Change my view: The world would be a better place if a global one child policy were implemented

Because it worked so well in China.

In Christ alone wrote:

Because it worked so well in China.

It did. China is a way better place to live in now than it was in 1979, when the one child policy was first implemented.

Vision 2050 wrote:

In Christ alone wrote:

Because it worked so well in China.

It did. China is a way better place to live in now than it was in 1979, when the one child policy was first implemented.

Idiot, China is a better place now(compared to 79) because it is has opened its market starting with Deng Xiaoping.

In short order you would have ~2 elderly/infirm people being supported by each worker. Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

The fact is that Earth holds more humans now than ever before--and a higher percentage of them gets enough to eat than ever before.

Never voluntarily limit your own freedom for any “perceived” benefit. You’ll never get it back.

its happening..for some wrote:

China is one thing, but there is already a manufactured birth rate control in place for whites in the western world. They have less than 1 child.

Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore all have around 1 child on average. There's no "manufactured birth rate control" there, and they're all decent places to live in.

kibitzer wrote:

In short order you would have ~2 elderly/infirm people being supported by each worker. Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

It's a net positive. When the elderly/infirm die, inheritances will skyrocket. The labor scarcity will cause wages to rise and unemployment to fall. We may even develop new technologies or find ways to slow down aging so that the elderly can still be productive.

Looking forward to it wrote:

kibitzer wrote:

In short order you would have ~2 elderly/infirm people being supported by each worker. Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

It's a net positive. When the elderly/infirm die, inheritances will skyrocket. The labor scarcity will cause wages to rise and unemployment to fall. We may even develop new technologies or find ways to slow down aging so that the elderly can still be productive.

Overall both supply and demand for labor would fall so wages wouldn't rise.

Nope wrote:

its happening..for some wrote:

China is one thing, but there is already a manufactured birth rate control in place for whites in the western world. They have less than 1 child.

Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore all have around 1 child on average. There's no "manufactured birth rate control" there, and they're all decent places to live in.

They have falling rates. They're also decent places to live because they are homogeneous societies. They're not falling apart like multicultural USA, France, UK, and Sweden.

Brothers and sisters have been a part of families since the beginning of human existance. There's no way eliminating them wouldn't create a psychological shift in the world. I woukd think for the worse but who knows I guess.

Growing up without siblings just seems boring though.

What you're proposing would cause a significant population decline while leaving most of the infrastructure intact. This happened before, with positive consequences for all but the very rich:

"This dramatic fall in population led to great changes taking place in England. Fields were left unsown and unreaped. Those who had not died of the plague were in danger of dying from starvation. Food shortages also resulted in much higher prices. The peasants, needing the money to feed their families, demanded higher wages. The landowners, desperately short of labour, often agreed to these wage demands. If the landlord refused, the peasant was likely to search out another employer."

"In some areas labourers began to organise themselves into groups and there were examples of strikes for higher wages took place. For hundreds of years peasants had accepted the way they were treated by their lords as being natural and unchangeable. They now knew that if they were willing to take risks, either by running away or by joining up with others to demand better treatment, they could improve their situation. This change in consciousness meant that the lords' power over their peasants was not as strong as it was before the outbreak of the Black Death."

https://spartacus-educational.com/U3Ahistory8.htm

not an economist but wrote:

Looking forward to it wrote:

It's a net positive. When the elderly/infirm die, inheritances will skyrocket. The labor scarcity will cause wages to rise and unemployment to fall. We may even develop new technologies or find ways to slow down aging so that the elderly can still be productive.

Overall both supply and demand for labor would fall so wages wouldn't rise.

Labor supply would fall a lot more than labor demand. Eventually, society will be mainly composed of elderly who can't work but still demand labor. They need to eat, drink, fix their homes, buy replacements for worn out clothes and goods, etc.

Agreed. Too bad such policy couldn't be around the time you were conceived, you wouldn't be annoying us with such idiocy.

doctorj wrote:

Agreed. Too bad such policy couldn't be around the time you were conceived, you wouldn't be annoying us with such idiocy.

It wouldn't have mattered if the OP was the first-born.

Vision 2050 wrote:

In no particular order of importance, the following benefits would occur:

- Pollution and waste would go down.

- Traffic would go down.

- Agricultural demand + hunger would go down.

- Resource depletion would be much less of a concern.

- Demand in the housing/real estate market would go down, making things more affordable. Homelessness would go down.

- Poverty would go down. Inheritances would no longer be split up among many siblings.

- Wages would rise and unemployment would go down, since the labor supply would shrink.

