[IronRanger]

And who is going to come in and fix this water infrastructure, the British?

The fact is that environmental conditions worsen each decade in India and quality of life is lower than in the 70s when the population was 555million (currently 1.3b).

Meanwhile the upper castes flee the country en-masse to the USA, Canada, Australia, Europe.

The Indian population will rise to 1.6b by 2050. It will be substantially easier to fix water infrastructure if this number was hundreds of millions lower. Population management is a bigger part of the solution than pipes and dams.

[betwixthewires]

You talk about fixing water infrastructure like it is really hard (so hard you need the British to do it) and your alternative is to eliminate a significant potion of the population? You think that is easier? Not to even talk of the ethical concerns or the unintended consequences, just from a logistical standpoint, your statement is absurd. There is no way that is is easier to reduce a human population than it is to increase water availability. I don't usually attack people (and technically I'm only criticizing your statement, not attacking you directly) but when malthusians start talking I immediately know that they don't know what they're talking about.

And on an ethical note, managing populations is something you do with sheep and cattle, not human beings.

[imtringued]

If you fix the problem today one day there will be 3 billion indians and you have to fix the problem again. It's much easier to reduce their reproduction rate through education and that education comes with other benefits.

[betwixthewires]

People don't just have kids en masse without a reason. People historically had lots of kids for 2 reasons: a lot of them died before reaching reproductive age, and they needed more hands to produce food because most people lived in a subsistence agriculture environment.

The population boom over the last 100 years is not due to people reproducing too much, it is due to a decrease in child mortality, that and development from agricultural to industrial economies meant a cultural lag time in reducing the number of kids a woman has.

Once you have an industrial economy, the pressure then becomes to have less kids. You don't need to be told in a classroom to do that, it happens naturally. If you need proof, these education programs didn't exist in the west during development into industrial economies and yet the fertility rate decreased simply due to economic pressures.

A fertility rate of 2.3 (the .3 accounting for child death and people who don't ever have kids) is replacement rate. At that rate population does not increase.

Long story short, at least in cities (where the water shortage we are talking about is happening) you won't see a doubling of the population due to sustained fertility. So the shortages you see of water and other resources can be entirely attributed to inefficient resource allocation, and once capacity is increased to match population you won't have to worry about it again and again.

[vishnugupta]

> A fertility rate of 2.3 (the .3 accounting for child death and people who don't ever have kids) is replacement rate.

This is a good point which often gets overlooked in the heated debate of population explosion.

Coincidentally just a year or two ago Indian growth rate reached replacement levels[1]. As per the latest data (not sure if it's been reviewed/confirmed) it's now slightly below the replacement levels.

Also, if you notice, the southern states's growth rate is well below that of replacement level.

[1] https://niti.gov.in/content/total-fertility-rate-tfr-birth-w...

[lotsofpulp]

I would say the debate is more accurately about distributing resources to an "exploding" amount of people. Bringing up the entire population of India (just as an example, could be any country) to the living standards that are commonly discussed (such as potable water, sufficient nutrition, healthcare, etc) could very well be practically impossible.

[betwixthewires]

Yep, when I make the argument that "the problem is resource allocation, not overpopulation" I don't mean to imply that resource availability can be instantaneously ramped up locally with an influx in population, there is obviously latency there, and there will be a lag in standard of living during a sharp population increase. But this isn't a permanent state due to there being too many people.

I don't think it is impossible to bring the projected population of India up to decent living standards, I think this is highly unlikely, but my point doesn't account for that, so it could very well be.

[Chris2048]

> You don't need to be told in a classroom to do that, it happens naturally

That's just a theory, and if you're wrong, then what? A description of what you think will happen needs better evidence. At least one other factor is religious/cultural inertia encouraging people to have lots of children, and that is somewhat characteristic/unique for each given culture s.t. you can't really generalise it too much.

There was a similar theory about non-democracies being unstable (Democratic peace theory, wrt greater public wealth), and how free trade liberates nations. How did that turn out for Chinese superpower?

China is an emerging superpower, and economic powerhouse, and anti-democratic to the extend of suppressing democracy in HK. It also does lot of trade that never seems to encourage an increase in civil liberties.

