseases that aren't fatal but are still very detrimental to mental and physical performance, so how much can you reasonably expect them to push back that retirement age?

[TD1]

I guess I'll post to watch.

As I said previously, the birth rate has dropped dramatically (looking at the figures for Afghanistan can show you how quickly), we should discourage the cause of over childer-fying and not the actual childering itself. Give women more rights in effected countries, tell people what contraceptive is. Don't tell people how to breed (because who'll listen to the pompous git that tells them that?) instead give them juicy alternatives.

As for those who are supporting adoption as the ethical solution, it probably is for some. Not me. In my opinion it sort of defeats the purpose, which is to ensure maximum gene-continuation, and replaces it with a false mothering instinct. As I say, that's fine for some - they just want something to love, and want a child for the sake of a child. I would too. But I also want the added element of genetic transfer.

Edit: Plus, some of the arguments used against the having of children seem to be similar to those I use against Immigration - stress on services, overpopulation. Many Bay12ers labelled me racist for that, so that's interesting (well, to use exact terminology "sometimes people don't think they're racist but they have views that are.")

[Antioch]

A stable population number is the only population number that is sustainable in the long run.

[Sergarr]

Well, currently a society will die off within one generation if no one in it has children, and will be diminishing in size over time if they don't have it above the replacement rate, so it depends on whenever you think it's ethical to potentially ruin your society for the sake of personal benefit.

One also have to consider that countries that stop having many children grow weaker in time compared to the others who didn't do that, so even if you're trying for the Malthusian solution, it will have a big chance of not working at all, as your resource-balanced society could be rendered unable to enforce its will upon the ones that aren't.

[TempAcc]

The current population crisis is as much of a technological problem as it is a sociological one. People simply live too long, but aren't able to remain productive during the late stage of their lives anymore. People live long, but aren't able to maintain quality of life for that long.
Old people weren't much of a problem a century ago because, well, being old meant being around your 40s-50s, an age in which the average human is still quite productive overall unless affected by serious injury or disease, and such things usualy resulted in death at that time anyway so it never became a (significant) social problem. Now we have this large chunk of the population with loads of expenses while being physically unable to be productive, in most cases.

However, it'd be nice if that was all the problem was about. Things are specially bad because the other half of the problem comes from a kind of social conditioning. In western (european, at least) society, people have been conditioned to just "enjoy life" and not worry about the problems the future generations will have to deal with. Even worse, a large chunk of the population decided that the best solution to that conundrum would to simply not have said next generation. There's a whole chunk of society who simply decided to not have any children because they thought there would be no real consequence to that, and that their personal pleasure ranks higher in the order of important things to do in life. Sure, in China that may not be a problem, but its a fuckhuge problem in yurop. Its not (purely) economical problem even, you can toss all the contraceptive methods and legalized abortion you want at, say, saudi arabia, and they'll still maintain a healthy population growth, simply because their culture encourages it.

Western europe has largely thrown away any semblance of its many cultures that stablish having children as a social duty. So, dear europa, stopstart fucking around.

There's also another economical problem that stems from people in developed countries being far more interested in manipulating money (investing) rather than actualy making money, but thats a whole 'nother can of worms.

[Reelya]

Pumping out kids to balance the old people isn't a sustainable solution. France, UK, USA are actually having kids at or near replacement rate. Any aging population in those places is actually moving towards the long-term equilibrium.

The problem is that the kids themselves will end up having an 80+ year lifespan. Consider a person who supports themselves. They spend 20 years being raised an educated, 40 years working, 20 years in retirement. Their 40 years of working pays for the rest. The problem with the theory of having more children to boost the workplace-participation is that those kids will then go on to have 20 years of being raised, 40 years working, and 20 years of retirement. So you haven't actually increased the workplace-participation rate at all, you just added more people. To be sustainable, therefore, the cost/benefit needs to balance out over the life of a single person.

[Zangi]

It is neither unethical nor ethical to go forth and multiply.  Humans are still animals in the grand scheme of things. 

Though, I reckon its more of a 'I say, you say, but everyone who doesn't agree is wrong' kinda thing, till one side gets majority and it becomes 'Its just how we/society do things.'

[Cthulhu]

A stable population number is the only population number that is sustainable in the long run.

That's just not true though.  A stable population number is the only population number that's stable, but there's plenty of societies that lasted for thousands of years where population went through phases of huge growth and contraction. If it's not the historical norm it's far closer to it than a stable number.

I'm gonna agree with the earlier post that this depends on your ethic, so it's inevitably going to be another thread where everyone argues past each other because we're not talking about the same thing.

tax rate is 100%. all money belongs to the government. but there is no bureaucracy or elected officials, everyone is a member of the government equally. the only action that the government takes is to sponsor whatever its citizens do at any given moment. every citizen carries the amount of money needed to accomplish their current task. if there is not enough money to accomplish all tasks, we pretend that there is.

God damn it, this is going too far! We're closer to a philosingulaity than ever! Shut it down.

...

I don't give a rat's ass what the director thinks, we are meddling in power beyond our control, so shut it down!

If by "singularity" you mean Egan's about to climb so far up his own ass he becomes a singularity, then yes.

As always, the obvious solution to our problems is to live in a perfect society with no flaws or problems where there's no scarcity.  Why haven't we done that yet

[Baffler]

However, it'd be nice if that was all the problem was about. Things are specially bad because the other half of the problem comes from a kind of social conditioning. In western (european, at least) society, people have been conditioned to just "enjoy life" and not worry about the problems the future generations will have to deal with. Even worse, a large chunk of the population decided that the best solution to that conundrum would to simply not have said next generation. There's a whole chunk of society who simply decided to not have any children because they thought there would be no real consequence to that, and that their personal pleasure ranks higher in the order of important things to do in life. Sure, in China that may not be a problem, but its a fuckhuge problem in yurop. Its not (purely) economical problem even, you can toss all the contraceptive methods and legalized abortion you want at, say, saudi arabia, and they'll still maintain a healthy population growth, simply because their culture encourages it.

Western europe has largely thrown away any semblance of its many cultures that stablish having children as a social duty. So, dear europa, stopstart fucking around.

There's also another economical problem that stems from people in developed countries being far more interested in manipulating money (investing) rather than actualy making money, but thats a whole 'nother can of worms.

I used to think that this was just a young people thing and that people still settled down, just not as young as they used to. Thinking about it though our society is really geared against having kids. It used to be perfectly feasible for one person to go work while the other stayed home and took care of the house and kids. Now though even the middle class often needs to be dual-income to stay financially solvent (relying on public assistance is not financially solvent) and that means either paying someone to raise your kids for those who have the means, or just not seeing all that much of them for those who don't.  Neither of which are exactly ideal. To say nothing of all the bullshit an expecting or recent parent can expect from their employer.

That, I think, is the true cause. Western people have just been made to think of kids as a liability. But unless you're one of those voluntary extinction dweebs we can't allow people who want kids to be deterred by the expense. It would quite literally be the death of an entire people, and all their customs and experience with them, because of nothing more than myopia and selfishness.