Do you think the worlds population is out of control?

Well, it is pretty over populated resources wise.
Like we’ll have used up non-renewable resources quicker than we think.
But tbh, what do you want to happen?
Do what China’s done and set it to one child per family?

I don’t think so, we just do not make very good use of the space that has been provided.
I hope I am around when waterworld happens for real.

I think you should need to get a license (from a non government source) to have so many kids(1, 2,3, whatever many)
also if you can’t afford to feed yourself then you can’t have children.

@judochop omg I REALLY want that to happen in our life time too, it will be SO cool :D

I think it is consumerism that has gotten out of control. We could all get by just fine with the population as it is now, but stripping the planet of resources so that we can toss our our cell phones every couple of years is a real problem.

I heard recently that if the Chinese developed an American sense of consumerism, the planet could not sustain the products that would be necessary.

current population: 6,877,293,099

No, there is plenty of room. It’s the greed of people that’s the problem. A small amount of the worlds popualtion owns most of the wealth and controls power. They don’t want to lose it. If money was more evenly distributed then people would flourish even more.

I remember when I was little. I thought the world would fill up with to many people and no one would have room. Wow was I off. Have you been to Wyoming?

YES. I think in this day and age every unwanted child is totally preventable and a tragedy. Have you read “Freakanomics”? Crime and murder went down as soon as birth control pills were introduced. The population is too much right now because people are slow to change their habits and our primary habit is indulgent consumption.

@nocountry2: <3 Freakanomics!

It’s not a problem. I was at a presentation recently, which showed that it is likely that we will have the opposite problem: too few people. The world’s population is projected to start plummeting in fifty years or so.

Think of it. Italy, Japan, Russia, and the US already are not having enough children to replace the population. As other nations become wealthier, this will become an international trend.

Our children are not going to be able to find workers to do the scut work they need. No health aides, no gardeners, no day laborers, no babysitters. Of course, if your nation is a popular destination for immigrants, you might be ok, but if your nation’s reputation is sunk, because you are inhospitable to immigrants, and you like to bomb the rest of the world, you may have a good deal of trouble getting the labor you need in a rapidly shrinking labor market.

I think the world’s population of jerks is out of control

There are resources. For the last while, we’ve had the ability to take care of pretty much everyone, if only the resources were distributed fairly evenly. This would mean that Americans (in particular) would have to give up some of their cars and lattes, though, and that would be too much of a hardship. (Let’s forget for a while that to an African living on $200 a year, it doesn’t look like much of a hardship.)

On the other hand, there are only so many resources. We seem to be speeding through oil in particular, and also natural gas. In the past, when a society ran out of wood, they either collapsed or found an alternative like coal for their energy needs. People seem to think that when we run down on oil, we’ll just pop back up with something like solar or nuclear power. In this case, though, oil is particularly special because it is not only fuel, but food. We have a big population in part because oil made food cheap and plentiful. When oil becomes scarce and/or too expensive, we can expect the next Malthusian catastrophe.

So, do we have too many people? It depends upon the carrying capacity of our resources and the quality of things like water and air. Even with a lower population, too few resources for that population can still mean bad things. If and when there are more people than can be supported by this planet, it will correct itself. I hope it’s not as painful as I believe it will be.

No. We’re good to go, be fruitful, and multiply for a few years more.

I find this concern more interesting now because (assuming the trend isn’t correcting itself) doesn’t this line of thought justify global atrocities such as war and genocide, deprivation of health care, food and water not to mention the martyrdom of stalwart defenders of population control? That would solve the problem pretty quickly. We wouldn’t have to wait 80 years for a generation of dinks to die off. (Rhetorically speaking,) are you willing to die from a preventable or curable disease to benefit population control? Should we have to get licenses to get life saving health care? Maybe the young people get it and the old people don’t because they don’t contribute as much and they’re going to die sooner anyway? Would it be okay, maybe, to harm people’s immune systems or make people infertile or less fertile by introducing toxins into food and water supplies?

Are we screwed? We, the human race, will probably survive, but maybe “the people in this room” won’t. That is comforting, right?

I’m not trying to be an a-hole, just taking the argument to an endpoint.

@daloon “Our children are not going to be able to find workers to do the scut work they need”

In 50 years time? Shouldn’t we be able to have at least some of the shitty work delegated to machines, a sort of second Industrial Age?

@kevbo

and don’t forget cigarette companies, CIA drug smuggling, the war on drugs which prevents people from utilizing one of the most versatile medicines in the world (marijuana).

Interesting.

@ark_a_dong: when you’re elderly, and can no longer cook or clean for yourself, or even go to the bathroom, do you want a machine to be helping you?

Even if we could build such a thing by then, that idea fills me with horror. There are some ideas in science fiction that really are non-starters.

In any case, machines already do too much for our health. Cars are a great example. People will drive two blocks to a store, instead of walking. People will drive a mile to work, instead of taking a bike (or walking, for that matter). There are so many other examples of how “labor-saving” devices actually hurt us, but I’ll stop there.

@daloon

Oh, I meant ‘scut’ work, as in repetitive, hard-labor type work. You raise a good point, though.

I think part of the reason people view robots or machines as frightening, cold, distant, metallic, is that lots of people find it hard to even be alone by themselves. To make that read easier, imagine in a household with a single wife where she has a robot do all of her cleaning and cooking. Not only is she alone, but she’s in the house with some sort of representation of something human, yet not living at all.

I think your face is out of control but again that’s just my opinion…

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6350303.ece