A license to breed?

I can't believe so many of you think that this is even remotely a good idea!!!

Who are you to tell "anyone" whether or not they are allowed to reproduce? Who decides??? Seriously...

I just.. Well... Chisler seems to saying everything I think about the subject. But in a much more eloquent manner. Good God... you want to give the power of reproduction to our government... That could lead to some scary ass situations.

In the future police state that was formerly know as the U.S. of A. there will be a license to breed. It will start off as each family group will only be allowed 2 kids, then the government will limit it to one. Then the government will want to decide who should have that one, and god forbid that child should somehow die, and you have another. It will be like that futuristic prison movie with Christopher Lambert were he got busted trying to sneak him and his wife into Mexico to have a 2nd child.

Yep license to breed, there's not much natural selection anymore so it should be regulated. This should prevent all those 16 year old junkies having kids and raising them to be criminals, ofcourse you would also need to provide incentives for good people to have more children. The only problem is how do you enforce it?

Precisely.

Do we not see the problems that this legislation would create? Forget about the issues we are attempting to fix, the consequences of such a plan would cause more havoc that we are currently enduring. If we would enforce the existing programs, we would not be having this discussion in the first place.

The hypocrisy in some of this though. Some of the same people who are demanding rights and freedom of speech while bashing the government for attempting to dictate how we live our lives, are willing to hand over the right to determine if and when we enter parenthood.

This thread has really shocked me.

That's pretty ridiculous.

Aside from the merit of such a policy, what do you do when people break the law and have kids anyway?

Take ALL their kids?

Lock them up?

Force them to abort the "illegal" baby?

Sterilize them after they have the "illegal" baby?

Besides, I get a sneaking suspicion that such a policy would be disproportionately enforced with minorities (in the US, anyway; in the UK, as this was a response to that thread subject, it wouldn't be as likely). Margaret Sanger comes to mind...

License to breed.

Next comes, we need more _________ people, so we will issue them more licenses.

Next comes, DNA collection.


As if it were yours to give. It is God's gift to us, not some bureaucrat's.


What are you people thinking of, anyway? Have you no sense?

I also find it ironic that many of those who would grant such a license are also the biggest supporters of abortion.

The government would take the children away in a situation like that. That could be the only punishment. I've read stories (granted they were fiction designed to scare us) were those children were sent to a federal orphanige and later trained as millitary, or became the serf's of society. They were granted no rights, and given the jobs no body would do.

The only way around the lack of space issue is to expand to other planets, moons, space stations, etc. Plus we will have to find ways to feed, and provide for all the billions which will eventually live on this planet and probably other planets.

Lots of good points raised here.

Like I said, there's no way a breeding license would work in a democratic government, the public backlash would be too high, the punishments too hard to enforce, and the standards too hard to agree on. You'd have to have an authoritarian government that was capable of deciding for the people, enforcing that decision through whatever means was neccessary, and forth.

It's really more of an excercise in OWG theory than anything else.

your thinking to much of the linear world we have today. they already state in an english paper that they can tell someones intentions before they do it. imagine in the future everyone is microchipped, and a computer system controls, hormones in all females to do with there cycle. the microchip would produce hormones that would make it impossible to concieve.
after they decide to have kids, they have to apply for a permit to have kids, and the computer system will automatically produce what ever hormones needed for a short time, to fill this request.

or the state could just run it without everyones knowledge. when they microchip everyone, an alert can be set to a computer if a women concieves, and a computer system will decide to abort the child, without her ever knowing she was preguant.

they could make sure a male has a very low sperm count, thus making chances of reproducing less.

we are all heading for a socialist state, and technology is moving so fast that no one knows whats behind the scenes. considering they are going to microchip every one anyway, they will undoubtebly have these sort of controls on lifes, whether it is known or not to the females.

i think there will be ways to control both genders in the future. freedoms are long since gone, its just a question of whether this will be done without knowledge of the people or not.

its like what someone said, once they have a system like this and control hormones, the computer system will own every human every person on the planet.

people talk about ethnic cleansing and all that, of course this hapopens. in the real world this always happens, and minorities are picked upon. they are making this system come alive in front of your eyes, and it will only be a matter of time, before something like this happens.

[edit on 2/16/2007 by andy1033]

Are you... Serious? I'm sorry man I honestly can't tell. I'll assume you are joking though. Who says we aren't computer chipped already? Muahahahahahahaha

if you think this is impossible, then what does the future bring. oh yep, the technology is just going to stay still, and governments are not going to get more into our lifes.

its only a question of when this will happen, not if.

You and I have a different take on the humanity of people then. You actually think the government will be able to take control of peoples lives this way. I don't believe the people would "ever" stand for something like this... Therefore... Your ideas would "never" happen.

If we are using our imaginations here... I would see a huge revolution if our government ever got... so... Socialistic as you seem to think it will, that if they tried to control reproduction... By the means that you imagine. There would be a anarchy.

That is if we are talking about the United States... Any reproductive control will never be tolerated here. Period.

what people do not know will not hurt them etc... ignorance is bliss, my way means no one never needs to know, and is run by intelligence agencies or military, who keep secrets very well.

how many rat out on the nsa, not many. no one knows what they really do, because there is measures in place to stop whistle blowing.

get used to socialist government because it is here to stay. like what a former leader of the soviet union said in the 60's or 70's, he said americans would live in a socialist system and they will not even know it. through propaganda they will believe they are free.

just look at pakistan where people are refusing vaccines because they fear steralisation.

birth rates will be controlled by a system similar to mine, in the future, and people will not even know.

