World population is rising at a rate twice as that of death what could be done:D

[SAND]

:O It is a funny but a very alarming fact that the worlds population is rising very quickly each minutes there are so many births that now countries are begining to face shortage of food and water, families are striving to keep up with everyday demands from there offsprings and so on... And there is one thing that makes me mad that is the rich dudes dont like to have more then 2 kids where as the poor people have moe kids why is this so? Nature sure is weird and what do you think could be done to control the population I mean we cannot mess with the forces of nature although there are ways to control it! I mean couples like to have sex or whatever for fun so condoms were introduced but nobody uses them they want to have it for pleasure but make the excuse that they want it to raise there family and it is so true then they cant afford to loose there respect so they continue lying and all and before you know it you have a billion kids! What do you think could be done to stop it or lets just say minimise it without influencing our daily lives lol...??

[Tatar Khan]

Well we can just start 3rd world war and that will do it. Or we can wait and let the excess population die off from starvation.

It is right that in wealthier countries the birth rates are down and population growth is often low, 0 or negative. The reason is that in wealthier countries people wait longer before having kids. Careers are more important to be build first, so the average female would have kids after 30. How many can they produce before the age factor will make it risky to have kids? Also here people consider the expense of kids (diapers to university) so they decide whether they will be able to afford to do all that for the kid and than decide whether to have one.

In poor countries kids often mean security at old age and so having more means there are higher chances that at least one will survive help out during the life time and provide for parents when they get old. Plus poor countries tend to be more religious so condoms and abortions would be seen as bad things by their religious leaders and so they won't use them.

[faster]

It's true that many people living in poverty have more children, and that a lot of the reason is that they presume that only a couple of them will survive to adulthood.  If they only have one or two, and they should die of the many causes poor people are vulnerable to, then the parents could be even worse off when they get old.  Look at some of the Chinese parents, with only one child, per Chinese law, who lost their only child in the earthquake and may now be too old, or too flattened and disheartened, to produce another.  For those past reproductive years, their old age is already doomed.

I live in Mexico and have had an empowerment project going with the indigenous Huichol for the past nine years.  They now have their own nonprofit, which is a powerful tool for them.  They are what might be called "endangered," because their water supplies have parasites and most are sick all the time.  They have lots of kids, but the mortality rate is high, so their numbers are actually decreasing.  Yet I've had some people say to me, sneeringly, that if they are so poor, they should learn how to use condoms.  That's unspeakably ignorant and bigoted, in light of the realities here.  It's especially disgusting, because American men didn't start using condoms themselves, even though they were "knocking up" lots of girls they had no intention of marrying, until AIDS entered the picture.  THEN they started using condoms - strictly for their OWN protection.  To them, causing pregnancy was entirely the girl's problem, not theirs.  Which is, of course, lying to themselves, and they know it.

Making a new human being is a matter which merits great concern and a powerful sense of responsibility - from both people.  Wherever this isn't so, the culture degenerates.  As our Western cultures have been doing for years now.

In places like the States, people know they can keep their kids alive well into adulthood, so married couples don't need to make as many.  And they also consider the costs of raising kids and only have as many as they feel they can comfortably afford.  That doesn't keep lots of men from making new human beings "on the side," as it were.

Another cause, too, is polygamy.  In this overpopulated world, where one man can sire 40-100 children, is downright obscene.  Then the male children will grow up and do likewise, and then their kids...

If we could change how people look at sexual relations, we could control population without harsh things, like starvation, widespread disease, or war, to bring down our numbers.  The problem is that almost nobody would want to DO it, particularly the men.

What we really need is the reverse of polygamy:  polyandry, it's called, where a woman has more than one husband.  The men would be able to fully indulge their sexual needs, because a woman can "accommodate" many sexual acts in even one day.  As long as both men are healthy and neither starts "whoring" on the side, disease isn't likely to become a problem, either.  A woman can only HAVE so many babies in her lifetime.  They could set up a plan which would insure that each man would be able to reproduce at least once.  We can't bypass the innate human desire to reproduce.  To do so would be unfair.

Families would have more than one breadwinner.  Children would have at least one male in the household to act as father, even if one or more of the others chose to divorce and seek different wives.  Kids would no longer have to be raised, abandoned by their fathers, in penury.  They could all have a stable family lifestyle.

Trouble is, the men would go berzerk at the idea.  They are raised to believe that sex is their birthright, that women can be used at will - at least when they can talk them into it - whether either of them is married or not.  Males think they have a right to "spread their seed" or "sow their wild oats," and are not likely to appreciate having that absolute liberty taken away.  Even for something that would serve their sexual needs quite amply.

Polyandry, applied globally, would quickly bring our planet's overburden of humanity down, and in a very humane way.  Nor is there any reason whatever that it couldn't be made to work very well indeed.

It won't be done, though, and the only reason for it is:  attitudes.  I guess most people would prefer war, famine and pestilence over polyandry.

It's the best option, yet it is the very LAST one anyone, or at least ALL males, would want to consider.

Are you aware that there are places in this world where young boys grow up DREAMING of the day they can marry and have children to care for?  It's true.  The very idea of impregnating a woman and walking out on her would be appalling to them.  These are indigenous people, who believe there is no immortality except through one's offspring.  Therefore, it is the males who want marriage most of all!  To die without issue is to die utterly.  An unthinkable thing, in those cultures.

We have the reverse attitudes in the Western cultures (some of the Eastern ones, too!), and they contribute directly to overpopulation.  But they also hurt US.  They definitely are extremely harmful to the children, who will grow up with the damage to their own values as a result of the harm done by being abandoned by their fathers, or growing up in broken homes, in poverty.  We give sex all the priorities, and the resulting kids, though welcomed by married couples, are a darned nuisance in other situations.

To address overpopulation, then, we must first address our own cultural ATTITUDES.  We can't honestly pretend that there's nothing we can do about overpopulation.  Because I've just told you a perfectly workable way it could be done.

Now how do people feel about that workable way?  Ahem.

[Tatar Khan]

Even with unwanted pregnancies western population is declining. And in USA people do not go off to have sex left and right all the time. The easiest way for world population growth to standardize is through getting more medicine to poor regions thus increasing the survivability of the children there.

[SandChigger]

Western culture is degenerating?

Oh dear...that'll put a bit of a crimp on the tea we're having Saturday afton. :(

[XaarKhan]

I wouldn't say its degenerating, it's just changing and adapting.

Staying stuck with old habbits isn't always the best thing to do.

[SandChigger]

You mean like nuns, right?

Some of their habits seems fairly old and worn out. ;)

(But high tea on a Saturday afternoon...dammit some traditions shall never die! THERE'LL ALWAYS BE AN ENGLAND! GOD SAVE THE TEA!)