Now, maybe the theory was all an illusion caused by the domination and coercive power, of existing democratic nations.

[betwixthewires]

You have a good point. I'd say educating women (and people in general) is a good idea generally speaking, and so could potentially help in this regard if what I said is wrong, so it doesn't hurt. But I do believe that people who have resources to support 3 people don't deliberately have 10 kids, that's the economic pressure that I'm relying on, I'd say accidental births would be more of a factor here than inertia due to cultural norm. Contraceptive technology IMO is more important.

[kthejoker2]

It's true education is the gift that keeps on giving, but India is already at replacement levels of fertility, its age 0-19 population has already peaked and is in decline, and its population will top out around 1.75 billion.

Their issue here is poor governance, economic inequality, and climate change.

[Chris2048]

You are purposefully using language that suggests genocide. Family planning counts as "managing populations" too.

Is every progression on human DNA eugenics? Is every new law facism?

[betwixthewires]

I didn't suggest genocide, not at all.

"Family planning" suggests agency. Humans have agency. The comment I'm responding to explicitly recommends forced reduction in fertility rates, removing agency, something you don't do to human beings unless you think of them like sheep or cattle. Equating a one or no child policy with "family planning" is extremely disingenuous.

Any law that tells human beings how many children they are allowed to have is fascism, yes. Any directive telling human beings how they have to reproduce is eugenics by definition.

[waterhouse]

> Any directive telling human beings how they have to reproduce is eugenics by definition.

It could be dysgenics, depending on what the instructions are. :-P How about private charities that provide voluntary incentives for some people to self-sterilize and others to have more kids? How about private charities that subsidize birth control and abortions? How about friends and family encouraging people to marry someone smart, or telling people with genetic disorders that they should adopt? Do you draw a line somewhere in the above between "eugenics" and "not eugenics"? I think your line would be far from universal. dictionary.com says "the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population", which would indeed encompass all of the above. I'm afraid the word "eugenics", like "fascism", has been corrupted into "something whose exact definition is unclear, but it's definitely a bad thing".

> Any law that tells human beings how many children they are allowed to have is fascism, yes.

So what is there to prevent some people from having 10 children, every generation, until the system collapses under their weight? If you say "it's the parents' responsibility to provide for the kids, and if they don't manage to do so from their own resources or persuade anyone else, then the kids may starve and that will limit the process", then, fine, that would work; though many people think the state should always prevent kids (or perhaps people generally) from starving, and I think policies with that effect have been enacted even in the U.S., and I doubt they will get repealed anytime soon.

You say that people with increased access to education and health and such naturally reduce their birth rates. That may be. But I think it would be only a matter of time before they got selected for impulsivity, high libido, inclination to adhere to the parents' religion that says to maximize children, or whatever other traits would lead to a bunch of people actually having tons of kids they can't support. (Perhaps the singularity and/or genetic engineering and/or other stuff will happen and make that irrelevant long before it becomes an issue.) Maybe those traits would also lead to doing things that land them in jail for years, getting a reproductive penalty that way; I dunno if that would be enough.

[betwixthewires]

Alright, it isn't exactly eugenics, it is one step removed from eugenics. Telling people how many children they can have is one step away from telling them who they're allowed to have them with.

> So what is there to prevent some people from having 10 children, every generation, until the system collapses under their weight?

The fact that if they can't feed those children those children will die and the standard of living of their other children will be significantly reduced. Natural economic pressure handles this problem already.

>You say that people with increased access to education and health and such naturally reduce their birth rates. That may be. But I think it would be only a matter of time before they got selected for impulsivity, high libido, inclination to adhere to the parents' religion that says to maximize children, or whatever other traits would lead to a bunch of people actually having tons of kids they can't support.

That's more speculative than anything I've said so far, everything I've said so far has a historical example to reference. Even if that were to happen, not bring able to support the people you create means reduced standard of living, and therefore reduced resource consumption, at best. Again, the problem is self correcting.

[cute_boi]

"Natural economic pressure handles this problem already."

