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Notes -
Just so we don’t get lost, I am not asserting that the Chinese policy was good. I am asserting that I do not agree with the reverse policy of ‘earth is big, we can have loads more people with no problems’.
In the specific metaphor I used, the ‘house’ is the Earth, or at least the nation. America is very big but lots of other countries aren’t, and the nice bits where people want to live are often much smaller. You can deal with that by having more density or fewer people, and really, why choose to create Coruscant when you can create Naboo? A lot of the Shire is based on Tolkein’s wandering in the countryside around Oxford, but that area is now entirely suburbs that stretch across the whole plain as far as the eye can see. This was a choice.
I’m not talking about the government literally putting people in my house, I’m saying that one way or another I have to share space and resources with your 8 billion plus and under those circumstances saying ‘we’re nowhere near carrying capacity so what’s the worry?’ seems irresponsible.
The optimal density / number of people != the maximum possible number of people. So I have no problem with the goal of controlling population numbers, only with the targets and methods. A two-child policy would have worked much better for China.
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