I apologise if the purpose of my thread were misinterpreted. I am not certain that population control is ethical and my intention was more to discuss that, if it was accepted, how it could be achieved.
I believe it can be however. Offering money for sterilization is not the same as people selling their legs for cigarettes. Surely there is a way to increase artificially the cost of having children, in a way that is fair across the planet? For example, perhaps you define it in terms of GDP for a given country (or half a days average wage in that country). Or even take it down to an individual level, as a child income tax. You then distribute all the money collected amongst those who don’t.
I don’t buy the “telling foreigners what to do” argument at all. You could use that argument to say that Americans have no right to expect china to keep a lid on greenhouse emissions, because Americans burn more. What about the paying of subsidies to Brazilian farmers not to cut down the amazon, so we don’t have to replant our forests? We use economic incentives to change behaviour in all sorts of ways, within borders and across them, so why is this any different?
Many people in the developed world have children FOR economic reasons. We just need to shift the economic balance in the favour of not doing so. Everyone has their price at which they consider themselves better off for their sacrifice, so why not give people the opportunity to achieve that in a way that helps everyone else? Money is usually the fairest way of attributing value, because it’s transferable.
Was a time when food ran out the population would fall and that was accepted. Now human life has become highly fetishized, ways around death are always found and food production increased. Now there is the atmosphere and limited stocks of oil, rare earth metals, and everything else to consider. There is no longer one fail safe mechanism that can intervene to bring down population, and until one is reached, the stretching of other means will continue to cause death and suffering for many more, whether it’s through increased opportunities for war or disease.
Personally i think the arguments of how are more interesting than the if. For example, how does a sterilization policy avoid the risks of gender imbalance?
