this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2024
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Unpopular Opinion

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Continuing to increase the world population is absolutely nuts.

*I'm not interested in gradual natural declines from whatever factors. 2 max implemented now.

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[–] RedditWanderer@lemmy.world 64 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Thats's just the dumb way to do it, because that's not how populations work. Educate people and allow them to thrive in society, they will have less children on their own.

Youre perpetuating a myth, not an unpopular opinion.

[–] HappycamperNZ@lemmy.world 49 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Hard disagree - you're effectively controlling people's body autonomy the same way as abortion bans. Let alone the confusion of differently structured families (what if the woman has two and a new husband wants one??).

Controlling wastefulness, development for the future and education on the other hand- absolutely. Side effect is that better education usually leads to smaller families, and that's before you also include sex ed and access to contraception.

[–] PP_BOY_@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago

Agreed. OP is choosing the stick over the carrot. The truth is that increasing education has a direct negative correlation to birth rates, and has like a million bonus side effects too

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[–] Clent@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You can help by having zero.

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[–] Trashcan@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just curious, you do know that such a rule would eventually reduce the human race to nill? Natural and unnatural deaths requires 2,X to remain at same level.

Btw, you should watch the British series Utopia

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(British_TV_series)

Such a good series.

[–] Jilanico@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Developed nations are seeing declining birth rates. I don't think we need to do anything.

Every time someone raised the alarm about population growth, some unforeseen innovation made it a non-issue.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism

[–] XTL@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 year ago

Yet population explosion is worse than ever. Only some of the developed nations are improving, though they are suffering the delayed effects of old population explosion (boomers).

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[–] NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

You may stay unpopular.

[–] RBWells@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

No. It's working out fine. Limits cause odd knock on effects when people prefer one sex over the other, and population growth is moderating now, the reason population still grows is old people living longer, it's not too many kids.

You need an average of 2 or less not a mandate.

If all women tomorrow said they were on strike, no more kids, at all, ever, are you going to mandate pregnancy? Who decides? Who is making these rules?

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Attached is a graph of global population projections from Wikipedia. You can see the median projection forecast a plateau and drop this century and half project more significant drops. I find the drops more likely because they correlate the affect of development and human rights on the birth rate rather than the naive “assume nothing changes” of the continued growth projections

More development, human rights, education of women have a proven history of people choosing a reduced birth rate. We can approach a more sustainable population simply by making everyone’s life better

[–] wahming@monyet.cc 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm mostly concerned at how many clueless people upvoted this dumb take

I think it should be upvoted as it's a very unpopular opinion.

[–] IvanOverdrive@lemm.ee 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Children aren't the problem. Late stage capitalism is. We have the technology and resources to feed everyone in the world but we don't. Because it's not profitable.

We reward billionaires more wealth than they could ever spend in their lives. Why? For accidentally being in the right place and time to take advantage of an opportunity. We pretend they're special, but it really comes down to mostly luck. That wealth could lift humanity out of poverty.

We need to make a new system that rewards people for doing what needs to be done, not for what's profitable.

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[–] the_q@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think people shouldn't have any kids.

The real right answer

All children should be kept secret until adulthood and then have to pretend to have been born before x year. It would build character.

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, this will certainly be an unpopular opinion, so at least it matches the community! :-)

[–] HappycamperNZ@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The top two responses are opposite - definitely sits right.

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

People get children without being a couple.

What even is the definition of a couple and why should that determine the number?

[–] XTL@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Good point. The obvious, and unpopular, take would probably be per uterus insteadnof per couple, since that is almost completely trackable, unlike paternity.

[–] HappycamperNZ@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ooo, do women have the power or are they a commodity valued on ability to have kids. Will this be a boon for feminine rights or a massive step backwards.

I smell a new post

[–] NoIWontPickaName@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] HappycamperNZ@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Don't forget to like and ring that bell

(I felt dirty even typing that as a joke)

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[–] admiralteal@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Violation of body autonomy is of the absolute most profound violations and the state has no right to do that. Whether or not people SHOULD have kids is irrelevant; even if they shouldn't, there exists no acceptable power lever to prevent it.

