Naked Science Forum
General Discussion & Feedback => Just Chat! => Topic started by: ~CB on 01/05/2015 23:05:00
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We humans are growing in population at a very high rate and if we do not take a step now... The nature will surely work it's part. We will exhaust resources to the point where half of us would die from non availability of food and so on. That's not the point though...I read, from some credible source, 'that controlling birth rate now may not be of any help' and our fate is already decided by those who lived before us. It may sound inhuman to say such, but I believe that genocide is the only solution. We may lose some very valuable in the process. But, that's the only solution there is.
...Or of course we can just wait for another 100 years and when the resources are depleted, the natural genocide will yet again balance it. It's more gentle sounding to humans but I very much prefer the first solution. Even if that means I'll have to die along;
It may sound very exaggerated and some of you might think that some mechanism in the space would help us restore resources when a more upgraded spaceship would be researched by humans which would be able to carry out such missions. And it's perfectly normal to think so. 'It's human psychology to usually not take action to prevent something wrong until that wrong really is happening to/with them'; I believe the last quote says it all and hopefully this post will help make some change, no matter how minor.
P.S We should at least urge the governments of all countries to pass birth control bill and limit 1 child per couple. Maybe that will make a huge difference.
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P.S We should at least urge the governments of all countries to pass birth control bill and limit 1 child per couple. Maybe that will make a huge difference.
It certainly would; with an aging population at least twice as numerous as the younger population, the young would have to work their socks off to care for the old.
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I might suggest that you go into hiding for a while. People don't take too kindly to genocide.
A certain Mr Hitler paid the price for it, as did Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein, to mention but a few.
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If we reach a point where the planet cannot support our numbers and there is a need to reduce the population, we could let nature do the job and just let the poorest die first, or we could attempt to do things in a way that's more fair, perhaps by starting with people who have had too many children (though that would have little impact as it would be immoral to kill their children) or better by starting with the most immoral people and then working up from there until the numbers have been brought back under control. Such a cull would be more moral than just standing back and leaving it to nature. How you identify them though, that's another question.
It isn't clear though that there will need to be a population crash - the current Pope has been helpful in suggesting that controlling family size is acceptable, and people were already bringing family size down in places like the Philipines. In Bangladesh it has become normal now to stop at two children. There is also a massive untapped potential for renewable energy which could lead to more food being grown indoors under artificial light (under deserts), and just by stopping people eating so much beef (cancer-causing meat) we could increase the food supply substantially.
It may be that we should have laws to restrict family size though anyway, because it is not right to have the better quality individuals (in terms of robust health and intelligence) be outbred by lower quality ones as it could lead to our species degenerating badly over time. A sensible limit would be two children for most people, one child for many (who have traits that we want to eliminate over time, such as uncontrollable violence - it would be good to breed out the rape and pillage genes), and to prevent the population from being reduced over time if it isn't necessary for it to fall, some people would be allowed to have a third child, and maybe more if their wider family has met with tragedies (accidents that weren't their fault) which have taken them out before they could reproduce. Such management will likely be essential in the long term. We also need to try to maintain the ability of our species to give birth without mothers having to be cut open, because if we become too dependent on technology and the Earth is hit by a major catastrophe (such as an asteroid impact, supervolcano or gamma-ray burst), we don't want to be in a position where our species dies out due to lack of medical facilities and an inability for people to give birth naturally.
It is major natural catastrophes that are the biggest danger to us (ignoring man-made catastrophes such as a suicidal leader of a superpower committing suicide by pressing the nuclear button, or AGI programmed to favour white people over blacks deciding to eliminate everyone for not being 100% white), so we don't only need to be able to feed everyone who exists at any given time, but we also need to be able to store enough food to get us through at least a decade of darkness and back to the point where we can grow lots of food again. That should be the main task of mankind, if only we could get all the monkeys out of power and the crazy religions that control so many of them and make them fight eternal wars in the name of ridiculous Gods which are mere projections of the very worst of humans (mass-murdering kings who require everyone to prostrate themselves before them - no real God would be like that).
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It is quite wise of Bangladesh and Philippines to do so but it really isn't quite a bid deal since they don't really accommodate heavy numbers of human population. They both have a total of 254 million humans according to the 2013 census. Whilst India alone has a population of 1.252 billion.
...And trust me, they are not stopping there. I have done a day's research on India and China, and while China has passed the law of 2 humans per couple. India is being governed by an ape. He (India's Prime minister, Modi) needs to evolve over economy and other trivial matters and give his attention to this. Although, even if he isn't smart enough to do so (I read his back story and I don't believe he is). Other nations needs to talk to India about controlling their effin population (Oh yes, I really Am mad at India). Since it's really everyone who will be impacted by there growing numbers; Do you have an idea which, if followed, might help passing birth control all over the world?
By the way, have you heard of Mars-One? I was on NewEnglandPhysics forum today, and I saw this topic that Pete posted which mentioned Mars-One. I did not know about it, hence, I had a quick peek and what I feel is that they just successfully scammed thousands of people and made 800,000 USD. I might be wrong here but hear me out. They want to initiate by sending 100 humans to mars. And... According to them own selves, sending 4 humans will cost them 6 billion USD. Let's just have some pity on them and say that the mission is to send 4 humans to mars and cut out the rest 96. They still won't be able to do so. The maximum donation they could have expected was, I'm being generous here, 2 billion USD. Now let's just assume that they did get 2 billion USD. But, who will give them the rest 4? I will be darned to hear any nation or company say that, they will sponsor them. Let's be practical here... The mission is not productive. Nations, on Earth have a lot of things to care of before they reach the point where they would have plenty spare for such things. Companies too have better projects to invest on, where they can expect a very good amount of return rather than this. So, why exactly did people donate to this project? I don't know. Why was this project ever thought of? Well, maybe they truly did want to send people to mars and did not really did a better research and as they came back to reality and figured out that this isn't something feasible (Funding wise), it turned into a scam. Or... it was a scam from first day onwards. Anyways, I really do commend the wits of the creator of such scam... Hmph... Project, PROJECT!
I would really love to hear your thoughts on this!
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(though that would have little impact as it would be immoral to kill their children) or better by starting with the most immoral people and then working up from there until the numbers have been brought back under control. Such a cull would be more moral than just standing back and leaving it to nature.
