How To Make Earth's Population Sustainable?

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by Human No More

I disagree. For me, I'd go for the job that's what I'm comfortable doing, but not needing to develop anything new, to improve. Since most people wouldn't (why kill yourself with hard work when you can get the same from a more comfortable job? - even one which is satisfying, but easier), everything stagnates.

This comes only from the notion, that development of new things require "hard work". Why would that be? Because we think of it that way. We think that gain=pain and only hard and unwanted labor brings something positive. This is not so - sure, "progress" would go slower if people would do what they like and not what they are forced to do, but honestly, do you think the people in the past, the inventors of rock tools, archery, medival tools and later Da Vinci or Darwin thought of what they do as "working hard"? I seriously doubt it, in fact most of them did research out of fun. They ususally had the time and resources to do whatever they wanted and they choose to do science or improve tools. Others choose to do art or music or exploration or architecture. The ones that laboured hard have always been those who do not develop anything - those who live in a personal stagnation.
The personal satisfaction of a job has to be the key component - people have to love what they are doing, this is the prime goal. Anything else is speculating on future gains or driven by the idea that for some reason civilization has to develop faster and faster and the loss of happiness and sanity is just a price to pay. Pay for what? A more "developed" future in which everything is better? Did that work up to now? Are we currently happier than our parents - or do people rather call the past the "good old time" instead.
Any kind of development has to be slow and thoughtful and wise and voluntarly and not pushed to the limits by a system of money and power. Only such a development can in the long term be something people can be happy to contribute and it may be tested before applied. But we are all in a rush now - hurrying. The next step in development has to be in 2 years, not 10 or 20 with the result that things are implemented without beeing thought through. See the BP spill or just look at your home VCR or SAT receiver or numerous software applications that constantly need bugfixes (euphemistically called upgrades). Why does everything need to go so fast? Because of economic gain involved, not because we actually need that development personally in 2 years instead of 20 or because we are happier if it arrives earlier!

[Human No More]

I never said that... what I meant was that yes, some development does come from spontaneous ideas, but it has to be improved, endlessly worked on to be any real progress. Development doesn't HAVE to be slow, you use software as an example... probably a bad example to use against me as I am a programmer, and I can tell you that unless testing was completely automated and tested EVERY possibility (would need tens of thousands of years and huge power which we don't have yet, coming back to development again ironically), that's unavoidable, so they do the best they can with the timeframe and resources and test anything LIKELY to have problems. Without continual development, we'd still be on WW2-era systems (well, not even that, maybe we might have just finished the Difference Engine )

[Rainbowhawk1993]

I think it's going to be reaily hard to stop the number of births because many People in thrid world countries beilive that women are just baby makers. (It's Just sad)

[GLaDOS]

That is unfortunately the case, and we wont be able to change them fast enough.

[auroraglacialis]

The need to have many babies mostly comes from the need for security. People need someone to care for them when old or unable to work. To this end, a proper healthcare and social security net would help. Another reason for too many babies is improper application of birth control (often absent) and as you said the role of women. The latter reasons however only apply once the first reason is dealt with, as it implies that people actually want to avoid having many babies.