[Colorado-Valley]

Okay, I'm always agonizing about this problem we have with an exponential human growth rate versus increasingly limited supplies of energy and food. I won't get into specifics so as not to alarm anyone, but there may be a tipping point involved ... and a not a really pleasant one, in my opinion.
So, of course, I've come up with a solution that is effective, profitable and harmless.
A free market for child credits.

Here's the proposal. Every human couple on Earth has the unalienable right to have up to two children. This would stabilize the population at zero growth -- a good thing, since it is currently expanding at about 85 million people a year. In fact, because of unexpected deaths, the population would likely decrease over time because of war, disease, accidents and all kinds of natural disasters.
Many people do not want to have children. I didn't, for instance. But what if there were a free market for my child credits? I could sell my credits to Mormons or Catholics or who ever wants extra kids. If a couple loses a child, they could purchase a credit for another one if they want. Everybody is happy!

Over time, this would decrease the number of humans on the planet to its natural carrying capacity, which is considered about a billion people. Up til now, access to cheap oil and synthetic fertilizer has allowed industrial agriculture to feed about five billion excess people, but cheap oil seems to have been a 20th Century phenomenon.
So, are humans smarter than yeast, as Bob is always asking over at the Oil Drum? Can they, unlike yeast, find a way to voluntarily lower their population in a humane way? The yeast multiply voraciously as long as there is energy in the petri dish, but then fall into a catastrophic die-off. So do all organisms, but they don't have the unique human possibility of "free will" to decide their fate.

Now I realize there are other ways to trim human populations back to a diminished carrying capacity, but to tell you the truth, they're why I've been waking up in a cold sweat at night. I hate human suffering ... especially on what could be such a grand scale.
So what do you think? Child credits for everyone as a way to back away from the cliff?

[zberry]

Why allow 2 kids? It seems to be 1 should be the max, given our present predicament. Allowing 2 doesn't really accomplish much, IMO

[EnergyHog]

We're yeast. I like the child credit idea but it seems like alot of the people that have more than 2 kids are families (or sometimes 1 mom and 5 babies daddy's) on the lower end of the economic scale. These families are not going to pay for credits, they're just going to hump like rabbits, and then what do you do? I suppose you would try to impose a penalty but like I said they're short on cash so... And if you did collect a penalty where would it go? To a corrupt government. So back to my original statement, we're yeast. Free will means we also have the will to not do anything (until it's too late) which I think is the most likely outcome.

[chuck6877]

A solution being worked on for the population problem?:
Sinister people can just release a highly lethal human to human version of the bird flu.
Or even better an airborne ebola virus. Ikes.
In all seriousness, great idea Colorado. I wish we could do this.
1st world countries have steady populations.
The problem is stopping the 3rd world countries from growing so fast. Maybe every country can do what China does?

[Colorado-Valley]

I agree the China solution is probably the best, but it requires a big, authoritarian government.
Americans like "free-market" solutions. This idea isn't any different than the pollution-credit, or the "tranferable development right" that some governments use to direct growth to places that make more sense than property lots way out in the countryside.

We'll probably end up with authoritarian government anyway, because surplus population will eventually end up in "civilian inmate camps," as the government currently calls them.
What's that one site called? "PrisonPlanet.com?"

[Nike62]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Colorado-Valley', 'C')hild credits for everyone as a way to back away from the cliff?

[oddone]

India had a "sterilize-for-cash" experiment a few years ago, they should have expanded it. And the rest of the world should have adopted it.
To curb the world population increase by human intervention we need such drastic measures that they will never happen. IQ-test? Literacy test? Income requirement? Self-sufficiency? Apply condition of passing any of the above and we will have the population problem solved in a few generations. We will however never have the guts nor logistics to do this, so we just have to wait for nature to sort the problem the hard way.

As for the surplus population, when the po(o) hits the fan we can always quarantine or "socially distance" them, possibly to future empty places like Las Vegas and Phoenix.

[gego]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nike62', 'T')here is a lethal side effect: an ageing human race.You should correct the mechanism of child credits with another one: euthanasia for everyone older than (lets say) 60 years...

[Colorado-Valley]

Sometimes I think there might be a sort of Pol Pot extermination campaign, but then I think that the elites might not even bother.
Just let it all crash while videotaping the mayhem for future sociological studies.
The current elites don't really like any of us very much, and will delight in watching the '60s anti-war movement and especially the environmental and liberal types die in agony.
It'll be their nightmare come true. A nasty vision of the final solution.

[rwwff]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gego', 'H')ell, we probably won't even need extermination efforts, as I doubt that most of you could feed or shelter yourselves in a Duncan type electrictrical collapse. Ever lop off a chickens head, or bludgeon a rabbit in the back of his head, or butcher a steer or pig. Probably too many of you have this Bambi view of food sources that will prevent you from taking the actions necessary to survive.

[pepper2000]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') think you're being a little extreme on that one. Survivor, as much as it is just another game show, does illustrate that bambi people, placed in an appropriate environment have little difficulting killing and eating stuff.

[galacticsurfer]

The original title of the thread reminds me of Swift's " A modest Proposal". This might be a good idea in a future where peak food and peak oil coincide with surplus population. Of course that seems a little too "Soylent Green" for most people but as so many people have trouble controlling their reproductive capacity and cannot feed the extra mouths anyway selling them as food to richer neighbours or to the rich in the first world would solve this whole problem of peak food and overpopulation reasonably and painlessly (we can always slaughter children in a painless and merciful manner of course).

Being of both Irish and English parentage personally I appreciate the ironies very well from both sides of this particular satiric essay from Swift.

The more things change the more they stay the same.

[rwwff]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pepper2000', '
')Your point is well-taken, that human beings may demonstrate better adaptive ability than we have so far assumed. But life in the future will not be like "Survivor".

[holmes]

This might work well. Really the only serious laws in powerdown are associated with breeding rates. Population issues. Also the more energy used the more one must pay. The basis of Ecological Economics. ALL costs included into the economic analysis. So advanced and so intelligent really. True compassion.

[grabby]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('zberry', 'W')hy allow 2 kids? It seems to be 1 should be the max, given our present predicament. Allowing 2 doesn't really accomplish much, IMO

[rwwff]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('grabby', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('zberry', 'W')hy allow 2 kids? It seems to be 1 should be the max, given our present predicament. Allowing 2 doesn't really accomplish much, IMO

[antispec]

i will sell **** to bush for five falling us dollars

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nike62', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Colorado-Valley', 'C')hild credits for everyone as a way to back away from the cliff?

[kam30en]

If you were going to have population control, one child would have to be the rule. I think a one child law, together with zero immigration, would be the best thing america (and the world) could do. And if people were willing to sell there right to the one child, even better. The poor would have less kids for once. This is in exactly what Malthus wanted, the poor to stop having kids.