SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the On-a-Pale-Horse-vs-Being-a-Green-Mother dept.
The world population is growing because the birth rate exceeds the death rate, so to stabilize the world population either the birth rate needs to drop, or the death rate needs to increase. The most cited reference for population studies is the projections of future population (PDF) made by the Population Division of the United Nations. The UN report projects the world population to eventually stabilize as a result of countries settling in to a birth rate that falls around the replacement level.
A commentary by Stephen Warren in the open access journal Earth's Future takes the UN report to task for focusing on birth rate. He notes that all species generate offspring in numbers well above the replacement level of two, but you don't see historically the kind of population growth like you do with humans. He argues that despite all the negative feedback mechanisms on population (such as war and pestilence), it seems that Malthus (PDF) was correct that food supply is the driving factor, and wonders whether it is even possible to stabilize the world population until food production levels off.
[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2015, @03:36PM
I think welfare states are a good idea especially in case of a future where automation and robots take away more and more jobs. Instead of having people living in poor conditions or paying to support people expensively via crime and prison, might as well pay to support them in more efficient ways.
However people on welfare should not be allowed to reproduce beyond a quota that's based on the country's estimated ability to support them and their resulting families, UNLESS they have sponsors who can commit to support their children. The quota could be per family-zero, or two or whatever - all depends on how rich the country is and is likely to be for the next say 30 years. Or it could be from a yearly pool - by lottery perhaps.
If you don't put in such artificial limits you'll be breeding for parasites. It may not be significant at first, but after a number of generations you may find that there is an exponentially growing population of people whose entire families/subspecies are on welfare - grandchildren, greatgrandchildren etc.
I'm well aware that not everyone wants to stay on welfare or will. However if you know how evolution works, you should realize what you will eventually breed if you do not put in such limits.
You may think this is harsh and evil, but if the population grows to hit the country's hard resource limits there'll be even more evil and harshness.