This is not how people works. I have seen people who gives 10 children due to religion thing. Sure the quality life is low but they don't care. There children are also doing same thing. You may be open to ideas but many religious people don't think like that. They will simply trade low quality life thinking more children brings more money.

[Barrin92]

>Equating a one or no child policy with "family planning" is extremely disingenuous.

meh, not really. The OP may have worded it bluntly but the distribution of free contraceptives, access to birth control is just the 'nudging' version of the same thing. I always find it a little bit hilarious how you can reframe population politics in terms of some technocratic wonk policy or language and then it's total cool, whereas just doing a one-child policy is evil despite having virtually the same goal

[betwixthewires]

>meh, not really

I was basing my response on what was clearly stated. You can't just reinterpret what someone else said for them. There is a big difference between "distribution of free contraceptives" and "one child policy" and you can't wiggle your way around that.

[Barrin92]

I didn't reinterpret what they said, I argued that you overestimate how much of a difference there is in both policy outcome and intention. What's the difference other than the branding? Women have fewer kids and they enter the workforce. The demographic development in China doesn't even look much different than in South Korea, in fact they have even fewer kids in SK.

In 'free' societies when governing elites want a policy outcome they dress it in women's liberation and rights language, put a tax on something or hand you a subsidy to remind you of what you're supposed to do, in China they don't give a crap and send you somewhere by fiat. tomato tomahto

[amanaplanacanal]

I don’t think the goal is the problem, but rather the means with which you get there. Voluntary is good, force is bad.

[Chris2048]

> I didn't suggest genocide, not at all

  your alternative is to eliminate a significant potion of the population

  managing populations is something you do with sheep and cattle, not human beings.

using the word "eliminate" and 'treating people like cattle' isn't consistent with merely incentivising them to not have children.

> The comment I'm responding to explicitly recommends forced reduction in fertility rates, removing agency

where does it? It's a comment previous that the same poster talks about Chinas 1cp, and as I understand it, it was implemented as a fine for having more than one child.

Do punitive fines, and tax/welfare incentives/disincentives count as being "forced" or "non-agency"?

> Any law that tells human beings how many children they are allowed to have is fascism, yes.

I disagree. Point me to a commonly accepted definition of fascism that agrees, without requiring too much subjective interpretation. Anyone can have their own notion of what constitutes freedom/oppression etc.

> Any directive telling human beings how they have to reproduce is eugenics by definition.

Again, show me that definition. Most that I've seen limit the choice of who can procreate. A flat rule of 1-child applied to everyone equally doesn't seem to apply to me as there is no differentiation based on genetics. But in any case, a rose by any other name: deciding something fits a definition doesn't really change the semantics, so it doesn't really make any difference, especially if you are using a special-case, or non-standard application of the definition (e.g. like arguing abortion is bad based on whether it counts as murder, or not).

[betwixthewires]

"Fascism" is interchangeable with "authoritarisnism" in common usage, and the comment I was responding to used it in this manner. Strictly speaking I suppose it is authoritarianism, not fascism.

Managing populations does not have to include killing people. China's one child policy strictly and explicitly prohibited couples from having more than one child. You're softening the definition of what I was responding to to discredit my response.

[Chris2048]

Fascism is commonly confused for authoritarianism but I don't consider them interchangeable. If it's common to conflate them, then I consider this a common fallacy.

I consider Fascism as authoritarianist, but not necessarily the other way around: there are plenty communist regimes that are authoritarian (including maybe China) but that are not considered Fascist.

> China's one child policy strictly and explicitly prohibited couples from having more than one child

Sure, but you seem to assume what this means. I don't read what you assume into the original post. Again, what about Chinas 1cp specifically do you believe to be fascist and/or immoral?

[mschuster91]

> Population management is a bigger part of the solution than pipes and dams.

"Population management" is a road leading straight to ethical catastrophes, to murder and other horrible forms of suffering. There have been many of these - genocides, "Lebensraum im Osten" aka Nazi Germany invading Eastern Europe, the Holocaust, China's "1 child policy".

The best way a society can handle population management is fact-based sex education and safe, cheap access to contraceptives and medical abortion, and general access to healthcare and a social security network so that people don't have to have half a dozen children if they want one or two to survive to adulthood and care for them at old age.

