Aids is good for population control

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Overpopulation wouldn't cause a crash, resources would either forcibly be redistributed, or the excess would die off.

In regard to this, and everything else like it, the world is not going to end.

You know what else is good for population control? Genocide.

AIDS kills slowly and painfully - not something you'd want for controlling a population in a 'good' way, and it kills off the impoverished instead of the ones who do the most harm to the world.

Total nonsense - AIDS is around at least since 1959 (this first confirmed victim). The genome suggest that the transmission from chimpanzees to humans happened any time around 1930.



I think you may have a closer look into history books: The Black Death in the mid 1300s caused an economic decline in whole Europe and was at least one of the causes of the near collapse of government structure in Europe. It is hard to explain the War of Roses, the 100-Years-War or the near-by collapse of the law enforcement in the Holy Roman Empire without the Black Death.

Even when I would ignore the human suffering (which is more than just hard to do) it would cause an horrible decline, because it kills primary the sexual active part of the population, which is also the part of the population which is productive.

If you ask for "overpopulation" you need to put this into an other prospect: The population of what consist today the EEA (EU and its "satellites") is roughly 550 Mio. 250 years ago this number was perhaps 150 Mio. and under constant thread of famines and starvation. Today the EU pays farmers for not-producing food.

The question is less the number of the population or the density of population but how manage resources. The later can be done without shear endless human suffering.

Yeah... I bet you wouldn't be saying this if you were one of the people with AIDS.

I don't buy the whole "all of a sudden population is going to explode downwards!" idea. The only way that would happen is if a bunch of crops were destroyed by natural disaster (or something else). Otherwise, population will level out at whatever the max sustainable population level is...

That's an optimistic statement that reminds me of the confidence of real estate investors in 2006 - "the market has grown, and will always continue to grow." Until it doesn't, and people find that their baseless ideas stranded them in an undesirable place.

Soil fertility is being depleted on a steady and serious basis - most of the best soils in the midwest US have only half as much organic matter as they did when they were first plowed in the 1800s. Irrigated soils in semi-arid regions are accumulating salts to the point of reducing crop yield. Fossil water deposits like the Ogalalla aquifer are being depleted rapidly will be economically depleted in many areas soon. And modern agriculture depends heavily on oil for fertilizing and plowing. The oceans were once seen as unlimited sources of bounty, but over fishing has led to a collapse of many fishery resources. New strains of corn yield more bushels per acre, but it is lower and protein and higher in starch - not a problem if the corn is intended to stuff cattle or produce high fructose corn syrup, but less useful for direct human consumption. We could switch to strains of corn that are less starchy, but thermodynamics indicates that would lower yields.

Last edited by monty on 22 Jun 2009, 12:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Don't forget about WWIII - a thermonuclear world war could solve the population problem rather quickly.

So could some neutron bombs.

Actually, unless there are open sores in the mouths of both the samaritan and the junkie/baby, there is not chance for transmission. HIV needs a direct route to the blood stream, something that the mouth does not provide.

In regards to population control: If it ever became necessary (and I agree that it does appear that it will be necessary at some point, even if we do ever develop colonies on Mars), then population control could be achieved by much more humane means. A requirement of the birth control implant for the (rather large) portion of the population that would be deemed unready for children, followed by the tubal ligation/vasectomy for every couple that has had a child. It is a slow process (one that takes about a hundred years to be effective), but would work and be humane nonetheless.

What the hell is wrong with you?

Easy for you to say, sitting back in Canada comfortable, away from the threat of aids.

Since you're so keen on controlling the population, [edited for content by sinsboldly]

Birth control happens almost automatically if the wealth, the live expectancy, the general level of eduction and the social standing of women raises. The reason for the ageing populations in Europe is not any form of forced birth control via the governments (they often promote having children), but a combination of all those factors.

It is a terrible idea, I would say that deadly epidemics or pandemics affects negatively the structure of a society as well as economically, if I'm correct, and well, I have to agree with others that using AIDS as an example seems controversial, given that some may have family members or friends that have suffered it, heck! maybe the swine flew could have been a better example to provide your point related to overpopulation but not without a reaction. In any case, that is not a way to reduce population as very likely it would cause a social collapse, not to mention that we are getting into the issue of bioterrorism, in which this practice would be labeled as such.

Anyway, the best option related to overpopulation, although it seems to be more related to developing countries, and that would be to reduce childbirths, but how, not sure, the socioeconomic system and probably culture seem to play their roles on the problem.

well, there is the issue of seeing this from the first person perspective, so hardly, someone proposing this idea would go to the kitchen and say "I'm doing this to contribute to society", I would say that people would often prefer to sacrifice others than themselves for a "cause" or for whatever reason, there might be few exceptions though. But I do share your sentiment. Heck! making a rule of the proposer of said idea becoming the first volunteer doesn't sound bad.


Maybe but how to do it is really the problem, a part from the earth being physically capable of that or not is one issue, human sociopolitical structures is another issue.