In an entry about abortion, I mentioned the need for all the world's nations to join in adopting China's One Child law. Sean pointed to the impossibility of this ever happening in a democracy.
He's right, I'm sure.
But. In thinking about all the thorny political issues out there, I think people should start by figuring out what really should happen, then work back from that.
Because we can't really multitask.
So we increase our odds of coming up with practical solutions if we divide our thinking into several discrete stages:
1. What's the problem?
2. Is that really the problem, or has it been framed by someone to push our thinking toward that someone's agenda? If so, what's really the problem?
3. What would be the ideal solution?
4. What's actually possible?
5. How would you best pursue what's actually possible, while still not forgetting the ideal solution?
If you try to solve the problem by trying to juggle all the pragmatic constraints while simultaneously trying to cook up a solution, you short-circuit the thought processes needed--and guarantee that you'll be thinking well inside the box. People get impatient with going through all the needed steps, but honestly it takes longer to try to take a shortcut, and the solutions may fall short.
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With the abortion issue, the antiabortionists have taken the high ground. Abortion supporters have been made to look like selfish teenagers whining about their rights while ignoring the rights of the "pre-born babies" inside them.
But if you go through the process I've recommended here, you may not go into debates demanding China's One Child policy--but you can frame the issue in the context of world overpopulation, so on an emotional level you can now paint the antiabortionists as the selfish juveniles who don't care about the consequences of their actions.
Just be prepared for overpopulation denialism, which I've been seeing for decades.
Seems like our species focuses on the problems that aren't while ignoring the ones that are, cloaking our emotionalism in rational-seeming language, because we're still talking apes--our advantage over chimps being that we can articulate our inner chimp's thoughts.
Woo hoo.
1 comment:
It's obvious: Birth rates need to drop but we can't take away people's rights to have children.
As I pointed out before it's simply a matter of waving a huge carrot in front of them to have less kids - pay people lots of $$$ to get sterilized after producing one child, or substantially less $$$ after producing two, or no money at all if they have more than two, plus bonus $$$ for any woman who is childless after the age of, say, 45.
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