Elizabeth Kolbert writes in The New Yorker that having kids is kinda’ selfish and probably shouldn’t be left up to you.
You’ve really gotta’ read the whoe thing. It’s just sickening.
Just check out this nugget:
Global population is expected to hit eight billion around 2025, which is to say about ninety-five years later than Knowlton predicted. No one in his right mind supposes that it could reach sixty-four billion without horrific consequences, except perhaps a few economists.
The decision to have a child, or one more child, or yet another child may seem to be a personal one—a choice about how many diapers you want to change in the short term versus how many Mother’s Day cards you hope to receive later on. But to see it in these terms alone is to be, as Caplan points out on the cover of his book, selfish. Whatever you may think of Overall’s and Benatar’s conclusions, it’s hard to argue with their insistence that the decision to have a child is an ethical one. When we set the size of our families, we are, each in our own small way, determining how the world of the future will look. And we’re doing this not just for ourselves and our own children; we’re doing it for everyone else’s children, too.
How horrible is this line of thinking? This is the same kind of logic that gets us the government takeover of healthcare. Because every healthcare decision you make affects others, the government should get involved and tell you what to do.
Using this same logic that having babies is just selfish and that it affects others, is it really a big jump to have the government start limiting the number of children one can have?
Go read the whole thing and then come back and share your horror.
April 13, 2012 at 1:12 pm
There is a lot of evidence that there is actually going to be a global population collapse. Currently the population is being driven more by us living longer than by high reproductive rates. Some countries are already experiencing the end result of a lack of children and are paying parents to undo what the foolish selfishness of liberalism has wrought.
April 13, 2012 at 5:37 pm
I think that Kolbert's article was so poorly researched and lazy that it's hard to take it seriously. Not only did she not make her case, she barely even presented it.
April 13, 2012 at 10:44 pm
Progressives: Population control starts with YOU
April 13, 2012 at 11:44 pm
So, if you want big families, don't teach your daughters to read. Also, Sophia's Favoite, if there are 35 billion humans, what else gets to be on Earth? That kind of population requires converting every acre of land on the planet, including mountain ranges, to housing and agriculture. No more forests, plains, or open spaces. You make like it, but it's my vision of Hell.
April 14, 2012 at 12:45 am
"Our Creator" creates all men equal, and without our Creator, no person would exist. Elizabeth Kolbert would deny God His creation and bring the wrath of God down on America.
April 14, 2012 at 1:57 am
God can fix anything
April 14, 2012 at 7:54 am
@ Karen: I'm sorry I didn't specify. We merely need to upgrade our existing agricultural land to the state of the art available in 1984, to support those numbers. And that only takes up 9% of the earth's land-surface, which is what it is now.
As for "converting every acre", that is adorable. I'm serious, it's very, very cute—I wish there was a "condescending pat" emoticon. When the population was 5 billion…it used .3% of the earth's surface to live on. If we septuple that to 35 billion, it's still only 2.1%. Added to our agricultural land usage, that's only 11.1% of the land—1/9. The rest is "forests, plains, or open spaces".
Maybe before you started working yourself up about "vision of hell", you should've looked up how much land we actually use. I find actual statistics to be more useful than "visions", but then, I write hard science fiction.
Frankly your arrogance, in believing that humans are so close to changing this planet that much, is disgusting. You appear to believe your species has actually done something to modify this planet? Well it hasn't. The reason the Great Wall of China being visible from space is considered noteworthy, is most human structures are still invisible on the grand scale.
April 14, 2012 at 7:56 am
Oh yes, Karen, speaking of "teaching your daughters to read", we can assume you have a large family? Since it never occurred to you—as it would to a literate person—to look up how much land it would actually take.
April 14, 2012 at 3:03 pm
Those who criticize large families as "selfish" expect to someday draw Social Security checks paid for by taxes on other people's kids.
And Karen (6:44 PM) accused Anne Romney of being illiterate? Harvard's reputation has been plunging in recent years – but really!
April 18, 2012 at 9:13 am
Lynda,Micha@You get social security whether you have kids or not. Many people have kids for selfish reasons. It is a decision not to be taken lightly. You cannot make people take on a responsiblity they don't want. There are already 500000 kid in foster homes across the country. Do we need more? Children should be a choice not an obligation. Demographic Winter is racists to say the least. It is about making the right kind of babies – white conservative Christians.
April 18, 2012 at 6:53 pm
Roddma, you get social security whether you have kids or not AND only if there are people paying into the system when you retire. Or do you truly believe that the money you've paid into it is waiting in a bank account for YOU to use?