in principle I agree with you, however i'd be interested to know how you define "responsible" in this context.

42

Its kinda hard to create a rigid definition. But I dont like the view certain people have today that the only way to have kids is to have a lot of money so they can travel, buy stuff and have kids. I think its selfish.

Im thinking if having one more kid is going to make me go out less cause of money I will still have the kid. And that is responsible.

I have to say I am religious so I see family as a sacred thing. For me, to have the government tell me that I cant have as many kids as I want is a big no-no unless they are starving, homeless, etc. Even then, its still tricky to know what exactly can they do.

I believe obviously in having kids that I can support. Im the youngest of 4, but things being what they are today I dont know if I ever will be able to afford having 4 kids myself. But I will certainly try.

This is a complicated matter.

16bil

It really comes down to the technology that allows us to survive - food creation, water acquisition and shelter. We've made great strides in each area which is allowing us to grow beyond what we thought was capacity.

I think that the reasonable cap would be around 11-12 billion, given the kinds of technological advances we've seen. Do I advocate getting that large? No. We're too populated (in terms of what we need) as it is. Fortunately, the growth of population is slowly falling, which is a good sign.

If you wanted to control the population, you would stop sending so much food aid to Africa. The rest of the world would take care of itself. Also, if America and other countries could remove themselves from dependancy on mideast oil, it would stymie their growth as well, as the middle east and Africa account for the vast majority of population increases:

@stickball

wouldnt it be better to help make countries more developed?

the graphs you showed indicate that the most developed nations are also the ones with the lower birth rates

SciFi-

The problem is that we've been helping them become more developed by providing massive amounts of capital to those nations in the way of food, money, and various other things. The problem is that their governments are very corrupt, and have never used the aid to develop anything other than their own power structure, so it is rather hard to argue that external government aid can really help them develop.

I would agree that developing them would help, but how do you develop a continent that has absolutely no interest in becoming developed?

hmm, you make a good point, maybe we could look at ways of helping that bypass the governments (if thats possible)

you guys could go back to colonizing them. worked well last time.

Yep.

Seriously though... things will probably sort themselves out naturally, unless we find a way to increase the technology in a lot of countries currently ruled by evil dictators... I think it'd be tough to do, and nobody is going want to help said dictators.

Also, they'd have to actually... help.