This just made me form a question for you... 'While we humans are nothing but intelligent animals, there being no hell... No heaven, neither an afterlife. Just this what we are, we are. Do you really believe... Outside of any spiritualistic framework, in morals?'
[Notice: If you are about to read what I have written below... You should know that I wasn't able to form a coherent version of what I really wanted to say. Blame this on my poor writing skills. I just would like to urge the readers to first read it completely and then judge or form an opinion about what I had to say.]
While I myself do not believe in morals and would kill an ant or a human without a second thought, if necessary. I just am inclined to say that people shouldn't think like me. Since if everyone is like that then there will be a point where humans will evolve to kill others over trivial. Resulting in complete extinction. But yet again, that shouldn't quite matter. If we have lived a great life or bad one, it shouldn't matter. If we collectively, as a species research our way to to being highly intelligent... IT SHOULDN'T REALLY MATTER.
I mean, we really don't have a purpose. We just live and die on this small dot in our galaxy with there being billions of them. My basic objective to say this not so coherent whole was to at least convince you scientists to not have morals. While [David] your schematic of who should live and die was the best there could have been. I just did not like that fact that you have morals (Ignore this if you said no to the first question I asked in this post), you should... Being one of the intelligent and rational thinkers there are, on Earth... Should think without morals.
...Well, that's all I had to say. I would love to be corrected if you believe I'm wrong.
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If there is no such thing as sentience, there is no role for morality. If things are capable of suffering though, then there is a clear role for morality, and that is to prevent suffering, or more specifically to manage it, as it should not all be eliminated: some suffering must be allowed when it is a necessary path to achieving enjoyment, and that can include dishing out a little of it to others in a small way by such means as bothering them as you walk past them. There is some suffering that is unavoidable and we cannot expect anyone not to cause it, but we try to minimise it, perhaps by going past at a greater distance than the straight line path would lead us (in order to invade less of someone else's space).
At the other end of the scale there is harming people through violence, but it is normally easy to avoid that, and wise too, because if you live in a society in which violence is common, finding yourself on the receiving end of it is much more likely to happen, and more often. It makes sense not to dish it out, because that way you will receive less of it, and so will other people that you care about. Morality is a system for maximising our quality of life and it has nothing to do with imagined gods, heaven or hell.
I find it worrying that you don't believe in morality, because it's rather fundamental when it comes to judging who's good and who's bad (why should we oppose people like Hitler, for example) and for basing systems of law upon (although a lot of our current law is still based on prejudice and is not moral).
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The fertility rate in Canada is already 1-2 children per female. It's 2-3 in the States, but I just saw an article saying it was decreasing among millennials. This has happened without a law restricting or penalizing people. Europe also has declining birth rates, most of them around 1.5. It seems to be the trend in democratic, educated societies with access to birth control.
Looking at the charts in wikipedia, the countries that have high birthrates also have horrible practices regarding treatment of women. One way to reduce birthrates might be simply to ensure that women don't have to rely on being a wife and mother for personal safety, economic support and moral status (such as it is), that they have many options to choose from, and won't be harassed or harmed for pursuing them. Not to mention the fact that ensuring women's rights would have other social benefits as well.
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_fertility_rate
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While I myself do not believe in morals and would kill an ant or a human without a second thought, if necessary.
So you do have a moral - "if necessary".
The debate is likely to be around what do you define as necessary. I have had this debate with myself and came to the conclusion that if a human was trying to kill a close member of my family, then yes I would kill. Without a second thought? Not sure.
A supplementary question, with an ageing population and fewer workers to support them , do we feel that pressured?, expected?, euthanasia will become a norm.? If you feel this is taking you off topic we can start another thread, but my feeling is that the govt won't need to set up a genocide programme, social pressure eg abuse in the streets, might occur. It is interesting to note that a number of obese people have reported abuse because of their weight and this could lead to suicides.
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but my feeling is that the govt won't need to set up a genocide programme, social pressure eg abuse in the streets, might occur. It is interesting to note that a number of obese people have reported abuse because of their weight and this could lead to suicides.
...But would that be enough? My bet is even if that happens we could only expect a total of 2 million (I kind of exaggerated) suicides... Worldwide, an year.
My only concerns are India and China. They alone could decide our fate.
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By the way, have you heard of Mars-One? I was on NewEnglandPhysics forum today, and I saw this topic that Pete posted which mentioned Mars-One. I did not know about it, hence, I had a quick peek and what I feel is that they just successfully scammed thousands of people and made 800,000 USD. I might be wrong here but hear me out. They want to initiate by sending 100 humans to mars. And... According to them own selves, sending 4 humans will cost them 6 billion USD. Let's just have some pity on them and say that the mission is to send 4 humans to mars and cut out the rest 96. They still won't be able to do so. The maximum donation they could have expected was, I'm being generous here, 2 billion USD. Now let's just assume that they did get 2 billion USD. But, who will give them the rest 4? I will be darned to hear any nation or company say that, they will sponsor them. Let's be practical here... The mission is not productive. Nations, on Earth have a lot of things to care of before they reach the point where they would have plenty spare for such things. Companies too have better projects to invest on, where they can expect a very good amount of return rather than this. So, why exactly did people donate to this project? I don't know. Why was this project ever thought of? Well, maybe they truly did want to send people to mars and did not really did a better research and as they came back to reality and figured out that this isn't something feasible (Funding wise), it turned into a scam. Or... it was a scam from first day onwards. Anyways, I really do commend the wits of the creator of such scam... Hmph... Project, PROJECT!
What do you think of Mars-One Colin?
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I might suggest that you go into hiding for a while. People don't take too kindly to genocide.
A certain Mr Hitler paid the price for it, as did Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein, to mention but a few.
With all due respect, are you someone who prefers that instead of a planned genocide (Preferably the one that David suggested), which would cost us only 2-3 billion humans... That we do nothing? I mean that would result in possible extinction or human species being just in millions. That's more gentle sounding but if thought about, more evil than genocide;
We are not living in 90's. We have to make a decision. It could be as easy as birth control in every nation to genocide if we wait more. I don't, with complete honesty prefer neither. But, we do not have a choice. Blame it on the people who governed before us that they did not think of the future and did not plan for it. But yet again, blaming won't help. Humans are going mad giving birth to people and increasing population without any concerns. Someone has to balance them. It's our choice whether we want to wait for nature to work it's way to possible extinction. Or just once, run a genocide.
