In a piece in the financial post of last year Diane Francis proposed to adopt a one child policy. This released a storm of media coverage with the underlying attitude that population control is a completely unacceptable concept. Laura Ingraham tries as hard as she can to misunderstand her position.
Life and Death
It would be rude to say that people these days are taking no responsibility for their existence, at least, it would be quickly conscrued as judgmental I guess. The truth is that every individual has an impact on resources available to others. It is also true that if every added individual causes uncompensated destruction or use of a certain resource at some point the resource in question runs out. This creates two choices: either fight for the left over resource (and not think about the time some of them run out), or flee this future by taking measures now to avoid it. If the number of individuals is the cuase of the problem, then reducing that number is a good idea. The best way to do this is by reducing the number of births.
Lessons from China
Unbiased information on China's one child policy will be hard to come by. My personal knowledge is that it has led to cases of infanticide (daughters), abortions and a male skewed population at the moment. Wikipedia reports that implementation of the policy differed from area to area. It basically consists of a system of fines and incentives.
The side effects are outlined in the wikipedia article. Of course China had a more primitive rural population prefering sons for their strength. Unwanted children where abandoned and ended up in ophanages. Rather than seeing the chinese policy as the example, one could see it as a study for designing policy to minimize its negative consequences.
The education of Jamie
It is ironic that most resistance against population control comes from people of a religious background that have been indoctrinated in a belief system that puts high value on having many children, and that otherwise does not promote rational thought or empirical exploration of the world. Religious communities often lack adequate sexual education, causing unwanted pregnancies and other avoidable suffering. To meet the challenges of the 21th century one needs to be schooled in the reality of the 20th century. It is not enough to rely on old scriptures or the opinion of others to form an opinion about population control. The problem is simple enough for everybody to understand.
You first
Laura Ingraham in the above interview responds by saying "Why don't you practice birth control, leave us alone". That response shows that 1. She does not see any problem (which there may not be, but then her response would be to point that out). 2. She thinks even if there was a problem she would not have to be responsible for a solution. Maybe there are other solutions than one child policies. Some will say higher educational levels will reduce the birth rate. Well, then education would have to be stimulated across the board, and we know it isn't, it is actually degenerating under pressure of religion.
Scary shit If policy that relates to real survival issues can no longer be proposed and if the same that block an open discussion of solutions are the ones that undermine education there may be a fundamental chisma developing in society. The irresponsible and unresponsive however are not independent of everybody else. That dependence should be used in every possible way to bring them to reason on how to deal with limited resouces and an as yet unbound population.
