kaigou: this is what I do, darling (Default)
[personal profile] kaigou
or 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.

Date: 22 Nov 2004 08:17 pm (UTC)
ext_6251: (Default)
From: [identity profile] sevenall.livejournal.com
I'm neither an economist nor any of the other cool things you mentioned, but it seems to me that the overpopulation issue is actually contraindicated by some of the social pressures you've put into play so far.

The value placed on reproduction for the sake of Healthy Children and the second-class citizenship for the neutrals points to underpopulation rather than overpopulation. Enforcing population control doesn't necessarily have to imply that the government want less children to be born, only that they want the right children to be born.

In a society where overpopulation is a problem, the neutrals might even be desirable for the government, since they can be part of the workforce but not contribute to the increasing population.

How they'd be viewed by the fertile population in the society is another question, of course. A high ratio of neutrals born would also imply a high level of damage to the gene pool. But with a reduced gene pool, the government would try to encourage higher birth rates, wouldn't they?

What I'm thinking is that after a war or a biological catastrophe of the magnitude that I envision as background to your story, the workforce is reduced and has impaired ability to produce healthy children -- this is why they can't support the elderly and the sick, no matter what natural resources which may exist or not.

There's a book called "Courtship Rite" about a world where food is very scarce -- some of the science is iffy, but several systems to control population is at work. One is organised and society sanctioned cannibalism (which is not meant to give anyone ideas!), another is to breed children in creches and bring them up competing/fighting against each other and grant the survivors entrance to a clan. Some clans have developed genetic traits that must be preserved and that are still developing, the one that can tolerate higher amounts of a semi-poisonous food grain than any other, for example. "Courtship Rite" is pretty funny, because the soft sciences are highly advanced, the hard sciences not so much -- there's also a lot of gratifying smut.

For some sobering perspective, forced sterilisation of people with epilepsy or certain mental disorders was legal in Sweden until 1976. Don't remember when sterilisation of diabetics was outlawed, but it was outrageously late.

Date: 22 Nov 2004 08:58 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] solitude1056.livejournal.com
I heart my favorite neuroscientist.

In a society where overpopulation is a problem, the neutrals might even be desirable for the government, since they can be part of the workforce but not contribute to the increasing population.

Good point. I'm starting to lean more and more towards a neutral-majority being the predominant class by virtue of two things: disposability (not like you're risking the gene pool), and sheer size.

How they'd be viewed by the fertile population in the society is another question, of course. A high ratio of neutrals born would also imply a high level of damage to the gene pool. But with a reduced gene pool, the government would try to encourage higher birth rates, wouldn't they?

Wouldn't that be dependent on the order of events? If, for instance, the population is excessively high, but technology is keeping up (barely) with supporting it. If, at that point, biological warfare or some kind of massive natural/manmade disaster impacted the economy and/or ecology (including the ability to reproduce), then the resource levels would plummet (after a delay of what's already produced having been consumed). If the population is also decimated but not the extent to balance the reduced resource levels, then the birthrate would need to be controlled artificially until the deathrate, resources, and birthrate leveled out again?

I'm not thinking that a govt would necessarily enforce such constrictions for a long period of time. It seems to me that once a population stabilizes - supply to demand, in general terms - then some of the restrictions would be lifted or modified to meet new situation criteria.

But if I catch the govt's attempts to modify/control things in those first, say, twenty years of the new situation, then the society itself would be in significant flux. There might be extremist cults that have sprung up, or things like the KKK trying to clear out undesirables from breeding or even just using resources, but...

Uh. I had a point. Somewhere. Brain hurts. Head happy, though.

whois

kaigou: this is what I do, darling (Default)
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"When you make the finding yourself— even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light— you'll never forget it." —Carl Sagan

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