[matthewdgreen]

Are you sure you’re disagreeing with the parent poster? It sounds to me like you’ve just outlined a plan to achieve the same goal.

[mschuster91]

The parent poster advocated for a one-child policy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25372090

[Chris2048]

> "Population management" is a road leading

You can say that about anything: socialist policies, "no-tolerance" policies, anything that looks like censorship.

You say there have been many such example, then trot out Nazi Germany; The fact the Nazis purposefully initiated a genocide (the holocaust) out of hatred out the Jews undermines the suggestion that there was a genuine attempt at population management.

Chinas also has a pretty poor human rights example, aside from it's 1-child policy.

Do you have any example of a modern (first-world, developed) country with a good human-rights record, and QOL index pursuing population management?

[jelliclesfarm]

>The Indian population will rise to 1.6b by 2050.

india will run out of resources(and water) before population hits a peak. depopulation is a statistical guarantee. reducing population voluntarily is the only way to assure a reasonable stock of the gene pool before the country completely runs out of resources and scarcity escalates into wars of depopulation(historically, it has been proven that war always follows drought or famine on a larger scale..from genghis khan to african tribes to vikings to the last syrian war, if you can collect enough data sets about world famine/droughts/scarcities, wars always follow.)

now..how to go about it. its a multi pronged approach:

1. stop incentivising children. what does this mean? instead of punitive measures or coercive one child policy, the state should incentivise responsible procreation and reward the child free. like an UBI for those who dont contribute to population growth.

2. provide free preservation of genetic material(sperm/eggs/dna) in a gene pool databank for posterity. this may not mean anything. it may amount to something. the idea that a 'legacy' might have a chance in a better world through frozen dna is a perk. it is a small cost and a nice gesture to reward selfless action for the nation. also: who knows what we might need in 300-500 years later.

3. go back to village or rural economies. by this, i dont mean that indians should start turning back time wrt sci and tech. what i mean is that people should go back village size communities. these have to be self governing and self sustaining units that can manage their own resources.

4. diversity is a double edged sword. i am not talking about social diversity, but diversity of resource expenditure and resource scarcity. there are too many people in india and to a certain extent, more cohesion and homogeneous living/way of life will give smaller communities more agency over how they manage local resources.

example: a meat eating population has a different resource expenditure pattern than a vegetarian/dairy inclusive one. rural communities differ from urban community's needs. droughty areas have different management starategies than those with monsoons.

5. it's very easy wrt water. dig more ponds and save rain water. protect watersheds and prevent ag/industrial runoffs. adopt 'nile valley' model of digging canals. take whatever you grow indoors into hydroponic systems. india still gets a lot of rain during the monsoons. development of rural areas and relieving the pressure in urban density will help. but only if there is a limit on the number of people per resource budgeted zone.

6. more importantly..before the depopulation occurs due to scarcity of resources, there is a real danger for india. if the wet bulb temperatures[1]rise as predicted, the heat and humidity will kill people in their sleep. they'd go to bed and die in their sleep.[2]

[..]He and his colleagues previously looked at how heat waves would evolve with warming in the Middle East and found that region will likely be home to the highest wet-bulb temperatures the world will see. (Bandar Mahshahr in Iran hit a wet-bulb temperature of nearly 95°F during a 2015 heat wave, which translates to a heat index of about 163°F (73°C).) But South Asia poses the bigger concern in terms of threats to people, as it is home to one fifth of the world’s population and is an area of deep poverty.

“That combination is what makes, what shapes this acute vulnerability,” Eltahir said.

Eltahir and his colleagues found that if greenhouse gas emissions continue on their current trajectory, parts of eastern India and Bangladesh will exceed the 95°F threshold by century’s end and most of South Asia will approach that threshold.

If emissions are substantially curtailed and global temperature rise meets the 2°C (3.6°F) limit agreed to in the Paris accord, no place in South Asia would exceed 95°F, though wet-bulb temperatures over 88°F would be widespread. Such temperatures can still be deadly, especially to already vulnerable populations like the elderly.[..]

