I'd like to turn in the direction of innovative solutions to the ever-burgeoning numbers of people. How about Birthright Lotteries? This is a concept originated by Larry Niven, in his Known Space universe, and you'll find some discussion of it on the Internet, although the term has been highjacked and turned to unrelated discussions by some.
I'm not going to discuss it at length. Even convicted criminals can't be excluded from the Birthright Lottery. What's the penalty if you circumvent getting your birth control implants? Well, then the ARMs go on a Mother Hunt....and the parents are executed, their child lives, thus maintaining zero growth. Have you a license to breed in the Lottery, and want more than one kid? Put your ticket in the pot and go in the arena and fight for it. The losers do the subtraction for the extra kid you have.
Grim? Not nearly as grim as where we're headed......the figures say world population will top out at 10+ billion. How long does anyone think that can be sustained? No one took Paul Ehrlich (The Population Bomb) very seriously in 1968 when his timeline proved to be far too short, but that book has always stuck with me, and it seems more relevant than ever in 2012. Population control by coercion has always been shunned as politically unacceptable. More acceptable than the inexorable depletion of irreplaceable resourcs and mass starvation?
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