Too Many Rabbits

Here's a question I don't think I've ever heard anyone ask:

How many people is enough?

You might ask, "Enough for what?" That very question underscores my point though. At the beginning and throughout the majority of our history, population has not been a major concern for anyone except city planners, canvassers and tax collectors, except during times of war, when the recruiting sergeant would pop up for a bit, then slink away when the bleeding stopped and the burying started. So why would I ask this question?

There are too damned many people in the world. I am not being funny; while the resources currently available on a global scale are (if properly managed, which they never are) more than sufficient to go around, the current arrangement of various systems makes it impossible to get things made properly available. Worse, the population is growing. Booming. Bugger it all, "exploding" is almost not too strong a word.

It doesn't take a mathematician to understand that increasing demand for...well, everything coupled with a finite supply of that same everything is a recipe for disaster. The story is as old as the desert nomad culture, "Who controls the wells and how do you get enough water for yourself?" In the short term you need only exchange "water" for "oil" and you've got the tribal warfare brewing between China, India and everyone else in the bloody world.

Now that we've established population growth mightn't always be a good thing our course of action is fairly obvious and we're faced with only three questions; How many is enough, how do we get the number down, if need be, and how do we keep it at that level?

Well my answer to the first question is founded in my emerging theory of energy as currency; enough population to support a diverse, technological society and produce significantly greater amounts of energy than are consumed while also sustaining the liberty of persons to choose their own pursuits and compete for societal rewards. Please note that nowhere in there do you see the need to support a society of mass consumption.

Getting the number down is at once simple and enormously complex. Simply, you stop people from reproducing faster than they die off. More complexly; how, exactly?

Since its completely impractical to keep people from having sex (just ask the Catholic Church) you'll have to do two things; provide ready, convenient prophylaxis and strong incentive to use it. Well the first bit is pretty easy. Various barriers exist and there are several pills available and in the works. There is even a simple, inexpensive surgical procedure that men can have performed; it makes sense, men are usually then active pursuers and initiators of sex among our species.

Motivating people to stop having children is tremendously more difficult. I favor a financial goad. A substantial credit for having one child, revocation of that credit for the second and a penalty of some sort for the third.

Once population numbers drop to a desired range, you maintain levels by providing a credit for the second child and a substantial penalty for the third, of-set by social services for the child; children have no choice in getting born so there's nothing to be gained in punishing them for a parent's failure.

Now obviously I've described this in the context of a two-parent household arrangement. Since we all know that doesn't happen in every case, a better way to track it might be by counting children on a 1 for 1 basis against the parents, counting the father first and thereby leaving the decision primarily in the prospective mother's hands and leaving her options open in the case of multiple partners. A second or third child would count against the mother only if by the father of the first child and would spare the mother in the case of a child of rape, which would count against the father, if identified.