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Population control by human intervention is out of the question. However, our environment is one of the key determinants to the rate of production in any given space (be it a spaceship, city or space colony)

Earth has its laws for Earth. Do we even need to impose birth control or will space (assuming we leave the planet) naturally impose this "birth control" on us if the environment doesn't support it?

Ahhh the great Population control debate. We do not actually need to tell people that they can or cannot have children. We can have a set of rules on how resources are distributed throughout the population. Basically we would have ration control. Each individual would start with a controlled amount of resources at their disposal ( this would be such things as food and water) if a individual wants to start a family they would then have a portion control that would sustain a family of a certain size (this size would be determined by the life support capabilities of the community). The allowed resources would not increase even if they had more children that what was recommended. So here is a idea of how this would al work out. First you have a individual over the age of 18. This individual is granted food and living courters enough for a single person. This individual enters into a contract (marriage) with another individual. They are now considered a couple and are allowed resources enough for 2 people.

The 2 individuals decide to have a child and now they are considered a family. The community can only afford enough resources for each couple to have 1 child and each family is allowed resources for 3 individuals.

Now the 2 individuals want to have another child increasing their family from the recommended 3 person home to a 4 person home. The allowed resources will not increase for them so if they were to have a 2nd child they would be focuses to ration their supplies meant for 3 people to accommodate 4 people. Now of course a person could have 5 or 6 children if they wanted but they would not have enough food for all of them and someone would need to leave the community (if possible) or die of starvation. This also guaranties that a carless family will not be able to take away from the rest of the responsible family’s living in the community.

This is of course just a quick rundown but I have gone through and worked out the rest of the details regarding sustainable community allowance. This also covers things like when a individual leaves the family plan, forced breeding, death, and loss of resources.

The problem with that kind of system is that people consistently choose to vote for children not dying just because their parents happened to be dumb. It comes off as a kind of social darwinism to people who unsympathetic to the position. And people do tend to be partial to defenseless children, though not so much to adults.

I'm with Sammwich, humans are emotional, advocating allowing children to starve simply wouldn't fly.

Assuming space-living; the primary problem is scarcity of resources. You can't simply emigrate or give your child away if you have too many. If you want to restrict resources post-birth as eyaras describes, you're basically punishing children for crimes they had no part in. There's lots of legal/moral arguments against that. Which ultimately means you'd want to prevent pregnancy from occurring or completing, either through incentives, sterilisation or abortion.

If incentives fail, there wouldn't be an alternative except for draconian measures, barring massively expensive redesigns of habitation.

In a practical sense however, I don't think we'd have to worry too much about this problem. Any spacefaring citizens would likely be rich relative to the terrestrial average, and we can see very low birthrates in rich countries. So much so, that incentives to procreate might be required.

Absolutely not.

Instead of this, I propose to have a good sex education curriculum.

No, the Asgardian government should not have a say in the matter of the reproductive rights of another. Space is infinte and there is plenty of room either the expansion of the original space station once it is built, or the building and placement of another which will allow for population growth. Besides, there is no effective way to regulate population growth short of steralizing both men and women or killing folks. Both are bad ideas and the former goes against the natural instincts of a living being which is to reproduce

By: InsanityOS(Asgardian) on 17 January 2017, 9:23 p.m.

I think population control should be primarily managed as a societal issue, not a legal one (barring the possible acute population crisis). By this, I mean that if we Asgardians provide for everyone higher education, our birth rate will naturally be lower than an uneducated population- if we encourage a socially-oriented mindset in our population, we will naturally modify our own population growth to suit the needs of the community.

I concur. I don't see it necessary to impose population control on our growing nation. Without a critical mass of Citizens, innovation and advancement of Science will grind to a halt. It takes a lot of people focused on minute topics of research to make further advancements. Together, we can grow smarter, technologically stronger, and reach a higher level of survival among the stars.

This should definitely not be a legal issue!

By: Brandon7(Asgardian) on 19 February 2017, 6:45 a.m.

No, the Asgardian government should not have a say in the matter of the reproductive rights of another. Space is infinte and there is plenty of room either the expansion of the original space station once it is built, or the building and placement of another which will allow for population growth. Besides, there is no effective way to regulate population growth short of steralizing both men and women or killing folks. Both are bad ideas and the former goes against the natural instincts of a living being which is to reproduce

Completely agree with you here.

@Carlitos

sustainable cohabitation

Ahh... Dear Asgardian Carlitos,

Are you running for the position of poster child for the eugenics party? You know what we call that in my line of business? A spin. You can change the words around all you want, we are still talking about the same thing.

Easy access to contraceptives and higher education are the gold standards for population control and have drastically reduced birth rates in every country that has implemented them, both when done with or without the intention to lower birthrates.

Forced sterilization has a dark history. It's best not to walk down that path, I think. Eugenics is still popular among Progressives and other radicalist ideologies, despite a total lack of evidence that it works as intended and a lot of evidence that it literally can't work as intended. Also, Baldwin Effect.

Easy access to contraceptives and higher education are the gold standards for population control and have drastically reduced birth rates in every country that has implemented them, both when done with or without the intention to lower birthrates.

No one has ever said it better.

> I'd like to know the ratio of male to female Asgardians. I've been wondering ever since I saw the flag entries.

We are pretty well overwhelmingly male. 83% male, to be exact.

I think that will pretty effectively handle 'population control' by itself. ;)

UQZ

I think the greater danger would be population loss with 83% being male.

Thankfully, gender equality will eventually reach an equilibrium, with a lot of eligible bachelors not procreating, or with the women-folk having multiple partners (which sounds exhausting).

EWL