Vote Sizing Institute Real change from within.

In my opinion, the idea that poverty is the reason for overpopulation is incorrect, just as the assumption that the eradication of poverty will eliminate the danger of an overpopulated world. Poverty has a lot to do with situations like these, where young people are encouraged (and forced) to 'settle down' and raise a family (usually an incredibly large family); but for me the cause runs deeper than that. Yes, providing a good education, and sex education, will dramatically improve the situation, but we need to look at the deeper issue, which is why do some societies try so desperately to put 'all their eggs in one basket' - ie: an incredibly large extended family?

The reason, it seems to me, is that they don't feel as though they are already part of a larger whole, and that they lack the awareness of how these kinds of behaviors invite very harsh consequences. It may be possible to feed and cloth everybody with the resources we currently have, but to use this as a reason to continue to have as many children as possible only invites an eventual collapse, and to make live only more challenging for everyone, including the children being brought into the world to hack out a piece for themselves, and their families.

The root cause of over-population is the same as the root causes of exploitation, resource-depletion, etc. It is not the poverty, but the lack of connection. People without any sense of belonging to a larger whole automatically fall back on their close family for support, their extended family, their tribe, their nation, and so on.

It is not lack of money that creates these situations, but a lack of power.

I believe that if these people were given more say over their government than they have now (and who can deny that they have an infinitesimally small say now) through vote sizing, then they would see that their behavior of encouraging everyone to have so many children is not a good plan. It's only when we feel insecure that we try to shore up our survival by promoting the idea of our children having children to support us as we grow old (our own children will busy, but not hopefully not the grandchildren). Developed countries don't have smaller families because they already own so much, they have smaller families because they feel responsible to the society as a whole not to put so many more citizens in it.