I just realised that my OP didn't mention that only women with 2 children already were explicitly given the offer of sterilisation. That's why the 'stealth genocide' doesn't make sense. We're only offering it, not enforcing it.
By the way, sterilisation is a better method of contraconception than condoms. Condoms perish and will leave behind wasteful residue. They don't keep well in heat and have an expiry date to begin with.
I can sum up countless examples where a lower population would have been or would be beneficial to a country:
1) Rwanda 1994 - the problem was partly a racial conflict, partially a competition for land. Rwanda's population went from 2 million in 1950 to 7 million in 1990. What kind of country can support that? Are we even surprised that they murdered each other? After the genocide, the population went from 5 million to 10 million in
15 (!!!) years!
http://www.indexmundi.com/rwanda/population.html
2) 1947 Japan - Japan was a devastated country after WWII. If not for a single measurement they took, they would have had another explosion in population (like right before the war). Japan legalised abortions, since then, it had a yearly abortion rate of
> 1.000.000 until the sixties. I don't think that a country would have been able to rebuild itself with another population boom. The growth rate went from thhe pre-war 7% to 5-3%.
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/poli.../ab-japan.html
3) China. Since 1978, the "one-child-policy" has been implemented in China. If it wasn't for that policy, there would have been 200.000.000 more Chinese in China now. Imagine that, a country that is struggling to provide for its citizens in the countryside, with 200 million more people. The one child policy has its controversial side, but what's the alternative? Besides, why do you bash utilitarianism? If you have to prevent 200 million births by force, in order to save the remaining 1000 million population from famine, I don't see what's unethical. 200 prevented births or 1200 in famine, easy choice to me.
In Mao's time, there was no limit. From 1959-1969, between 15 million (lowest government estimate) and 45 million (highest estimate) perished from starvation. The cause was definitely Mao's mismanagement, but you can't deny that the casualty rate would have been lower if there were simply less infants. The birthrate was 37 per 1000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China
4)
http://www.indexmundi.com/niger/demo...s_profile.html
http://www.indexmundi.com/niger/population.html
In short: 1950: 2.5 million, 2010: 15 million. The last great famine was 2010. Before it was 2005. The current total fertility rate is 7 children per mother, what comes down to a whopping 700.000 newborns per year.
Apparently, half Niger's population is under 15. Are they gonna feed the country, Ego?
Then there's also the so called
demographic transition:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition
See, that are sources I can accept.
Last edited by Redundant; Jan 21, 2014 at 11:22 PM.