If this would help, let me tell you the truth about most humans living on Earth right now. 5 billion (Possibly 6) of them, quite feeble. They find selfies, song's about sex and drugs and more pointless things with no productivity... Entertaining. Most of them have been raised to believe in something that will help them through their lives, aka, god. Come'on, what could be more feeble than that? There are many more stupid things most of them do (I won't mention them as I believe your mind will help you think of many yourself).
Instead of considering this as an end... We could welcome the balance as a beginning with fixing ourselves up. I will possibly be dead when the balance takes place. I really hope that the new world humans will be way more intelligent and productive as of now and keep their population reasonably low;
It seems I got carried away... Anwyays, at last all I would like to say is that, for this balance, we should not feel bad considering the current position of humans;
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I'd prefer to see a control on birth rather than killing people after their born or letting people die of starvation later. A good idea would be to limit the number of children to any married couple to two. Those who have children out of wedlock and those who have more than two children will not be allowed to raise their children. They will have their children put up for adoption to those married couples who can't have children including single parents. After all, I think it should be okay for single people to raise a child. Severe taxes could also be used to deter people from having more than two children. The shameful thing of this is that the people who are having large families nowadays are those who have a poor education and are often on welfare or sometimes don't even work. I lost count of the number of times that I've met people with many children who aren't married, sometimes the children have different fathers. There's just too many horny men out there who are too lazy to take birth control seriously.
But who knows? Perhaps we'll have started to colonize Mars by then. After all we're already going to be sending people to live there for the rest of their lives in just a few years. In any case it's not my problem. I'll be long dead before that comes. Politicians aren't doing their jobs so the world will pay the price for not penalizing them for it. But as I said, not my problem. :)
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But who knows? Perhaps we'll have started to colonize Mars by then. After all we're already going to be sending people to live there for the rest of their lives in just a few years. In any case it's not my problem. I'll be long dead before that comes. Politicians aren't doing their jobs so the world will pay the price for not penalizing them for it. But as I said, not my problem. :)
It's not happening Peter. The mars mission is not happening.
By the way, have you heard of Mars-One? I was on NewEnglandPhysics forum today, and I saw this topic that Pete posted which mentioned Mars-One. I did not know about it, hence, I had a quick peek and what I feel is that they just successfully scammed thousands of people and made 800,000 USD. I might be wrong here but hear me out. They want to initiate by sending 100 humans to mars. And... According to them own selves, sending 4 humans will cost them 6 billion USD. Let's just have some pity on them and say that the mission is to send 4 humans to mars and cut out the rest 96. They still won't be able to do so. The maximum donation they could have expected was, I'm being generous here, 2 billion USD. Now let's just assume that they did get 2 billion USD. But, who will give them the rest 4? I will be darned to hear any nation or company say that, they will sponsor them. Let's be practical here... The mission is not productive. Nations, on Earth have a lot of things to care of before they reach the point where they would have plenty spare for such things. Companies too have better projects to invest on, where they can expect a very good amount of return rather than this. So, why exactly did people donate to this project? I don't know. Why was this project ever thought of? Well, maybe they truly did want to send people to mars and did not really did a better research and as they came back to reality and figured out that this isn't something feasible (Funding wise), it turned into a scam. Or... it was a scam from first day onwards. Anyways, I really do commend the wits of the creator of such scam... Hmph... Project, PROJECT!
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People die if you let them, so there's no need to kill anyone to reduce the population - it will happen anyway, if you don't make more people.
The idea that an ageing population imposes a burden on the young is actually nonsense. Old people (say over 60) have already made considerable provision for their retirement in the form of state taxes or private pensions. The young, however, contribute nothing to the economy for the first 20 years of life (on average, in the UK) but consume revenue for education, health, etc. It now costs parents about £250,000 to raise a child to independence.
If we reduced the birthrate to half the repacement rate, i.e. about 1 child per female, the "working fraction" of the population, i.e. those aged between 20 and 60, would increase gradually from 0.5 to about 0.6, whilst the total population would of course decrease, thus releasing fixed resources (land, housing, energy, food....) and making everyone better off.
The upside is that nobody needs to do anything to make life better for everybody - just make fewer babies. The downside is that conventional economic indicators such as Gross National Product or average house prices, would fall. So the question is whether you want your children to inherit a better world, or better statistics.
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The upside is that nobody needs to do anything to make life better for everybody - just make fewer babies.
I seem to remember a report saying that educating girls in developing countries reduced the birthrate as they had babies later and fewer per couple.
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Probably, but unsustainable population growth is already affecting the UK, where education and contraception are apparently available to anyone who wants either, but the rate of teenage pregnancy is a serious concern to governments and do-gooders.
The trick is to abolish all child benefits and to pay women a comparable sum if they are not pregnant. Say £500 every 6 months from the age of 10 to 60. You get one "bye" after which you lose the benefit permanently if you are pregnant, though it is restored if your child dies before the age of 16. There is a net saving to the exchequer, plus additional tax income from working women not taking maternity leave.
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I seem to remember a report saying that educating girls in developing countries reduced the birthrate as they had babies later and fewer per couple.
Education has many effects on birthrate - economic independence and knowledge and understanding of birth control, but education for women is also a reflection of a society's recognition of women beyond their reproductive role - in some countries, not even approval but mere permission to be something other than baby maker.
According to UNICEF "women’s literacy rates in the least developed countries were 70% of those of men.
The lack of education and literacy of women correlates with a high birth rate. A 2010 United Nations study in more than 20 sub-Saharan countries with very high population growth rates shows a clear correlation between low use of contraception and both lack of education and poverty. In the poorest households only 10% of women and girls who lacked schooling had been using modern contraception but the rate of use was four times greater among those with higher education.
Another example of denial of basic human rights concerns the right for women to decide for themselves whether to use contraception. Surveys show that more than 200 million women worldwide say they would like to use modern contraception but were unable to do so. Studies carried out in areas such as rural India, Pakistan, Uganda and Ethiopia confirm that husbands’ opposition to contraception is one of the main reasons for women not using the form of contraception they want."
Here's a list of the top ten worst violators of women's human rights: Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Nepal, Sudan, Guatemala, Mali, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, according to the Toronto Star.
Opinions vary somewhat. This is the list of worst offenders according to International Business Times: Yemen, Pakistan, Chad, Syria, Mauritania, Ivory Coast, Iran, Chad, Morocco, Mali, Saudi Arabia.