[1]https://www.livemint.com/mint-lounge/features/climate-change...

[2]https://www.climatecentral.org/news/extreme-heat-india-most-...

[imtringued]

>6. more importantly..before the depopulation occurs due to scarcity of resources, there is a real danger for india. if the wet bulb temperatures[1]rise as predicted, the heat and humidity will kill people in their sleep. they'd go to bed and die in their sleep.[2]

Yeah but people have a survival instinct. They won't just say"Hey, it's so hot I will die before I wake up. Let's go to sleep!". They'll go somewhere where they won't die. They will go to where we are...

[jelliclesfarm]

it will not take days and months. one heat wave will kill hundreds of thousands of people in their sleep.

and how and where will a few hundred million people migrate?

[..]Currently, about 2 percent of the Indian population is occasionally exposed to extreme wet-bulb temperatures (between 89 and 94 degrees). According to a 2017 study, by 2100 that number could increase to 70 percent. [..]

https://scroll.in/article/931865/the-human-body-cant-cope-in... : Human body can’t cope infinitely with rising temperatures – and in India, it is close to its limits At a certain temperature, sweat stops evaporating – shutting down the body's cooling mechanism, causing death. Parts of the world are already there.

When the air temperature exceeds 35 degrees Celsius, the body relies on the evaporation of water – mainly through sweating – to keep core temperature at a safe level. This system works until what is called the wet-bulb temperature reaches 35 degrees Celsius. The wet-bulb temperature includes the cooling effect of water evaporating from the thermometer and so is normally much lower than the normal dry-bulb temperature reported in weather forecasts.

Once this wet-bulb temperature threshold is crossed, the air is so full of water vapour that sweat no longer evaporates. Without the means to dissipate heat, our core temperature rises, irrespective of how much water we drink, how much shade we seek, or how much rest we take. Without respite, death follows – soonest for the very young, elderly or those with pre-existing medical conditions.

Wet-bulb temperatures of 35 degrees Celsius have not yet been widely reported, but there is some evidence that they are starting to occur in South West Asia. Climate change then offers the prospect that some of the most densely populated regions on Earth could pass this threshold by the end of the century, with the Persian Gulf, South Asia and most recently the North China Plain on the front line. These regions are, together, home to billions of people.[...]

[killtimeatwork]

> it will not take days and months. one heat wave will kill hundreds of thousands of people in their sleep.

Peak temperatures don't occur during the night. How do you figure heat wave will kill people in their sleep?

[jhowell]

> And who is going to come in and fix this water infrastructure, the British?

Seems like the Brits have done a lot, historically in Indian and China, but have their hands full at the moment with Brexit to reunite the "kingdom." My money is on the Chinese and their scientists in exchange for concessions that will further isolate the United States due to xenophobic thinking some people in the states perpetuate. How long before "their" water born illnesses become our airborne viruses?

[apatters]

This seems like a comment by someone who lacks a basic knowledge of Indian/Chinese relations but has an axe to grind against America. India and China are constantly saber rattling over turf wars and other geopolitical issues, and India withdrew from the recent Chinese-led RCEP free trade agreement over concerns that China would compromise their economic sovereignty.

India could undergo governmental reform and hire, say, German experts (or Indian experts!) to help revitalize their water infrastructure. Just illustrating a scenario where things change for the better and neither China nor America is involved whatsoever.

[bluGill]

India has more than enough smart people to design and build everything they need. Labor is cheap there too, so they can dig in pipes everywhere cheaply.

The things that need to be done are public knowledge or easy to find out. Most of the west already does it, and has been for one hundred years or so. There is nothing magical about turning bad water into clean drinkable water. All that India is lacking is the will (probably because of money or corruption - both real problems).

[Chris2048]

> to reunite the "kingdom."

BS. They just don't want to be part of a new "kingdom".

Brexiteers don't trust EU politician, but they also don't trust UK politicians.

> My money is on the Chinese

Chinese aggression isn't much better than US "xenophobic thinking", plus India has pretty good contacts with Europe and other south-Asian countries. Plus there is a large and influential Indian population in the US, I'd be surprised in The Indian population in China are half as influential.