[oblio]

A fellow HackerNews reader had a great quote, I don't remember the source.

You're basically complaining that China has too many people and would presumably want that some of them wouldn't exist.

His quote was: "If you think a certain group of people shouldn't exist, how do you select that group of people? And how do you know that you, yourself, shouldn't he a part of that group?".

China's population is a fact. In the end, you can't argue against facts. And in their current circumstances, China, a much poorer per capita country than the US, is willing to sacrifice a bit of their profits for long term stability.

The US is basically eating its own seed corn.

[Danihan]

> would presumably want that some of them wouldn't exist.

I simply don't want to pay to enable them even more.

When the proper social constraints aren't in place, money = energy = more babies.

It's poor policy to continually reward countries that are chronically overcrowded and polluted, it just makes the issues worse long-term.

>The US is basically eating its own seed corn.

It's hilarious to me that you believe this when ~85% of the rivers in China are qualified as "very polluted" or "extremely polluted."

[legolas2412]

> When the proper social constraints aren't in place, money = energy = more babies.

Funny, it is actually money = better healthcare = less infant mortality + higher cost of raising child = less fertility rate = less babies.

Rich countries don't have more babies than poor ones, its the opposite.

[Danihan]

>Rich countries don't have more babies than poor ones, its the opposite.

Rich countries are market democracies. They have the proper social constraints.

In a market democracy it's more like you described, but not entirely, there are plenty of people who abuse the welfare systems to have as many children as possible for the tax credits and other benefits.

[legolas2412]

Clearly you don't understand the mentality of developing countries. Do you think they are socialist utopia?

I am from India. And the main sentiments for people having more children were - high infant mortality (not knowing who will live to be old, which is still high for India but falling fast), more hands mean more money in home (less people to hire in the farm).

The "more hands mean more money" is exactly what market economy gets you, not a centrally planned communist economy. But with rising standard of living and cost of raising a child, people are moving away from the old mentality.

[kaybe]

Just a point, air pollution has peaked about 2 years ago and is starting to go down. (Not sure if that data is published yet.) There is some progress.

[oblio]

Go read about the "1 child policy" and get back to me when you have a clue what you're talking about. "Enabling", sheesh. You're enabling them through buying iPhones made in China, not through this agreement. You're so way off in this discussion that I don't think it's worth continuing it.

Have a nice day!

[Danihan]

The "1 child policy" is what you get when you have an authoritarian government instead of democracy.

China doesn't have a properly functioning government, therefore they have to resort to crazy policies like that.

And I don't think we should be enabling through trade either, ideally we would jack up tariffs massively on countries with poor human rights, excessive pollution, etc.