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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006 Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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^ David, April 1st was yesterday.
Can you imagine the outcry? We are talking blood in the streets here, and not on a small scale. No government on Earth could keep the lid on something like that, not even North Korea. You'd be talking about the ex-government by Tuesday.
In any case, your plan is way too simplistic: we need children to survive - just not so many of them. The time for sterilisation is after you reach replacement level (roughly 2 per couple). You certainly can't do it before.
As for your silly claim that it "grinds my gears", where on Earth did you drag that dumb idea up from? I don't particularly object to the idea myself - I've never much wanted children and had a vasectomy in my twenties, which was (for me) a perfectly sensible thing to do - I just have at least some vague connection to the social and political and medical reality that this lunatic scheme of yours is so wildly impractical, inhumane, and counter-productive that I'd not really have expected it to be proposed even by our friendly resident clueless nutcases (no names, you figure out who they are), never mind an apparently intelligent man like you.
Fair dinkum, I'm gobsmacked.
You'd better check your calendar. _________________ �Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. |
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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If any government or leader attempted that, I'd be first in line to end them. By ballot or by bullet, that shit would never fly. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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Perhaps I'm thinking of this in too abstract a mannerperhaps most people would be as viscerally outraged as you two and see such a practice as vile and inhumane. Not me. I don't see fertility as being a basic human right, and as someone who was circumcised at 8 days of age I don't see performing operations on newborn babies to be that horrible either. Perhaps the problem is that you're not taking the "lesser of two evils" approachif we ever find ourselves facing extinction because of overpopulation, then you'll see real cruelty, suffering and degradation of human rights. If those were the two options, which would you choose?
Perhaps, as you say, there's a third: education, free birth control, abolition of theocratic authoritarianism. It really does sound great, but consider me unconvinced: that's the sane long-term scheme that should have been enacted a century ago. Nowadays, will it really be enough to stop us from overpopulating the planet? I hope so, but I can't help but get the feeling that when the real crises roll around, it'll be too little too late. _________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Location: somewhere
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David wrote: | Tannin wrote: | Forced sterilisation, quite apart from the serious human rights implications, is hugely impractical. It has never been done successfully, and most likely never will - you'd need to bring it about at gunpoint and you'd never get enough people to hold all those guns. At best, you could have a massive civil war (which would be one way of bringing the population down for a short while, I suppose). |
Has it ever been tried? I can't imagine it'd be too hardthe vast majority of babies are born in hospital, so it could be done then and there without the parents even knowing (though, ideally, they would know and it would simply be common knowledge that most babies will be sterile). I'm not talking about castration or anything horrible like thatjust a quick vasectomy, or pill, or whatever other crazy medicine we have in 100 years' time. Not sure why this grinds your gears so much! Is fertility really such a fundamental human right?
One of the reasons I suggest this is that there'll probably come a time in the future when we're all sterile and babies are just created in test tubes as needed. We may not even be talking that far off in the future. |
Well this is one of the most mind blowing posts I've ever read
I don't know where to start
So your not planning a family yourself? _________________ You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Location: somewhere
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David wrote: | Perhaps I'm thinking of this in too abstract a mannerperhaps most people would be as viscerally outraged as you two and see such a practice as vile and inhumane. Not me. I don't see fertility as being a basic human right, and as someone who was circumcised at 8 days of age I don't see performing operations on newborn babies to be that horrible either. Perhaps the problem is that you're not taking the "lesser of two evils" approachif we ever find ourselves facing extinction because of overpopulation, then you'll see real cruelty, suffering and degradation of human rights. If those were the two options, which would you choose?
Perhaps, as you say, there's a third: education, free birth control, abolition of theocratic authoritarianism. It really does sound great, but consider me unconvinced: that's the sane long-term scheme that should have been enacted a century ago. Nowadays, will it really be enough to stop us from overpopulating the planet? I hope so, but I can't help but get the feeling that when the real crises roll around, it'll be too little too late. |
Why can't we just have the 2 kid policy for everyone? Along with car crashes, epidemics, wars, disappearing planes and tsunami's we be right in a year or 2 _________________ You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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The thing is, I see one-child policies and the like to be not only much more difficult to enforce but also much more horrible to enforce (what do you do to people who break the rules? What about unplanned pregnancies?). Unfortunately, these aren't hypotheticals: China has already given us an example of how such a policy might operate.
My scheme, in case it's unclear, is really just sci-fi dystopian musing. Obviously I'm not advocating for it to happen now. The trouble is, if overpopulation does ever threaten the survival of the human raceas many people say it willdrastic policies may need to be enacted, and I really can't think of anything more humane than my proposal (I can certainly think of much less humane things). _________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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Read a good little fiction novlette from Matthew Reilly over Easter. Bastard released it as an e book in 3 episodes so you'd read the first then have to wait for the second to be available. He's a very good writer, I like his stuff. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Morrigu
Joined: 11 Aug 2001
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A Thousand Splendid Suns written by Khaled Hosseini - I loved Kite Runner and loved this one too! _________________ “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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Are you talking about an animal, vegetable or mineral? |
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