It's also a solution in search of a problem. Human population growth is already slowing and will likely plateau in my lifetime before starting a trend of retreat. Assuming we aren't all dead by way of the collapsing climate already.

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[–] SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, that certainly is an unpopular opinion. Do I upvote or downvote?

[–] JustMy2c@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

Just inform him that only a very few very poor countries still INCREASE IN POP. the rest are shrinking

[–] drmeanfeel@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

Who animated this shambling, tired malthusian corpse

[–] Oneeightnine 8 points 1 year ago

I already have two and cannot understand why anyone would want anymore...that said, no.

[–] inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Well this sure is an unpopular opinion. Mostly because there is no way to define or enforce this and a draconian limitation of individual rights to a nonexistent problem, over population is a smoke screen. There is more than enough land and resources to support billions more people.

This is literally captilsism 101, if the rich have you angry at other humans that don't even exist yet you will spend less time on disturbing the resources they are hoarding.

Thinking it's easier to enforce humanity wide birth control than to tax and build houses in the empty areas is dillusional.

[–] conciselyverbose@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

Maybe start by not making people who don't want babies have them...

[–] 5714@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 year ago

Population control just ends up as trying to control marginalised bodies. Stop trying to mess with uteri.

[–] NoIWontPickaName@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

I have 1 bio but 6 total from other relationships that I became dad to.

Where am I on your pogrom?

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (11 children)

I'm honestly in favor of it. Before everyone jumps down my throat, I'm not saying how China did it was the right way.

But we are barreling towards a very unsustainable future. This century is going to be very dire for these next generations. We simply do not have the resources.

There are some great "hacks" I'll call them. GMOs, urban farming, etc, but those just treat the symptoms.

I'm not having kids and this is one of the big reasons why. My family thinks I'm crazy but from my point of view I'm just bringing kids into this world to suffer, so if I do that then it's only for selfish reasons. And with that line of thought I think people who willingly have more than, oh, let's say 3 kids are selfish.

It's harsh, but seriously look around. It's unmaintainable, we can't keep going at infinite growth.

Unfortunately it will never be implemented because there is no way to do it without bias. Sterilizations have always had bias, along race, class, religion, and those I'm against. This is more me yelling into the void "For the love of God stop having kids! You do not need 5 kids! We can't continue with this exponential curve on this one tiny planet!"

[–] StereoTrespasser@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The problem has never been the amount of resources. The problem is distribution of resources is heavily skewed to a few.

[–] Damage@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 year ago

If the abundant resources are obtained through unbridled agriculture (deforestation) and excessive amounts of ecosystem-destroying pesticides, maybe they're not sustainable

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[–] Chetzemoka@startrek.website 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Already happening.

The only thing you need to do to accomplish this faster is educate girls (making women valuable for things other than childbearing), provide access to birth control and family planning education, and reduce child mortality (reducing the inclination to have "spare children" to replace all the ones you know will die).

Bangladesh provides a good example of these factors at play:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.GROW?locations=BD

"World’s population is projected to nearly stop growing by the end of the century"

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/06/17/worlds-population-is-projected-to-nearly-stop-growing-by-the-end-of-the-century/

And the collective human fertility rate (births per woman) has been falling for decades:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN

[–] Lath@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago
[–] corroded@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Unlike just about everyone else here, I agree with this 100%. Population does not need to increase. Take either men or women and limit their number of children to 2; that would ensure a 1-to-1 replacement with the exception of early deaths. Once population decreases, maybe increase the limit to 3 if the numbers support it.

I'm not sure where I heard this quote, but it holds true here: "Save the earth; don't give birth."

[–] Lifecoach5000@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

By default I would normally agree with you, but after reading some people’s responses, now I’m not so sure. The internet is still cool in that regard.

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