Most are very high, with several in the top ten, on the wikipedia list for fertility rate. None are below replacement value except possibly Iran.
In these countries, women's literacy rate is less than 50 per cent of men's:
Mali 49 per cent
Benin 49 per cent
Yemen 47 per cent
Mozambique 46 per cent
Ethiopia 46 per cent
Guinea 42 per cent
Niger 35 per cent
Chad 31 per cent
Afghanistan 28 per cent
Countries with women's literacy rate less than 70 per cent of men's:
India 65 per cent
Morocco 60 per cent
Pakistan 55 per cent
Also, high or higher than world average for fertility.
These are supposedly the best countries to be female:
1. Iceland
2. Norway
3. Australia
4. Canada
5. Ireland
6. Sweden
7. Switzerland
8. Japan
9. Netherlands
10. France
All at or below replacement value.
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Probably, but unsustainable population growth is already affecting the UK, where education and contraception are apparently available to anyone who wants either, but the rate of teenage pregnancy is a serious concern to governments and do-gooders.
The trick is to abolish all child benefits and to pay women a comparable sum if they are not pregnant. Say £500 every 6 months from the age of 10 to 60. You get one "bye" after which you lose the benefit permanently if you are pregnant, though it is restored if your child dies before the age of 16. There is a net saving to the exchequer, plus additional tax income from working women not taking maternity leave.
The statistics, though, say the UK is below replacement rate. So what you are actually worried about is the wrong people having more than their fair share. Again, I'd argue that draconian measures wouldn't be necessary if more females believed they have other options, even in developed nations. One thing I notice on reality shows like "Teen Mom" or "16 and Pregnant" is that none of these girls appear headed to university. They all are on the fast track to Walmart. It's almost as if they think pregnancy will somehow equalize their status, among women at least.
Another strategy society might try before exterminating people is stop worshiping the nuclear family. We can still be a kid friendly world without being so culturally obsessed with family life. People are still made to feel guilty, narcissistic, and self absorbed for not having kids, or only having one!
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/04/why-women-arent-having-children/390765/
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Go forth and multiply a lot less
http://www.economist.com/node/14743589
Interesting article.
"The global average is 2.33. By about 2020, the global fertility rate will dip below the global replacement rate for the first time.
Modern Malthusians tend to discount the significance of falling fertility. They believe there are too many people in the world, so for them, it is the absolute number that matters. And that number is still rising, by a forecast 2.4 billion over the next 40 years. Populations can rise while fertility declines because of inertia, which matters a lot in demography. If, because of high fertility in earlier generations, there is a bulge of women of childbearing years, more children will be born, though each mother is having fewer children. There will be more, smaller families. Assuming fertility falls at current rates, says the UN, the world's population will rise from 6.8 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050, at which point it will stabilise (see chart 1)."
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Go forth and multiply a lot less
Your mention of UNICEF reminds me where I saw the reference we sent this out to our Facebook contacts http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/ED/GMR/images/2011/girls-factsheet-en.pdf
Others might want to circulate.
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The statistics, though, say the UK is below replacement rate.
If that were true, the UK population would be decreasing, not increasing. Standard replacement rate assumes a fixed life expectancy but that is increasing (or at least has been until now) quite rapidly. My children were the first generation in either family to have four living grandparents, and 30 years later that is entirely normal (I've just been to a big family reunion where all the youngest had all their grandparents present.)
So what you are actually worried about is the wrong people having more than their fair share.
No. What I am worried about is my descendants living in a country wholly dependent on fossil fuel, when the oil runs out. With a stable population of 5 million, the UK could be entirely selfsufficient on renewables, with a better standard of living than at present.
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According to UNICEF "women’s literacy rates in the least developed countries were 70% of those of men.
The lack of education and literacy of women correlates with a high birth rate.
Birth rate alone does not determine population trend. The problem with sub-Saharan Africa is that life expectancy has increased dramatically in the last 100 years so the replacement rate has decreased from 5 or more births per female to just over 2.
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With a stable population of 5 million, the UK could be entirely selfsufficient on renewables, with a better standard of living than at present.
...And that's the reason I suggested genocide. Even if you somehow implement 1 child policy, It will take UK at least 120 years to cut down to 7.5 million population. I don't really think we have enough resources to last for 120 years.
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Your figure is pretty close to my calculation, which reaches 10 million in about 110 years.
Estimates suggest that the UK has enough coal and oil to last 200 years at current levels of consumption. Since my "payment for nonpregnancy" policy yields benefits from Day 1, can be reversed at any time with no penalty, and imposes no demands or hardship on anyone, this seems an opportune time to implement it, and the population can be held stable at any level in future when people decide that thay have reached indefinite sustainability at a comfortable quality of life.
It is unlikely that that decision to stabilise (i.e. breed at replacement rate) will be made unanimously or simultaneously across the nation, but that doesn't matter. We make individual decisions for our descendants and it is likely that those women who reach a comfort level early on, will decide to have more than one child, but the option always remains: the fewer you have, the richer you and they will be.
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Germany has a population of 81 million, life expectancy of 78 years for men, 83 years for women, population growth rate: -0.18% birth rate: 8.42 / 1,000 and a death rate: 11.2 / 1,000 (2014 estimate).On current projections, Germany's population will drop to 69 million people by 2050 and 43 million by 2100.
That may not be 7.5 million, but it still seems like a fairly steep drop. How fast can you drop the population of country, and increase the numbers of old people with out causing havoc? Old people may have pensions and investments, but that money isn't just sitting in a box under their bed. Its the money produced from some other on going economic activity.
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Probably, but unsustainable population growth is already affecting the UK, where education and contraception are apparently available to anyone who wants either, but the rate of teenage pregnancy is a serious concern to governments and do-gooders.
The trick is to abolish all child benefits and to pay women a comparable sum if they are not pregnant. Say £500 every 6 months from the age of 10 to 60. You get one "bye" after which you lose the benefit permanently if you are pregnant, though it is restored if your child dies before the age of 16. There is a net saving to the exchequer, plus additional tax income from working women not taking maternity leave.
So after losing the benefit, what's the incentive not to have 3?
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...And that's the reason I suggested genocide. Even if you somehow implement 1 child policy, It will take UK at least 120 years to cut down to 7.5 million population. I don't really think we have enough resources to last for 120 years.
