De-populate or perish

4. There are no signs politicians anywhere, except in China, support universal birth control. In Japan, for example, women are being pressured to have children, and in Australia financial incentives are offered to induce couples to procreate: we all remember Peter Costello’s dictum, “One for the wife, one for the husband, and one for the country”.

5. There will be pressure to have “replacement” children, to make up for populations lost through war, famine and disease - and by extension, as voluntary reduction in birth rates begins to take hold in a proportion of the population there will probably be a compensatory tendency (“equal and opposite reaction”) in the other proportion to increase family size, in the short run, leading to homeostasis.

Argument - eliminate poverty

Necessary conditions

1. First, there would need to be a change of government in most of the low-income countries. The corrupt élites that sequester the bulk of the income of most of the poor countries would have to be disempowered - not an easy task since often the military and the politicians are either one and the same or are in collusion. All too often we have seen how reluctant our politicians and the UN are to take effective, even non-military action against brutal, corrupt governments, such as Zimbabwe and Burma.

2. Second, rich countries must pay market prices for the product of the poor, which is antithetic to “free-market” capitalism (“Never give a sucker an even break”, W.C. Fields). Rich countries must make long-term investments (NOT provide assistance via the “aid” model) directly into poor countries without demanding high rates of return on their investment.

3. Health services (affordable pharmaceuticals, enough health professionals, hospitals and equipment, community health services, clean water, healthy living conditions, and so on) must be made available by training local medical and other health workers; allowing quality assured, generic drugs to be supplied; and insisting the IMF subsidises the purchase of equipment and projects to improve environmental conditions.

4. Existing sovereign debt must be written off - and so on, and so on…

Do we really believe the rich countries are likely to come to such an expensive party?

Involuntary contraception

If voluntary birth control will not work, what about involuntary contraception? The objections to enforced contraception are moral/ethical and practical.

Moral and ethical objections

People have the inalienable right to choose whether they have children or not, and to decide how many children they will have. Some would say, “the God-given right …”

Counterargument