Not that I am particularly advocating for such, but I always like the carrot rather than the stick when it comes to reproductive choices.
An idea I had years ago that I’m not going to defend on more than the fact that it is an idea is the vasectomy camaro.
You go in, get a vasectomy (for free), and you get a camaro.
A vasectomy is usually reversible, if at a later age you choose that children are in your future, and if not, well, you got a camaro, right?
There’s points on either side, but people can change and perhaps a criminal convicted of multiple felonies can reform and change for the better. As for drug addicts, there should be a mandatory rehab program.
No one is talking about removing existing kids. There is a certain disadvantage to society and existing kids in those situations when another kid is brought into the mix.
While I believe that forced sterilization is a terrible violation of human rights, it needs to be pointed out that “Do you know who said that? Hitler,” is essentially a version of the “Hitler ate sugar” fallacy. Just because Hitler supported something does not necessarily in and of itself make that thing bad.
The problem may solve itself.
Because of rising obesity rates among young people, more and more baby boomers may outlive their children. A new study shows that a generational shift in obesity rates is setting the younger generation up for shorter life and poorer health in comparison to their parents.
You know who else pointed out logical fallacies.
Carrot Top?
That’s fair when it’s something like, “Hitler was a vegetarian,” or “Hitler liked dogs.”
When the discussion is about actually advocating for eugenics, “Hitler agrees with you,” is kinda damning.
I think it is pretty damning to keep taking care of the mistakes of mistakes and screw ups generation after generation. At some point if they can emotionally or financially take care of what they have they shouldn’t be allowed to have more.
Many sides, Miller. Many sides.
There are many sides to this and it isn’t easy. Personal freedom versus the best interests of society and the individuals involved.
No need to go to Hitler; Americans have been perfectly willing to define people as inferior and deserving of sterilization for such “defects” as being poor or a rape victim.
The Nazis modeled their eugenics program on ours, not the other way around.
Perhaps there are some fine people who advocate for eugenics. But it’s actually pretty simple when you realize that you shouldn’t punish people who aren’t criminals.
No, vasectomies are NOT usually reversible, and the longer the time between the vasectomy and the attempted reversal the less likely it is to succeed. Vasectomies should be considered truly permanent because they usually are.
In the 1970s (and especially during the state of emergency period under Indira Gandhi in 1975-1977) the Indian government carried out a program of forced sterilization (vasectomies and tubal ligations) among the population, which ended up affecting millions of people.
Leaving aside the fact that many more women than men were subjected to forced sterilization, that program, directed by Indira Gandhi’s son, Sanjay, tainted in a very bad way the whole concept of “family planning”, with effects that apparently continue into the present day.
Copy-paste from the article on Sanjay Gandhi in Wikipedia:
“Sanjay is now chiefly remembered for the family planning initiative that attracted much notoriety and caused longterm harm to population control in India.” (Citing content from two papers, one published in 2007 and the other in 2016).
It seems that the Indian experiment (which benefited from the fact that many democratic safeguards were being suspended at the time, thus allowing unrestricted authority to carry out those forced sterilizations) ended up being “a remedy worse than the disease”, for it has hampered later efforts to carry out contraception campaigns in India.
Frankly, I do not think that forced sterilizations elsewhere would end up being much more successful than in India.
First, you go ahead and tell them that it is reversible when you give them the keys to their camaro, you just don’t give them the stats. If they are responsible enough, they will look them up themselves.
Webmd says “Leads to overall pregnancy rates of greater than 50%.”, but does go on to say “Leads to pregnancy only about 30% of the time if the reversal is done 10 years after vasectomy.”
The point is only that this is in contrast to the OP’s idea of forced sterilization of people that he deems unfit to reproduce. A better method of mass sterilization, if that is what is desired (which I do not believe that it is) is to make it voluntary with a decent enough payout that would cause young men who would otherwise be irresponsibly fathering children to make a selfish choice to curtail their reproduction.
The camaro is kinda a silly “prize” but I am just saying that if reproductive issues are what we need to concentrate on, rewards rather than oppression is the better way to go.
That doesn’t have any eugenic implications unless obesity is killing people before they reproduce, or making it less likely for them to reproduce (it isn’t).
I’d like to see a graph of body weight (in kg) vs reproductive success (number of live births). I’m guessing there is a negative impact on fecundity as weight increases.
I agree with the first two paragraphs in principle, although I don’t care so much about the “poor” part. I object to forced sterilization (except in extreme cases), but I don’t object to providing financial and other incentives to people to get sterilized. (I wouldn’t object to financial incentives to myself to get vasectomized, but that’s because, much more so than a few years ago, I’m of mixed minds about children anyway).
I don’t agree with your latter two paragraphs though: we live in an overpopulated world which is getting more so, and the United States fertility rate at 1.8 is still high enough that I don’t think we need to encourage more Americans to have children for the time being. You’re correct that changing age structure is going to make it very difficult to maintain welfare states at the level we’re accustomed to them, but that’s a price we are going to have to pay if we’re going to take the carrying capacity of the planet seriously. There are some countries, e.g. East Asia and Eastern Europe, where fertility rates are closer to 1.3 than 1.8 and there I’d be more willing to encourage larger families, and there are some groups in the US (Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, highly educated women) where fertility is also in that very low range, but overall, US fertility today is not problematically low.
Unless you’re in the massively overweight range where it starts impacting sperm count and so forth, I don’t see why that would be the case.