Living Within Limits - Chapter 25

Population Control - Why?

As a reminder, the goal of population control is not for its own sake, but to improve (maintain) the prosperity of the living - evolutionarily speaking, to keep a successful species from becoming too successful - consuming itself to its own doom.  More specifically, we wish to replace nature's methods of population control (starvation and disease) with human ones (preferably not nuclear holocaust or biological apocalypse).

Individual Rights or Virtue of Community

Hardin states that it is difficult for us westerners to realize that what we extol as 'Universal Human Rights' are in actuality 'Western Human Rights', which happens to date only three centuries back to John Locke.  The individualism of western society, and the emphasis it places upon the rights of the individual make population control particularly difficult.

In China, 1-child policies were enforced by community groups.  The community groups worked together, through such traditional motivational techniques as shame and morality (items long since out of style here in the West), in order to coerce adherence to law, for the good of all.

Perhaps sometime in the future, China will exhort the West to adopt laws more focused on 'Universal Societal Rights' - and perhaps our own legal system may even one day focus more on greater good, rather than individual rights.

Finally, a good solution...

2.2 kids per couple is approximately the magic number in order to stabilize population growth.  The solution I particularly like was offered by Kenneth Boulding.  The solution is interesting, and important, enough that it will be posted separately.