Agreed. The comment I was responding to took issue with China dictating a number of children—I don’t have a problem with that. The specific enforcement (sterilization, abortions, etc) are grotesque. Conceivably you can enforce population control without resorting to those measures.
That only encourages those who have both the need and the abilityto prioritize budgeting/saving to think ttwice about having kids. In other words, that really only targets the middle class.
1. That’s still a net reduction in births, even if the reduction isn’t spread evenly among socioeconomic classes
2. You can means-adjust the fines to dissuade the rich. You can even redistribute revenue from these fines to the poor if your concern is inequality. I’m particularly curious about paying the poor not to have children since fining the poor seems likely to be unproductive.
