Population control on a global scale is not going to happen, I think. People are just too different and too incapable of understanding each other.

The problem with overpopulation is really condensed to third world countries, whereas economic growth often outstrips population growth in first world countries. In fact it is constantly argued in economic history and the geography of economics that the persistent high population growth in these third world countries is what has kept them as third world countries (because the economy has been unable to create jobs, wealth or life quality for everyone new).

In a free, democratic society population control is unlikely to happen on a national scale. Generally, people do not consider themselves a net deficit for the environment (but most are).

I think if one wishes to limit population, one must look to the fundamental reasons for having kids. One of the main reasons for having kids in a third world country is to ensure your own economic safety. These countries lack social security, and they lack any form of government pension for when a person gets too old to work. And, in fact, it is often not possible to save up for a pension on your own salary. And because of the population growth which keeps salaries near the absolute bottom, the next generation is forced into the same situation.

Attitudes and religion are also important, although very little can be done about those.

Available contraceptives is another method of voluntarily limiting population growth. A government seeking to limit the amount of kids could support such initiatives (and, similarly, not pay people to have kids like some countries do).

If you're worried about overpopulation, I think it's important not to help people who are starving in areas of constant growth. As cruel as it may sound, and this is coming from someone who has lived through rough times, if a population lives over its production means, it should be forced to shrink or consume less.

Edit: If the reins were free, it might be a good idea to outlaw religion and porn. Those are probably major contributors to pregnancies in first world countries. But honestly, at that point one might as well force sterilization on people with x amount of kids.

And of course, there's also the possibility of covertly spreading diseases to countries that cannot afford vaccinations.

Expecting global population control though our current international system does seem implausible, but cultures can and do change rapidly from time to time. But this one is probably harder than the civil rights struggles we in the U.S. have been going through since the 1950s.

Outlawing porn would help nothing, and outlawing religion seems even more insane than wanting a world where civilized women can and do limit themselves to one or two children. As far as food aid goes, the problem is not so simple as subsidizing breeding in an overpopulated habitat. The real mess is that most food aid does little or nothing to help local populations restore their ability to grow their own food. Too many farmers are essentially driven to plant crops for export by distorted 'global' economics when they and their extended families would be far better off in the long run with local food production.

When it comes to 'free rein' thoughts about this problem, my dream is more fully in the land of speculative fiction than Heavenfall's edit in reply 2. I'd like to see a genetic tweak to our entire species that enables women to decide exactly when they want to become pregnant, ensures that the only risk of a failed pregnancy is serious physical trauma, and limits that choice to once in a lifetime unless she manages to live her whole life in a very low pop-density setting. 

Starvation (when the oilcrisis hits) will be the natural way to reduce overpopulation. Especially in the primitive 3rd world countries. So things will solve itself. So don't worry, play games and be happy

Rough times??   Aren't you an ethnical Swede that's lived here all your life??   Having a tough life doesn't mean that you were denied the latest iPhone you know

It indeed sounds cruel, but you seem to be one of the few realistic people in the world that dare to say things like that.

I don't understand at all how religion is a major contributor to pregnancy in firstworld countries (since they are christian). Christianity isn't against contraceptives are they? (ignoring catholics)

And pr0n    Don't get that at all.

You're definetly a freespeaker or what they call it. But the problem is that it's not guaranteed to be effective since the UN & EU would hurry to create a cure and might even want Europe to take care of them....Another possibility is to arm warlords (there is an endless amount of them down there in Africa) that want to conquer.

Have some faith, people. We'll exterminate ourselves, one way or another. You'll see. Probably.

How does one be both naive and banal at the same time?...

BTW....reproduction is NOT 'a fundamental human right' ... it's an animal function, like eating, shitting and breathing..... none of which is any sort of 'fundamental right'.  

'Population control' will only either be conscious choice or inevitably imposed through whatever environmental/social/economic 'hardship' gets you first.

One way or another every single death through starvation or alternate forms of genocidal manipulation of the world's resources will get YOU, not 'just' them.

Eventually.

It would seem that only the most drastic means for controlling population have been suggested, some things never change. 

In case you haven't noticed there is an easier and less violent way.  Across the world there is in fact an alternate life style that would more than likely, over time, have the same effect on the growth of population that everyone is seeking.  Now I'm not saying that everyone has to adopt the life style.  Allow the alternate life style the same status as we give the so called accepted life style and I think we would achieve what everyone is looking for.

The solutions to problems don't always have to be drastic and involve some sort of dominace of one side over the other. 

I bet this made some folks sit back in there chair. 

Really, you have no idea?

Whose attitudes are you talking about?  Must be those who are resistance to change and want to use the same problem solving techniques that have been shown not to work.

Nah. That's already been tried (Third Reich).

Besides, we've already got "Death Panels" [insert heavy sarcasm].

I'm pretty sure he's using outdated slang to refer to homosexuality. If you buy the Kinsey scale, which I mostly do, then it's true that perhaps half of the population has the potential remain exclusively homosexual, but that would take tremendous cultural change that would almost certainly entail lots of the violence that Philly (sarcastically?) suggests his plan could avoid. That, or it would take a very long time.

It's another SF solution. Maybe it could be workable with some 'change syringes' like the ones in Nancy Kress' Beggars Ride. Instead of making people photosynthetic, it could flip the current proportions of our population so that breeders were the minority. Jafo's correct about the matter being part of our animal natures, but our tool use is definitely near ready to start drastically changing ourselves as well as our environment.

On a loosely-related point: Reproductive freedom is a legal right in most nations. I don't buy 'natural law' as a source of rights. Rights come from and are maintained, changed, or discarded by political processes. When rights touch closely on our most 'primitive' drives, they make for especially tricky politics. I support zero population growth as a minimal goal for the whole planet (reduction for a while would be better still). But I do not support things such as the block-lady menstruation cops and forced abortions that helped China get a handle on their unsustainable population growth.

I've read a lot of history and I basically agree with you here. Except that people can be damned surprising at times. When I came out in the early '80s, I could never have imagined that before I even made it to my 50th birthday we would have same-sex marriage in a growing number of states and soon the military will no longer make gay people live a lie in order to serve in uniform.

As far as heterosexual folks who choose not to create more people, more power to all of y'all. There's a ludicrous mountain of cultural forces telling everyone that they're not truly whole adults until they reproduce, plus the even-more-mysterious hormonal stuff (I have men friends who went baby-crazy almost like they had ovaries...).

One of the weird twists of success for the gay rights movement is that now many of us get to keep our parents after coming out, but have to suffer them talking about adoption, surrogacy, sperm donors, and all that. Grandchildren are some kind of crack to many parents, it seems.

First, there is already far too much sketchy social policy woven into the tax codes of the industrialized world. I would be far happier with clear and accountable subsidies for all manner of policy goals instead of the smoke and mirrors that 'pro-business' and 'pro-family' tax breaks create.

Second, I trust your fine idea of paying for folks to volunteer for sterilisation includes wealth transfers to impoverished sectors of wealthy nations. Right here in the U.S. we have many regions where problems of poverty are made worse by a lack of family planning.

Plus, we still have plenty of prosperous, money-oriented folks who tend to over-reproduce and a sturdy payout to get them out of the baby business would also do well for us all in the long run. There's no reason to limit the call for population control to the poorest people on the planet. Every baby sucks up resources, and rich babies suck up a great deal more than poor ones.