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kaigouor a philosopher, or a historian.
Okay, the theories on world population control are pretty diverse, and as far as I know, China is the only country (so far) to actually attempt some kind of a major population control. In contrast, Japan's population is holding steady and/or decreasing minutely, as a result of the economic pressures and social changes resulting in people waiting longer to have children, having fewer children, and some folks not bothering at all.
But here are the primary situations facing the worldbuilding experiment I'm working on:
1. the population is significantly higher than the resources can support
2. the government (secular) has been forced to institute controls on the birth rate
3. for various reasons, a significant # of the population is sterile
Without sitting down and figuring out numbers, I'm postulating that if the death rate continues at a steady pace (barring sudden natural disasters and war), it's still too low to balance out the birth rate against the actual population. So, more deaths required, fewer births allowed, until the population reaches a point that's feasible and manageable against the number of resources.
China, currently, has a huge number of baby girls up for adoption, who have been abandoned to the government's care. Part of the feasibility of doing this is that there are other countries who have resources/room for the children. If, however, that were not an option, I'd think the government would be forced to clamp down harder, rather than have the burden of unwanted children shifted onto them. I do know that a Chinese friend told me that although she's a Chinese citizen, she may have as many children as she wants (especially while out of the country, and it helps that she's educated middle-class for China). The clincher is not that her children will be forcibly removed, but that if she returns to China with her two sons, she will lose all health insurance/support, education options, etc, for her second child. As far as the government would be concerned, her second child simply would not exist; China's cost of living is apparently quite high in contrast to possible incomes, so the cost makes such an option completely out of the question for 99.9% of the population. (I'm disregarding, of course, the issue of minorities being exempt from this rule, as well as the fact that my friend could have two sons because she was outside China when they were born and thus out from under the government's control.)
What are the theories on overpopulation? Would such a situation result in anarchy? I've posited a lottery setup for potential parents taking their turn at a chance to have children - "this year, seventy-three children can be born; seventy-three fertile couples will have a chance to concieve; those who cannot will be removed from the lotteries and the unborn # added to next year's lottery". Might a black market situation where the mafia hires itself out to slaughter/destroy large neighborhoods in hopes of introducing more deaths to raise the # of parental couples selected in the lottery? I can't think of any historical examples of such, to demonstate that such callous disregard could occur on the level required, if the proportion were greater than one to one, say, five deaths for every birth. CP has pointed out that even now, we have a recurring pattern of negligence for the elderly - cutting back medicare, attempting to privatize social security - and wouldn't the same possibly occur for those people ranked as 'neutrals' (sterile by birth, drug exposure or malnutrition)? That would shift the gender wars dramatically: male, female, neutral, based solely on one's ability to reproduce. If someone were determined to be neutral and infertile, would this create a second-class citizenship? Is there any historical example of situations where this has occured? I'm thinking of the mulattos and quatroons in Louisiana, where recognition of black ancestry was enough to drop one on the social scale, but it's not like you can look at a person and know they're fertile or infertile.
Glad to hear any/all speculation.
This world-building stuff is kinda fun.
Okay, the theories on world population control are pretty diverse, and as far as I know, China is the only country (so far) to actually attempt some kind of a major population control. In contrast, Japan's population is holding steady and/or decreasing minutely, as a result of the economic pressures and social changes resulting in people waiting longer to have children, having fewer children, and some folks not bothering at all.
But here are the primary situations facing the worldbuilding experiment I'm working on:
1. the population is significantly higher than the resources can support
2. the government (secular) has been forced to institute controls on the birth rate
3. for various reasons, a significant # of the population is sterile
Without sitting down and figuring out numbers, I'm postulating that if the death rate continues at a steady pace (barring sudden natural disasters and war), it's still too low to balance out the birth rate against the actual population. So, more deaths required, fewer births allowed, until the population reaches a point that's feasible and manageable against the number of resources.