Why shouldn't everyone drink the Kool aid then? For the good of the planet. It would be fair, after all.
I can't take your position seriously because it's contradictory. To claim that we have to decrease the population so that the species can survive is itself a moral value - it implies that humans have some kind of value. How do you derive any value from them collectively as a species, if individual humans are valueless? Why should you care if the species continues at all? If you were truly amoral, it shouldn't matter one way or the other.
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So after losing the benefit, what's the incentive not to have 3?
If you can afford to feed, clothe and educate them, why not? But the state won't, and it would be a crime (it already is) to allow them to starve, so you will go to prison. On the other hand if you stop at 0 or 1 you will still receive £1000 per year, which is a fair incentive to do nothing.
I'll make an exception for naturally-conceived multiple births: twins and more add fun to everyone's life.
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Old people may have pensions and investments, but that money isn't just sitting in a box under their bed. Its the money produced from some other on going economic activity.
True, but that ongoing economic activity is being carried out by the "working fraction", i.e. those between 20 and 60 years old, which increases if the birth rate is below replacement level because the nonworking fraction under 20 is decreasing.
It's quite easy to model with a spreadsheet but I haven't yet derived a simple analytic expression, for which I apologise.
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If a huge cull is ever required, one simple way to select people for it is to ask them if they believe in royalty. If they think it's a good thing that the birth of a new "royal" should chuck more important stories out of news broadcasts for days, they should not be inflicting their genes on future generations.
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So after losing the benefit, what's the incentive not to have 3?
If you can afford to feed, clothe and educate them, why not? But the state won't, and it would be a crime (it already is) to allow them to starve, so you will go to prison. On the other hand if you stop at 0 or 1 you will still receive £1000 per year, which is a fair incentive to do nothing.
I'll make an exception for naturally-conceived multiple births: twins and more add fun to everyone's life.
That's an entirely different argument. Whether you can "afford" to feed and clothe and drive them to practice in your suv is irrelevant if the discussion is about depleting resources. In fact affluent people probably consume more.
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And there will be more for everyone to consume, where there are fewer people. The objective is to get to the point where consumption can equal production for ever, and in the case of the UK that requires a population of not more than 10 million and preferably around 5 million. I have no doubt that there will be inequalities of distribution, ability, opportunity, and a thousand other things that may or may not be seen as problems, but where there is a finite limit on per capita resources, you are more likely to get an equitable distribution by reducing the number of capitas so that nobody needs to starve or freeze. You can't redistribute resources equitably if there isn't enough to go round in the first place.
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Until that magic number is reached, though, the plan would appear to be that poorer people need to make all the sacrifices so that a select portion of the population can carry on as usual. Don't reproduce, pay a huge portion of your income on energy taxes, and if it's not too much trouble, please kill yourself once you are too old to be exploited in your menial low wage job.
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Old people may have pensions and investments, but that money isn't just sitting in a box under their bed. Its the money produced from some other on going economic activity.
True, but that ongoing economic activity is being carried out by the "working fraction", i.e. those between 20 and 60 years old, which increases if the birth rate is below replacement level because the nonworking fraction under 20 is decreasing.
Well, okay, but then those absent under-20s are eventually absent 40 year olds. I'm not arguing against decreasing the population - not at all - but you have to get over that crest gently, where you will have a large number of elderly people dependent on others. Japan seems to be hitting that already. If that bump is too big, you end up with people clamoring for mothers to have more babies, and you are back to square one.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2014/12/15/can-abe-tackle-the-real-reason-for-japans-decline/
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Until that magic number is reached, though, the plan would appear to be that poorer people need to make all the sacrifices so that a select portion of the population can carry on as usual. Don't reproduce, pay a huge portion of your income on energy taxes, and if it's not too much trouble, please kill yourself once you are too old to be exploited in your menial low wage job.
Non sequitur to my argument. All I am suggesting is that (a) every woman can get £1000 per year for doing nothing and (b) your children are not my responsibility. In return for doing nothing, everyone gets cheaper housing, renewable energy, increasingly sustainable and politically stable food, and a bigger pension.
I haven't advocated suicide (though I do intend to take my own life) or told anyone what job they can have or what their wages will be. I am sure there will be corrupt bankers, politicians with their snouts in the trough, and all the rest, but with fewer people there will be less scope for unemployment and if anything wages will increase.
Well, okay, but then those absent under-20s are eventually absent 40 year olds.
but they are supporting fewer under-20's. The common error is to forget that, in a western society, the 0 - 20 cohort contribute nothing and probably consume more than the 60 - 100 group.
but you have to get over that crest gently, where you will have a large number of elderly people dependent on others. Japan seems to be hitting that already. If that bump is too big, you end up with people clamoring for mothers to have more babies, and you are back to square one.
The bump is illusory. I've plotted the age distribution and "working fraction" for the next 100 years on the assumptions only that everyone lives to the age of 60 and nobody lives to be more than 100 years old - a reasonable approximation, I think - and every woman has one child. If you look at the attached charts you can see that the "working fraction" of the population actually increases (the ripples are due to discretisation errors in the spreadheet I used to create them) if we decrease birthrate without significantly inceasing life expectancy.
The political problem is that all modern politics and economics is about growth, expansion, and an increasing pool of consumers. The economics of stasis is uninteresting and politically unsaleable, but the economics of an intentionally shrinking population hasn't really been promulgated - yet.
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So then what is Japan freaking out about?
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30653825
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That in turn is expected to harm the pension system and other elements of social welfare. The impact in rural areas is predicted to be especially damaging, putting the very existence of some communities in danger.
...This and
just make fewer babies. The downside is that conventional economic indicators such as Gross National Product or average house prices, would fall. So the question is whether you want your children to inherit a better world, or better statistics.
...That's all Japan's concerned about.
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The "existence of communities" is of interest only to historians and others who were never part of that community. Many years ago I helped build a road in the hope that it would encourage tourists to visit an isolated and rather beautiful village in the Austrian Tyrol. As soon as the road opened, the village youngsters rented a truck and moved out, lock, stock and barrel. It is immoral to value an abstract notion like community or culture above the happiness of the people who live in it.
When you say "Japan" I presume you mean "Japanese politicians, economists and business owners", not the emancipated women who have decided to live their own lives rather than raise children to make statistics for other people.