[edit on 2/16/2007 by andy1033]

Personally, I think that parents should have to pass some sort of test to have a child. Not that you need to reproduce within a given amount of time or be denied...but some people should have to justify why they want to keep popping children out. Especially if they are severely impoverished. What good is it to bring 5-6 children into this world if you can even afford to put clothes on or feed them. This is terrible, and it is happening daily, all over the world

The basic assumption seems to be that if one is not a productive member of society (useful to the state) then one has no right to life (their own or to produce another). This seems like dangerous thinking to me.

All sorts of situations come up in which a parent might need financial assistance that have nothing to do with them being useless eaters. How many widows do we have from our current engagement in the middle east raising children who will never know their fathers? I am perfectly willing to have my tax dollars go to support the semi-orphaned children of our fallen heroes.

My parents were exactly the type of horrible parents many of you describe yet I went on to get a college degree, raise 5 decent children, support myself, am not taking any psychiatric medication, etc. Let us not fall into the trap of estimating an individuals worth in terms of usefulness to the state.

A license to breed is simply another way of saying breeding-programme and I have no doubt this will occur in the future. And it will be great. A vastly reduced population will result in a heaven on earth. The environment and animal kingdom will benefit as will those few individuals to exist at any one time.

People speak of the 'right to have children'. Yet where is it written that anyone has the 'right' to reproduce?

Why do people imagine the world is required to suffer the (often odious) fruit of their loins ?

Let's be honest: it's just ego. It's the fear of dying. And from the rest of the world's perspective, it often seems that some people have children as revenge. Or because more-of-themselves is all they CAN produce.

The reality is: most people's lives are pointless. They drink, eat, consume, breed, die. Generation after generation of pointless folk.

In their senior years, when asked what their greatest achievement is, they reply: "I have 4 children, 12 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren." They really believe that reproducing like animals in the field, matters. Matters to whom? It matters, most often, only to the 80 year old, lifelong consumer. They die as unenlightened as when they were born. They and their offspring are a strain on resources. They consumed and produced items for others to consume. The world wouldn't have missed any of them if they'd never existed.

There is no 'right' to breed. It's an imaginary 'right' that if repeated often enough is accepted by some as truth.

No, there's no 'right' to reproduce. That's just fear talking.

Most people do not plan to have children. Most children (and most of those in existence today and in the past) were accidents. Most of our mother's panicked when they discovered we were on the way and most of our father's privately groaned.

People enjoy grinding groins.

Fine. Painless sterilization and then people can go f*ck like rabbits without inflicting the consequences on the planet.

Most people have children because they're too lazy or careless NOT to --- and then they try to make a virtue out of their laziness and carelessness.

Too many people have children because it offers them a 'role'. They don't know what to do with their lives after the flush of youth is over. They're never going to realise their 'dream', so they have children to plug the hole. Being a 'parent' provides them respectability. It provides them an identity. It softens the pain of failure.

Most people are 'average' and so are their offspring and the reality is, the world could have done without the vast majority of them.

You don't miss what you've never had. And to that, the planet nods 'Amen'.

Unfortunately, no matter how distasteful the idea seems, the ongoing problem of scummy people having and dragging up kids who then go on to be scummy people having and dragging up kids is having such an impact on society that at some point, if the problem is not addressed, even reasonable people will start to lean towards more authoritarian methods of controlling this underclass and the knock on effect that these methods begin to seep out to the general population too.

Along the lines that you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, any solutions that seek to avoid either total authoritarian control or a chaotic free for all may have to be prepared to legislate and enforce some harsh measures against those who are a problem within society.

That is a stereotype if I ever heard one. Do you live on welfare? Social assistance? If you have not, I have. As a young child when I lived with my mother, a single mother, she collected social assistance. We did not have the luxury of rental assistance, we did not live in a nice place, we had no food assistance, and we did not eat steaks. So rather than spewing stereotypes, stick to the facts. Yes, some people abuse the system. I do not deny that. But don't make it seem that these individuals are living the high life. For those that are abusing the system, the legislation already exists for them to have their children removed. It is hardly justified to remove the children and then proceed to sterilize them.

Wow! Dock6. I've apparently been laboring under the delusion that raising my 5 (unplanned) children to be decent human beings was the most important job on the planet when all along I was just afraid of dying. I have actually stood in the path of a crazy man who had a gun pointed at my head to defend the life of my child so I'm gonna have to disagree that fear of dying was the motive for such behavior, especially since the child was conceived despite 99.9% effective birth control methods.
I think a better solution is to train people in personal responsibility and challenge their victim mentality. Government interference/intervention is not the answer. (It so seldom is). The problem with licensing/regulating people and their reproductive capabilities is the premise that we somehow are property of the state. I am a sovereign unto myself and any sanctions placed on me personally are a declaration of war.
There are many examples of poor parenting skills but who decides what's acceptable (and acceptable for what reason?). My parents were atrocious role models but I turned out just fine (matter of opinion, I know. lol) We, as individuals are worth more to one another than just our ability to provide goods and services to the dominating powers that be.