- Crime/violence would go down, as an aging population is generally less prone to crime.

- Parents would focus their resources on only one kid, so the next generation will have better lives.

Not so fast my friend.

Japan has has a fertility rate of under 2 births per women since 1975 so roughly 40 years now. The fertility rate has been declining over 40 years but is still at 1.43 which is far higher than your proposed 1 child policy.

Lets look at some facts:

"An aging population like Japan's poses numerous problems. The government will have to spend more on healthcare, and that, coupled with a shrinking workforce and tax base, is a recipe for economic stagnation. It also means, among other things, that there will not be enough young people to care for the elderly."

"An aging population will mean higher costs for the government, a shortage of pension and social-security-type funds, a shortage of people to care for the very aged, slow economic growth, and a shortage of young workers,"

"In perhaps the biggest sign of the problem, adult diapers now outsell baby diapers in Japanese supermarkets."

Japan currently has an epidemic, solitary deaths, where people with no close family ties or children to watch out for / check in on them die in their apartments. No one knows for days, weeks, months even until the neighbors smell the stench.

There is currently a whole thriving industry in Japan dedicated to such clean ups. And it's going to get worse before it gets better.

Japan and many other countries around the world are waking up to the crisis at hand, and depopulation does not paint a pretty picture.

“It’s a surprise even to people like myself, the idea that it’s half the countries in the world will be a huge surprise to people…We will soon be transitioning to a point where societies are grappling with a declining population.”

“Demography impacts on every single aspect of our lives, just look out of your window at the people on the streets, the houses, the traffic, the consumption…Everything we plan for is not just driven by the numbers in the population, but also the age structure and that is changing, so fundamentally we haven’t got our heads around it.”

“On current trends there will be very few children and lots of people over the age of 65 and that’s very difficult to sustain global society. Think of all the profound social and economic consequences of a society structured like that with more grandparents than grandchildren.”

So as nice as it sounds:

- Agricultural demand + hunger would go down.

- Poverty would go down. Inheritances would no longer be split up among many siblings.

- Wages would rise and unemployment would go down, since the labor supply would shrink.

- Parents would focus their resources on only one kid, so the next generation will have better lives.

- This would be wrong because you would have a comparatively small able bodied population being tasked with supporting a larger aged population. Not just agriculturally, but with health care etc.. Putting a great burden on the workforce. The quality of life for all goes down.

You vision may come to fruition because it's already starting to happen globally, the forces of depopulation are in motion and it's happening with birthrates far higher than you propose.

Japan is feeling the effects and it not good, that is why Japan has a goal to raise their birthrate in an attempt to stem the tide, from 1.43 to 1.8 by 2026 but initial reports are that the government is struggling to meet that goal. In fact the birthrate fell to 1.43 last year from 1.44 the year prior.

Good gravy, be carful what you wish for.

nofacetimber wrote:

a shortage of people to care for the very aged, slow economic growth, and a shortage of young workers,"

Japan currently has an epidemic, solitary deaths, where people with no close family ties or children to watch out for / check in on them die in their apartments. No one knows for days, weeks, months even until the neighbors smell the stench.

There is currently a whole thriving industry in Japan dedicated to such clean ups. And it's going to get worse before it gets better.

A shortage of young workers and a shortage of workers to care for the elderly? Good, young workers will no longer be seen as disposable, and they can finally get decent jobs with benefits. And maybe we can finally pay our elderly care workers a living wage. Slow economic growth isn't an issue since a declining population means that GDP per capita will go way up.

Yeah, dying and not being noticed may suck, but honestly, it's not that big of a deal. You're dead anyway and can't feel anything.

Maybe the OP means "one child per person?" So if my wife and I have a child, one of us has to register it as our one allowable child. We could then have a second child, which the is the one allowable child for the other one of us.

I could get on board with that in theory, but I can think of no way to enforce it that isnt horribly Orwellian. If everybody was limited to one child (aka 2 per couple), we would have a natural decline in population as some choose to have only one child.

However, if you enforce one child per couple, you risk the collapse in population China is looking at in a decade or two, which will be destabilizing.

nofacetimber wrote:

Japan is feeling the effects and it not good, that is why Japan has a goal to raise their birthrate in an attempt to stem the tide, from 1.43 to 1.8 by 2026 but initial reports are that the government is struggling to meet that goal. In fact the birthrate fell to 1.43 last year from 1.44 the year prior.

Imagine a world without Japanese people :( truly a sad thing to think about

The world would not be a better place with such lack of freedom.