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So then what is Japan freaking out about?
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30653825
Experts warn the impact of the decline will harm Japan in various ways.
A lowering of the number of people aged between 15 to 64 is predicted to lower potential growth and shrink Japan's GDP.
A decline in the population is said by experts to have damaging consequences for Japan
Japanese "experts" thought it would be a good idea to sink the US Fleet at Pearl Harbor. Beware of anonymous consensus without experimental proof or calculation.
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What the Uk need to do is simple, start an agricultural revolution inland Britain to ensure a food supply for the future. We then gather all the worthless gold and gems and money of the UK, we then can swap this worthless piles of junk for a load of resources from the unsuspecting marks from abroad.
Then while the marks are eating paper and chewing on stones, our economy will be flourishing with grazing cattle and growing food that is protected from high tides and floods.
Turn the entire of the Midlands into an agricultural area that feeds the entire UK.
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Turn the entire of the Midlands into an agricultural area that feeds the entire UK.
90% of the UK is already agricultural (including hill grazing, forestry and marshland) and the 10% classed as "urban" is actually about 5% concrete and 5% parks and gardens. But it isn't enough to feed 65,000,000 people sustainably. We currently produce less than 60% of the food we eat, and that involves a substantial input of artificial fertilisers, all derived from fossil fuels.
With a population of 5 - 10 million we could devote enough land to energy production to maintain our current standard of living with renewables, and still have enough area to grow all the food we need.
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... With a population of 5 - 10 million we could devote enough land to energy production to maintain our current standard of living with renewables, and still have enough area to grow all the food we need.
At that point Britain becomes an allotment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_%28gardening%29) for an overpopulated neighbouring country with a bigger armed forces.
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At that point Britain becomes an allotment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_%28gardening%29) for an overpopulated neighbouring country with a bigger armed forces.
RD... Alan, isn't talking about turning only England into a less populated country. But, he, in his early posts, talked about turning the world into a less populated whole.
...After that he just assumed that the reader would know what he is talking about;
He just used U.K to explain, in more details about what could be done, etc.
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... With a population of 5 - 10 million we could devote enough land to energy production to maintain our current standard of living with renewables, and still have enough area to grow all the food we need.
At that point Britain becomes an allotment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_%28gardening%29) for an overpopulated neighbouring country with a bigger armed forces.
Like, say, Canada, Australia, Kenya, New Zealand, Italy, or any other food-exporting country.
Did I suggest reducing the size of the military? I think not. Right now, we have the smallest proportion of the population under arms for over a century, and if 150,000 personnel are sufficient to defend the borders whilst rearranging the rubble in Iaq and Afghanistan, I se no reason to reduce the number.
And remember that there won't necessarily be any surplus to export. I'm looking for complete, sustainable selfsufficiency, unlike the present where the entire country is hostage to Saudi Arabia and Russia and the price of food is determined by the least efficient farmer in France.
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... With a population of 5 - 10 million we could devote enough land to energy production to maintain our current standard of living with renewables, and still have enough area to grow all the food we need.
At that point Britain becomes an allotment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_%28gardening%29) for an overpopulated neighbouring country with a bigger armed forces.
Like, say, Canada, Australia, Kenya, New Zealand, Italy, or any other food-exporting country.
Did I suggest reducing the size of the military? I think not. Right now, we have the smallest proportion of the population under arms for over a century, and if 150,000 personnel are sufficient to defend the borders whilst rearranging the rubble in Iaq and Afghanistan, I se no reason to reduce the number.
And remember that there won't necessarily be any surplus to export. I'm looking for complete, sustainable selfsufficiency, unlike the present where the entire country is hostage to Saudi Arabia and Russia and the price of food is determined by the least efficient farmer in France.
self efficiency is what I was aiming at with my post, although you explained a lot of Britain is agriculture sufficient I personally do not observe this. I have many open areas of country side around where I live, these fields are empty of food and cattle where this land should be flourishing. It is interesting that armed forces were mentioned, that is why I suggested the Midlands, an inland place we could surround with our forces to make a stronghold of resources.
All coastal towns would be for leisure, between those towns and the Midlands would be army bases.
Inland protects from the sea, strategy important for our future in my opinion. Our country is big enough to sustain us all if the agriculture revolution was to take effect, and all baron land was revamped for prosperity of crops and cattle.
We do not need televisions or the likes of industry, this is just playing on our boredom, we need to grow more food and use more land, produce more cattle and wheat etc, a country wide revolution would enable this to happen.
Why do we have to follow the rest of the world?
Keeping up with the jones's is self righteous greed, a ten year plan and we could really do this, we do not need money or gold it has no value in reality. The UK should be the first to scrap money. It really is useless if you can not eat it, the best thing for money is to burn it to keep warm in winter.
We live for the now and not for the future, we are all selfish to our future including all government in charge.
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self efficiency is what I was aiming at with my post, although you explained a lot of Britain is agriculture sufficient I personally do not observe this.
No I didn't. We cannot grow enough food to feed the present population, and you would need to convert about half the cultivable land to fuel production in order to maintain an acceptable standard of living for the population that could be fed on the remainder. This puts the upper limit of sustainable population at not more than 10,000,000, or about half that if you want to eat farmed animal meat.
I have many open areas of country side around where I live, these fields are empty of food and cattle where this land should be flourishing.
Blame the European Union for paying farmers to grow nothing (remember its objective is to sustain market prices and business statistics, not people) . Or consider whether the land is zoned for building, intentionally fallow as part of a crop rotation, subject to purchase negotitations, too prone to flooding, set aside as a nature reserve or parkland, or polluted. Pretty much every bit of the UK that can be farmed for profit, is.
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When you say "Japan" I presume you mean "Japanese politicians, economists and business owners", not the emancipated women who have decided to live their own lives rather than raise children to make statistics for other people.
No, I completely agree with that, hence my previous posts about civil liberties for women world wide, which I think have had a major effect on fertility, and would continue to, despite very different past cultural practices. The only thing I question is that "bump" as birthrate reverses, and the best rate of decline to mitigate it, but still meet sustainable population goals on time. And also, whether economic pressure on the people with the lowest income is the only strategy in forcing people to conserve in the mean time, while allowing others to waste or consume as much as they like if they can "afford to." But maybe there is no other effective strategy.
