![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.
no subject
Date: 22 Nov 2004 05:39 pm (UTC)Supposing it to be possible, though, I think you need to address two things before you dig into the social ramifications of crowding/reproduction. One, why did technology fail so spectacularly? While it's true that there's only so much raw material to go around, exceeding the carrying capacity of a whole planet requires that we not be able to refine and expand our caloric production, and we're already doing that every year. That's where Malthus went wrong, after all. He assumed no technological advances in production at all. It's why we've already, I believe, overshot his estimated limit for population. So, why has technology not been able to keep up in this world?
Two, why is there a shortage of birth control? Not just the Pill, but all the other forms of getting rid of unwanted children (toxins, mechanical abortion, abandonment/exposure, killing the mother). Are there social prohibitions against taking steps like that? And, if so, why have they persisted in face of such overcrowding?
That said, what seems most likely to me is a class divide. The upper class, having the luxury of proper medical care, might treat the process of reproduction as a career choice, those who don't make that choice being voluntarily sterilized. The class identification could be strong enough to enable that kind of system, centered around the reproducers despite them being outside the channels of material power.
The lower class, not having access to the medical tech to correct mistaken conceptions, might have to resort to more strenuous methods of controlling the fertile members. Shunning, for example. Death for repeat offenders. Not as a government policy, but as a social reaction. All really effective methods of controlling people come from inside, not outside; they get you doing it to yourself.
I suspect there would be two contradictory pressures. One, the desire to have, or participate in the production of, children. The other, to not endanger everyone's survival by producing any more children. I could see a lot of attention focusing on the fertile people. Whether it wound up expressed as privilege or supression would depend on a lot of other factors, I think.
no subject
Date: 22 Nov 2004 05:53 pm (UTC)And frankly, I guess it would be perfectly feasible for folks to get rid of unpermitted pregnancies by a variety of means - not as in govt-allowed but as in, crap, hide that. (heh.) Just as it's done in China now, so I would imagine folks would continue to do such. It's not like when abortion was illegal that this stopped people determined to get one - although it was out of the question for folks without the money/means to travel to Canada pre-1970. I'd think illegal/back-alley abortions would be seriously punished, though, since many do result in serious damage to the woman - and if she's fertile, that's the last thing you'd want.
I guess what I need to do is pause from rewriting Dancing and take a look at why China chose to introduce population controls. They do have resources, after all, and are not exactly cheek-to-jowl in all parts of the country. Was it a preventive measure on China's part? Or an answer to the inevitable population jump if large families continued to be the norm?
Attention would definitely be focused on someone who is not only fertile but capable of bearing a child without congenital birth defects. A'course, I can always take the post-apocalyptic cop-out of "massive war and nuclear damage in large parts of the earth made agricultural areas unable to produce enough food, destroyed genetic information in some people, blah blah blah" - I do so hate doing that, since it begs the question of how the population could still be so massive as to be unmanageable within a limited geographic area.
Off to run errands. Will continue to ponder. Head hurts.
no subject
Date: 22 Nov 2004 06:33 pm (UTC)This would require almost worldwide first world lifestyles before the crash, I think. No one else has quite the cultural dedication to altruism as a nation whose stomachs are, by and large, filled already.
no subject
Date: 22 Nov 2004 07:35 pm (UTC)Hmmm.