[throwaway894345]

I’m a pretty staunch critic of China, but population control seems like a pretty good thing. I suppose ideally it would be promoted but ultimately voluntary, but I don’t think their single child policy was the worst thing they’ve done by far.

[lolinder]

How about forced sterilization, forced abortions, and the interplay between the one child policy and culture that led to massive numbers of sex-targeted abortions and infanticide? Calling it "population control" euphemizes away the horrible human cost of the enforcement methods and the collateral damage.

I'd agree it's not the worst thing they've done so far, but given that they're actively committing genocide that's a pretty high bar.

[throwaway894345]

Agreed. The comment I was responding to took issue with China dictating a number of children—I don’t have a problem with that. The specific enforcement (sterilization, abortions, etc) are grotesque. Conceivably you can enforce population control without resorting to those measures.

[mensetmanusman]

How?

[throwaway894345]

Fines seem like the most straightforward approach, though there are certainly tradeoffs with anything.

[tolbish]

That only encourages those who have both the need and the abilityto prioritize budgeting/saving to think ttwice about having kids. In other words, that really only targets the middle class.

[throwaway894345]

1. That’s still a net reduction in births, even if the reduction isn’t spread evenly among socioeconomic classes

2. You can means-adjust the fines to dissuade the rich. You can even redistribute revenue from these fines to the poor if your concern is inequality. I’m particularly curious about paying the poor not to have children since fining the poor seems likely to be unproductive.

[mensetmanusman]

Doesn’t work on the rich or poor…

[throwaway894345]

That’s an opinion.