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I don't see how giving money to all women for doing nothing counts as economic pressure on the poor, and I don't intend to force anyone to conserve anything.
Eventually, fossil fuel will run out, so conservation merely delays the inevitable and makes life miserable in the meantime. My strategy is to get to the point where we don't need it, before we don't have it. The only way to do that without reducing per capita consumption (which is what makes us happy) is to reduce the number of capitae, and Mother Nature does that for us by preferentially killing the oldest.
Did you have a look at the graphs I linked to ("popchart", reply #35 above)? You can see that, even on a crudely sampled model, there is no "bump" but a steadily increasing working fraction and per capita availability of resources.
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self efficiency is what I was aiming at with my post, although you explained a lot of Britain is agriculture sufficient I personally do not observe this.
No I didn't. We cannot grow enough food to feed the present population, and you would need to convert about half the cultivable land to fuel production in order to maintain an acceptable standard of living for the population that could be fed on the remainder. This puts the upper limit of sustainable population at not more than 10,000,000, or about half that if you want to eat farmed animal meat.
I have many open areas of country side around where I live, these fields are empty of food and cattle where this land should be flourishing.
Blame the European Union for paying farmers to grow nothing (remember its objective is to sustain market prices and business statistics, not people) . Or consider whether the land is zoned for building, intentionally fallow as part of a crop rotation, subject to purchase negotitations, too prone to flooding, set aside as a nature reserve or parkland, or polluted. Pretty much every bit of the UK that can be farmed for profit, is.
I think we may be getting our wires crossed. In my opinion there is fields everywhere around the UK with soil that things can grow from, every single one of these fields should have food growing in them. Most of them have nothing and sit there doing nothing, I am certain we could breed cattle on this land, or grow apple tress and potatoes, I understand that the corporations own all the food and we are simply worker ants, we are in effect all slaves and owned by the corporations, including all of you government types of officials, you also are charged for food which is not even theres by earthly natural right that we are all equal and the land is anybodies and nobodies.
You own all the food and water you own the earth.
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Given the validity of your opinions on physics, I very much doubt the accuracy or relevance of your observations of agriculture.
The bloke who owns the fields around my house isn't a corporation. Right now they aren't all under crop because he leaves some to grow weeds for a year then turns pigs and sheep out to mulch them. I guess I could steal a bit and grow some carrots, but he has all sorts of machinery and years of study and experience that means he can do it much better than I can, and cheaper. So I go off to help heal the sick, get money, and buy my food from my farming neighbour who (given years of study and experience) might well be able to build linear accelerators and x-ray machines, but is quite happy to let me do it while he does his thing. Civilisation is specialisation.
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How much are willing to pay for this food? And how well do you like cabbage?
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Draw lots and eat the winners.....
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How much are willing to pay for this food? And how well do you like cabbage?
We strike a deal, as has been done between farmers and consumers since civilisation began.
As for cabbage, thanks to modern (i.e. post-1200) farming methods, he doesn't grow the same crop in every field every year. In fact there are several other farms nearby and around the world willing to supply just about anything you can eat, but to save having to negotiate with all of them, I visit markets and shops, wherein knowledgeable traders have made what we call wholesale deals with such productive gentlefolk, and arranged to bring a veritable selection of foods to my attention. We exchange money for goods, pretty much as you do on your planet.
If we move towards sustainability by reducing the population, I think the price of food will decrease and its availability will increase. And before you ask "who will work the land?" it's worth looking at a simple fact: 80% of the Ugandan population works on the land, which is fertile, well watered, and never frozen. There are always shortages of food in Uganda. About 2% of the UK population works on the land, some of which is fertile and well watered but much is prone to flood, drought, and freezing. The supermarket shelves are groaning under the weight of food. Modern farming uses machines, not people.
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Given the validity of your opinions on physics, I very much doubt the accuracy or relevance of your observations of agriculture.
The bloke who owns the fields around my house isn't a corporation. Right now they aren't all under crop because he leaves some to grow weeds for a year then turns pigs and sheep out to mulch them........
Yes, on a forum like this you soon get to know who is a reliable source of observation and analysis.
I was raised in a farming, mining community in the midlands and never saw idle land except as you describe Alan - even when I go back to visit. Same around here.
For various reasons I've done quite a lot of survival training, we grow our own veg, and buy as much as we can locally; so I know quite a few of the local farmers and open land. It's as you say, EU and Govt policy drives farming behaviour.
With a smaller, willing population it would be possible to survive but no one should be under any illusions, it is very hard work, especially if we lack fuel for mechanisation.
Excuse a diversion caused by the mention of cabbage, a Russian joke of the communist era
What is 100m long and eats cabbage?
A meat queue!
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We strike a deal, as has been done between farmers and consumers since civilisation began.
As for cabbage, thanks to modern (i.e. post-1200) farming methods, he doesn't grow the same crop in every field every year. In fact there are several other farms nearby and around the world willing to supply just about anything you can eat, but to save having to negotiate with all of them, I visit markets and shops, wherein knowledgeable traders have made what we call wholesale deals with such productive gentlefolk, and arranged to bring a veritable selection of foods to my attention. We exchange money for goods, pretty much as you do on your planet.
If we move towards sustainability by reducing the population, I think the price of food will decrease and its availability will increase. And before you ask "who will work the land?" it's worth looking at a simple fact: 80% of the Ugandan population works on the land, which is fertile, well watered, and never frozen. There are always shortages of food in Uganda. About 2% of the UK population works on the land, some of which is fertile and well watered but much is prone to flood, drought, and freezing. The supermarket shelves are groaning under the weight of food. Modern farming uses machines, not people.
I mention cabbage because I think it might be difficult to get people to revert back to a traditional seasonal diet where certain fruits and vegetables aren't available year round. England wouldn't be as bad as Canada, but I don't think you'll be growing bananas or coffee. I suppose you could grow some fruits and vegetables in green houses, but that's expensive and has an energy cost. You'd need huge tariffs to prevent people from importing cheaper food.
Not to beat a dead horse, but I did look at the graphs. When population reverses direction, I still don't see how you can avoid an interval of time where there are large numbers of elderly people relative the rest of the population. The money you spend on them might come from not having to spend money on children, so the proportion of working people to dependents might not change drastically, but which group is more expensive? Kids require new stuff as they grow, education, and parents often buy bigger houses to accommodate families. The elderly require pensions, much more health care, some prefer to live independently in homes or apartments rather than with their children until they need assisted living. Crime might drop with fewer young people which could be a savings.
