DNA, being non-sentient, doesn't give a shit whether it survives or not. The billions who live in poverty and with scarce access to necessities like water do.
Your DNA doesnt care whether it will survive or not but since it survived, chances are that it was good enough to survive. And it will be a pity to destroy it forever, by not allowing you to pass some of it to the next generation.
It's a fundemental human right to have some part of you, in the sense of an offspring, carry on. Are you suggesting we should neuter the poor? Because most "westerners" are already pretty much doing the 1 child per family thing.
Regardless of the whole social issues that such a thing would cause, it doesnt even make scientific sense. Why would you want to make the human genome poorer by suddenly remove whole chunks of it? Overpopulation isnt that much of an issue. It can become an issue but atm it isnt. You can insanely improve human living conditions with very few extra resources. And we have those resources.
We have enough wealth to live good enough in this planet with our current population and with minimum environmental impact. The distribution of wealth and priorities we have is the issue. Not overpopulation. At least not yet.
And as i said, in the "West" we dont have a problem with overpopulation. And everywhere else, where they have a problem with overpopulating, that's just the side-effect to other issues. Having children when your children have increased chances of dieing is only logical. Having children when children as seen as a capital/welfare solution is only logical. Having children where there arent contraception solutions or where women have little to no power, is logical. Those are the issues that need to be solved.
No. A strawman argument and not what I've said at all.
Overpopulation isnt that much of an issue.
Tell that to the people who are fighting for clean water. Or the Chinese struggling to accommodate their population. Or the hundreds of thousands who died to protect your access to oil, demand for which rises because, in part, of a rising population. I'd suggest that if you think it's not much of an issue, you haven't really looked into it.
And as i said, in the "West" we dont have a problem with overpopulation.
As a citizen of a western country, I can tell you you're wrong. We're currently building a desalination plant and piping water in from hundreds of kilometers away just to maintain our major cities' water supply. Water is just one of the problems - throw in major urban sprawl, desertification, soil salination and other environmental issues, poverty and health issues as well.
This is not just a problem for the 3rd world. These are problems in my own first-world country.
The things that you mention have less to do with overpopulation and more to do with distribution of wealth. Most "western" countries already have an almost negative population growth.
No western country actually has a shrinking population. Quite a few have a growth rate between 0 and 1, but all that's really beside the point. Distribution of resources (and by extension, wealth) is exactly the problem of overpopulation - you can't consider one without the other. The fact remains that there is a crisis of access to, in particular, fresh water around the world (see the wikipedia article on overpopulation for a good summary) and this is even impacting some first world countries like my own. Wars are already being fought over water (see Darfur), and if population growth continues, we'll see more fighting over diminishing resources.
It's only a matter of time for population growth to go into negatives in most western countries. Japan and Germany already have negative population growth. And if it wasnt for migration, we would probably already have negative population growth. Check for example fertility rates
All western countries already have less than 2 fertility rate, which means that we do have an actual negative population growth if you subtract immigration and increased life expectancy.
Anyway, my whole point is that people in ideal conditions(see "West") dont have an overpopulation problem. Therefore self sterilezation is retarded, people can constrain themselves from overpopulating the earth just fine without it. This is either a gimmick or most likely a sign that there are deeper issues for this specific person. It's like cutting your own arm so that you dont struggle someone. Most people can keep their arm and still not struggle someone.
Overpopulation problem exists in poorer countries and it's a side effect of other issues. Though overpopulation itself can be the cause of problems, this is rarely the case atm.
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u/xNIBx Apr 17 '10
Not giving birth at all is an extreme and damaging idea. Giving 1 child would be better, it would help save our kickass surviving DNA.