This just means that the wealthy will be able to reproduce with greater ease. Kinda like an aristocracy. This system does not ensure that worthy people reproduce, just the wealthy. Having wealth does not mean you are biologically hardy or worth duplicating anyway. Look at the Hapsburg chin. That's what happens when the rich only breed with each, which is the exact outcome of a pay-for-children scheme.
Pay who? What possible government agency would you trust not to exploit this immense power?
Either way, this idea will never work in conservative devleoped countries. If a person falls pregnant but cannot pay for it, is an abortion the next step? Or do you want to go a step back and sterilise the poor so they cannot fall pregnant in the first place?
Money is a terrible way to determine someones reproductive fitness. It just means they will be able to afford lifelong care of their children, but a wealthy nation can make that determination itself. The wealthy are also the greatest consumer of resources; if over consumption is a concern, it doesn't make sense to isolate reproduction to the greediest.
Its been discussed but birth rates drop when healthcare for children improves. This is done not through individual wealth but through a wealthy society funding research into causes of infant mortality, etc. If you want people to make less shitty humans, make the humans they do have a 'guaranteed' lifelong investment, not something where they have to hedge their bets and add another few children because some will inevitably be lost.
I do like the idea of people needing to be 'accredited' before they have kids. Humans should know the basics of budgeting, health and nutrition, education, etc. and there could be a system whereby folks with a paucity of thsoe skills are able to attain them before being able to have children. How this is enforced is where I get a bit vague though...
Your argument is a red herring. I never said money determined fitness. I said that only people who can afford to have children should be having them.
All of your questions have already been answered by the one government in the world who
successfully enacted a one-child policy, and that was China. You can have one child, nobody will stop you. If you want another, then be prepared to paid a huge fine and possibly not have credentials for your child. The negative incentives have to be very high to stop people from breeding otherwise they will just do it. I look at families like octomom or the Christians who are still having 20 children and I want to vomit.
The enforcement part is negotiable. I think it can be done. It already has been done. There is no Constitutional law on the books that says the government can't mandate reproductive controls.
What you point out is true... when health care, education, free access to contraception and abortion are given, birth rates drop. But do you think that can happen as long as religious people are around? No. What I'm suggesting is a necessary evil to save our planet.
Ah, I see. So you've downgrade kidnapping and forced operations to rendering children stateless through no fault of their own.
You know, I don't think I care to discuss politics or what is right and wrong with you any further. I'm out.
The morality of reproductive controls is overshadowed by the immorality of what large numbers of humans are doing to this planet. We are genociding thousands upon thousands of animal species and making this planet uninhabitable for all future life. It has to stop. Humans are the problem and humans in high numbers.
The calculations have already been done on this. The planet can comfortably sustain about a billion humans at a high standard of living indefinitely without destroying the legacy of the natural world.
So you can whine about "right and wrong" but nature doesn't care about your feelings. Nature is dying.
I'm inferring that you are feeling overwhelmed by mass media and suffering from its effects (by inferring, here, I mean inferring), what has brought you to the conclusion that everyone is stupid except for you? Do you not realize that this is a stupid reason to base a premise on? Why are you making a supposition that you desire to have the answers to, when no-one does - a convolution of issues that have no specificity/reason - that no-one can answer, seems like the problems of Sysiphus, are on you? Why... am curious?
Please quote where I said everyone is stupid except for me. That's what
others have accused me of in this thread because they have reading comprehension problems.
K, so back to reason and argument, what is stupid about people? ... and how can an argument be based on a nebulous, and subjective, generalization?
I already defined my terms, more than once. I won't do so again. I'm also not interested in your lengthy cerebral analysis of stupidity.
China, civilized? lol Id rather be surrounded by the "Stupid" than the people who think they are clever but just talk bollocks.
Have you ever been to China? Lived there? Learned the language? Studied the politics, as well as their social and economic system? I didn't think so.
I have done all of those things.
Disappointing to see that this thread apparently wasn't the result of an honest exasperation at the self destructive tendencies of the human race, but in fact just another iteration of the same old bitter resentments that others who are "less deserving" should not have certain freedoms forcibly removed from them.
I mean, why should we, the unstupid, the enlightened, superior race of the world, who work and pay our taxes, have to pay for those ignorant subhumans to sit around breeding and living lives of easy, undeserved luxury?
/scarcasm, in case that wasn't obvious...
Foreigner, have you considered that perhaps being "stupid" is not the panacea of ignorant, undeserved bliss that you seem to assume it is, and in fact is it's own curse, one that no amount of children, benefits, or undeserved handouts from the more compassionate nation states of the world can make up for?
Please also consider that being more "smart", as you seem to assume that you must be, is not an indisputable indicator of personal moral superiority, as, again, you seem to think it is, and in fact a gift, which was given to you by the cosmic welfare state of an inscrutable and chaotic universe.
Rather than sitting around working yourself into a senseless, bitter rage about the injustice that those who are less deserving than yourself are not being made to suffer for their stupidity, how about you channel some of that energy into using your own supposed intelligence to help those who were less fortunate than you have been in the cosmic lottery of mind.
As far as hands that you could have been dealt in the game of life go, having to "handle stupid people" is pretty low on the list of problems you could have, and pales in comparison to the problems that actually being stupid would bring. You can handle stupid people, and if you are indeed as smart as you think you are, you should be able to find a way to let go of this unjust bitterness and resentment that you currently feel towards them. Suck it up.
There's a lot of assumptions here being made about me, as well as
100% incorrect assertions about statements I've made. Again, reading comprehension problems. It's a shame that you took so much time to reply to me yet your statements are all framed on things I never said.
Let me reiterate: I am in favour of controlling humanity's reproduction rate by any means possible in order to save this planet from ecological collapse and the genocide of thousands of species. In the presence of "freedom", people show utter stupidity and lack of responsibility.
My entire OP is actually a lament on the harms humanity is doing to this world, a world I care about, a world that I place as a higher priority than even my own life. I want to see our numbers cut back significantly, and I am not willing to wait for the talking heads to get their ideologies straight. We don't have time. We have 10-20 years max to stop a climate change roller coaster that will kill us and our way of life.
People keep rebutting my argument as though I am saying I am smarter than everyone else, and that most other people are stupid. I never said that, not once.
That's what you're saying.
I also don't care how stupid people suffer. It's not my problem. If they don't have the self-control to stop breeding, then someone else has to enact that control for them. It's that simple.