Another question might be whether childless people will use their savings to support the elderly - perhaps their own parents, but not necessarily someone elses, and there will be an increasing number of older people without any children. Of course, they might be able to use money not spent on kids for their own retirement if they invest well.
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I mention cabbage because I think it might be difficult to get people to revert back to a traditional seasonal diet where certain fruits and vegetables aren't available year round. England wouldn't be as bad as Canada, but I don't think you'll be growing bananas or coffee. I suppose you could grow some fruits and vegetables in green houses, but that's expensive and has an energy cost. You'd need huge tariffs to prevent people from importing cheaper food.
You're right it is very difficult to get people to change their diet. Here in the UK the average calories from fat is 60% (30% recommended) and we have an obesity epidemic. Food manufactures want to sell as much cheap fat and sugar as they can. Certainly a major diet change would be very traumatic to most people, particularly restricted calories. I think the trigger would be equally traumatic. Not government action but say mutant Ebola with indirect transmission. The other scenario could be lack of access to cheaper imported food, China is already buying land around the world eg Africa for assured supply.
Diet would be very restricted. Our experience is that unless you have access to pesticides and fungicides greenhouses can fail dramatically. We are managing with organic alternatives, but there is still a lot of effort needed in hygiene. In the Middle Ages special foods were only available for the rich, the masses ate a cabbage, roots, grain diet with very little meat.
Our luxury is beekeeping, but I suspect it's main value would be for barter, preserving or mead - to take our minds off the monotonous diet.
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Why change your diet? Reducing the population doesn't involve destroying refrigerators or reverting to the Stone Age, and if people want to import bananas and oranges, why shouldn't they? Indeed since everyone will have more money to spend, and free energy, we might expect food to become even more varied and interesting.
Cheryl: Could you possibly point out where, in my graphs, the ratio of nonworking population to working exceeds the current value? There is a blip at 60 years hence, but as I explained earlier, that is an artefact of the coarse sampling interval and corrects itself within 5 years anyway. You seem to have missed the key point that children consume just as much as pensioners - but you are not alone in that misconception. The cost of raising a child to age 20 in the UK is now about £240,000. State pension is about £6000, so a 60-year-old can live for 40 years on what it costs to raise one child. But the over-60's die off at such a rate that there are only as many pensioners as children, so continuously reducing the number of children simply reduces the total burden on the working population. Remember this isn't a one-off pause in reproduction but a continuous process of reduction.
For what it's worth, UK calorific intake has actually decreased since 1950, but the universal adoption of home insulation and central heatig has reduced our calorific demand even more. All my contemporaries remember being cold as children - none of my kids or grandchildren has ever felt cold indoors, and since nobody walks to school opr plays in the street these days, they probably won't ever experience routine coldness outdoors either!
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For what it's worth, UK calorific intake has actually decreased since 1950, but the universal adoption of home insulation and central heatig has reduced our calorific demand even more. All my contemporaries remember being cold as children
I can remember scrapeing frost off the inside of the windows when I was small!
the reduction in calorie intake is interesting given that average weight appears to have increased over the same period, or is it weight of a specific part of the population - are we seeing polarisation. Would be interesting to look at stats on manual labour over the period.
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Nearly all your calorific intake is used to maintain your body temperature. The quickest way to lose weight is to take mild exercise (just enough so you don't feel cold) in a serious wind chill. I can lose 6000 calories a day when crosscountry skiing, but walking the same track in the summer only burns 2500 - 3000.
Apropos cabbage: tonight's dinner was ostrich, beans, courgettes, onions, capsicum, broccoli and cheese. Yesterday we ate steak, asparagus, tomatoes and potatoes. The only ingredient not grown within 50 miles of home was...beans! Looking forward to tomorrow's aubergine and pak choi (both all the way from Essex) and whatever North Sea fish happens to turn up for dinner. Breakfast will probably be several bits of local pig and an egg from the hens next door, and since we live on the arable side of the country, plenty of toast with plum and cherry jam (OK, Kent is south of Watford, but it's still England). I'm still munching my way through last year's figs from the garden and getting stoned on English wines and beers whilst waiting for my olive tree to bear fruit (it's only a year old). I don't think I'd die from culinary boredom if I couldn't get bananas - in fact I haven't eaten one for about six months, and there's a fair possibility that they will become unaffordable anyway as the fusarium blight spreads around the tropics. So don't worry, Cheryl, my descendants won't have to survive on coleslaw alone.
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Nearly all your calorific intake is used to maintain your body temperature. The quickest way to lose weight is to take mild exercise (just enough so you don't feel cold) in a serious wind chill. I can lose 6000 calories a day when crosscountry skiing, but walking the same track in the summer only burns 2500 - 3000.
Thanks, I was about to start looking for info on BMR and temp. Don't want to disrupt this thread, but given we are told portion sizes have risen since the 50s, and we have an obesity epidemic I am interested to find out what is happening.
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They prolly are already doing this in africa with ebola
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It may sound inhuman to say such, but I believe that genocide is the only solution. We may lose some very valuable in the process. But, that's the only solution there is.
I'd never accept that as a solution. You just can't murder millions of people to control population. And it is murder. First of all people of various religions won't allow it and they have a great deal of pull in this world. I think that the goal should be to limit people to two children per couple. But it would require education to control population and try to make people become more responsible birth control wise. For example; there should be a law which would fine a couple if a woman got pregnant without a declaration of intention to do so. This would force people to try to be much more responsible than they are now.
I took a quick look at some data regarding race vs family size and Hispanics appear to have the largest families across the country so by looking at the data itself it's clear that race is a large determining factor as to who has children. I'd hazard to guess that it's based on a lack of education and that might affect a persons sense of responsibility.
So if we were to do something I'd say that we should fine people who have kids by accident. It's a hell of a lot better than murdering them. How would we determine who ends up dead anyway? I won't volunteer, that's for sure.
But if that kind of thing is implemented I'd like to see it done with a great deal of compassion. Otherwise I can just see it now. There'd be a social worker helping kids to pay their large fine and they'd have to do it on installment plan etc. But after so long the social worker, seeing irresponsible people all day long all year long, might be quite rude to those people and end up doing a great deal of emotional damage to them for making them feel guilty about what's really a very natural thing.