China, currently, has a huge number of baby girls up for adoption, who have been abandoned to the government's care. Part of the feasibility of doing this is that there are other countries who have resources/room for the children. If, however, that were not an option, I'd think the government would be forced to clamp down harder, rather than have the burden of unwanted children shifted onto them. I do know that a Chinese friend told me that although she's a Chinese citizen, she may have as many children as she wants (especially while out of the country, and it helps that she's educated middle-class for China). The clincher is not that her children will be forcibly removed, but that if she returns to China with her two sons, she will lose all health insurance/support, education options, etc, for her second child. As far as the government would be concerned, her second child simply would not exist; China's cost of living is apparently quite high in contrast to possible incomes, so the cost makes such an option completely out of the question for 99.9% of the population. (I'm disregarding, of course, the issue of minorities being exempt from this rule, as well as the fact that my friend could have two sons because she was outside China when they were born and thus out from under the government's control.)
What are the theories on overpopulation? Would such a situation result in anarchy? I've posited a lottery setup for potential parents taking their turn at a chance to have children - "this year, seventy-three children can be born; seventy-three fertile couples will have a chance to concieve; those who cannot will be removed from the lotteries and the unborn # added to next year's lottery". Might a black market situation where the mafia hires itself out to slaughter/destroy large neighborhoods in hopes of introducing more deaths to raise the # of parental couples selected in the lottery? I can't think of any historical examples of such, to demonstate that such callous disregard could occur on the level required, if the proportion were greater than one to one, say, five deaths for every birth. CP has pointed out that even now, we have a recurring pattern of negligence for the elderly - cutting back medicare, attempting to privatize social security - and wouldn't the same possibly occur for those people ranked as 'neutrals' (sterile by birth, drug exposure or malnutrition)? That would shift the gender wars dramatically: male, female, neutral, based solely on one's ability to reproduce. If someone were determined to be neutral and infertile, would this create a second-class citizenship? Is there any historical example of situations where this has occured? I'm thinking of the mulattos and quatroons in Louisiana, where recognition of black ancestry was enough to drop one on the social scale, but it's not like you can look at a person and know they're fertile or infertile.
Glad to hear any/all speculation.
This world-building stuff is kinda fun.
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no subject
Date: 22 Nov 2004 04:04 pm (UTC)One question you might want to address is why they have companions in the first place. I mean, why not create some other kind of birth control program? Women go in for their shot every couple months, and if one should accidently get pregnant, they're forced to abort? Why is this the system they developed? Is there some moral grounding? Does BC not work for some reason? Are they afaid of side effects from the hormones?
Curiosity, you know. This makes sense as an absolute method, but why so extreme?
Did they perhaps enforce BC in the past, and found that it wasn't effective enough?
no subject
Date: 22 Nov 2004 04:23 pm (UTC)I was discussing this with CP the other night, and pointed out that a fertile couple has three options: 1, mess around (short of having actual sex), 2, abstain, 3, take same-sex partners to blow off sexual tension as needed. I don't know how many in the population would take the third option, or even the second. (His comment: more people might take the 3rd option than currently indicated; if the Kiernsey scale of bisexuality is accurate, there might be folks who'd explore that side once the religio-social stigma is removed.)
And I'd expect that a number would go for the first option, as they do now when messing around prior to actually wanting to produce a child. (By this same token, it makes sense there would be three genders: male, female, neutral, and two infertile people who marry - regardless of original gender - would simply be an infertile couple, end of story.)
But when resources are really low in a society, and it can't produce the food/goods it needs for its population, I guess the question is what gets shafted. If the govt sees its programs as 'good enough,' would it push pharmaceutical companies to develop preventive medicine (like cheaper, higher quality contraceptives) or corrective medicine (a post-sex pill). Or would the focus be on dealing with viruses and illnesses sweeping through the population as a result of crowding?
I suppose it depends on whether the govt is proactive or reactive; the latter might mean it's too busy scrambling to deal with the latest cases of meningitis to bother with encouraging companies to make more condoms. Companies will go where the money is, after all; condoms sales might be a steady sale but if the actual fertile population is a small percentage of the overall population, the companies making birth control might see it as better to keep it regulated - just like they did for years with the damn yeast infection medications. They made more money requiring doctors to write prescriptions than they did selling it over the counter, open to competition, and I was out of college before you could get the meds without having to see a doctor, get a pap smear, blah blah blah. Given that companies, first and foremost, want to make money, I'd think they'd prefer such shots and whatnot to be regulated. That would mean the fertile couple would have to have solid health insurance, money to pay for the visit/meds...and those couples on a lower income would have to pick option two or option three.