Why not just disallow free porn? Require everything available in the UK to be paid, for at least $1, via credit card. This will exclude children most simply.
This comment was dead. I vouched for it as the comment has substance and this is HN - please don't downvote just because you disagree.
I used to work for a company that facilitated selling adult content on phones in the UK (why someone would pay a few quid for a 320x240 video I don't know). Even to access free samples you had to pass age verification, which required you to have a contract phone (not prepay).
In regards to credit cards this may work in the US, but in the UK (and the rest of Europe) a lot of people only have debit cards, not credit cards. These are accessible to minors, apparently as young as 8.
Limiting any one country to 15% of the visa intake would be great for actual diversity. Requiring that a minimum of 51% of all H1B visas be given to women, from all countries, would truly help with gender diversity.
Indian hiring managers have a history of illegally discriminating against non-Indian job applicants. This change would help bring an end to that.
India is not our Civilization. I'm presuming you're either in America or Europe, or heavily influenced by their culture.
India's chief problem is overpopulation. There are simply too many people to provide water to. The country needs an urgent population program encouraging poorer families to have one or zero children. The same things are working in Bangladesh.
The world is a very big place and there's more than enough space and resources for everyone. Overpopulation is not and never has been a serious problem.
The only issues are in engineering and government to ensure citizens are actually provided what they need, which in this case is limited by decades of corruption and poor decision making. India is more than capable of handling the issue, it just needs better leadership to cast off some of the anchors it has been carrying for far too long.
Overpopulation is 100% a big problem and then some.
The overcrowded cesspits that we whimsically call 'cities' in India are founts for all kinds of shit like the water table drying up, widespread water-borne and air-pollution diseases, anti-microbial resistance, shitty healthcare in overworked hospitals in general etc. These things are ALL made orders of magnitude worse to deal with just because our population is through the roof.
Not to mention the "smaller" quality of life factors. Enjoyable walk in nature? Hah! It's impossible to walk for even two minutes in Delhi and not see another person. Never-do-wells loiter the streets all day. No possibility of orderly queuing, just this huge, irritating, wearisome crowd wherever you look and wherever you turn. The metro. The park. The roads. The neighbourhood. Even the fucking hill stations that you seek to escape to. No solitude.
In an ideal world, these thing may manageable while still fostering a large population. But an ideal world this isn't.
> "...more than enough space and resources for everyone"
That's going to be a hell-to-the-no from me dawg. I hate the fact that we fucking breed like Rabbits.
Again, this is all about proper civil engineering and city planning. There is nothing inherently impossible about supporting billions of people and there are wide swaths of India with barely anyone at all.
The earth is a gigantic place. Every single human would fit into a cubic mile. The amount of freshwater that every single living creature drinks is only a sphere of a few miles in diameter, which itself is less than 1% of the freshwater on the planet.
The capabilities are vast, we are not limited by numbers but only by the weaker parts of human nature.
Your first statement speaks to the larger "disrupt everything!" naivete found in spades on Hacker News, and I imagine, by extension, in Silicon Valley.
Sure, wave a wand, and POOF! No more greenhouse gases. Wave a wand, and POOF! No more single-use plastics. Wave a wand, and POOF! No more dead bodies in the Ganga.
That's not the world we inhabit. The world we inhabit moves at a glacial pace, and I sincerely doubt India moves at ALL.
The fact that humans can all fit into a small cube says nothing. Or at least, says far less than the fact that in India, the cities are in squalor and resemble garbage dumps much more than they resemble thriving metropolises. And that's NOT hyperbole.
What, exactly, has improved in our cities that leads you to your optimism? The fact that Delhi is the least polluted city in the world? Oh, wait. Or does your heart glow with joy while taking long walks along the banks of the Ganga, breathing in the smells of nature?
Hypothetically, anything can be done. In reality, the only part of your argument that matters is the rather poignant last statement. Optimism is for other people. A large order of deep-fried cynicism for me please.
The original comment was blaming overpopulation, but that's simply not an issue as I've explained. There are very dense cities that look and work fine because of proper planning and infrastructure. India can do this once it gets over the corruption and outdated politics but it will take time, but again has nothing to do with population size.
I'm not sure what argument you're trying to make but optimism has nothing to do with the discussion.
it's telling that the overpopulation people always worry about poor people having too many kids. rich people have a far larger ecological footprint and consume far more of any given resource.
Don't poor people usually have more kid in developing countries as that's basically the retirement plan? That's how I read parent's post, I'm assuming wealthy citizens have closer to western levels of offspring also in India.
We've banned this account for using HN for ideological and racial battle. Doing this will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't.
Excessive taxes and expensive housing. In much of Europe it is simply impossible to buy a house on a single income, if you obey 100% of tax laws. These taxes are used to pay for the elderly, their welfare (pensions) and healthcare.
If you are in the US you may not appreciate how heavy the tax burden is in Europe. It varies by country but its normally something like: 30% payroll tax paid by employer. 30% income tax paid by you. 20% sales tax paid by you. Then, very expensive housing due to the high population densities and limited room to expand.
Additionally in Europe, many parents want their children to be educated in English, however the language of instruction is usually the local language. This is partly why the migrant stream into the Anglosphere is so high. The alternative are private international schools, which are hideously expensive.
"Have you seen the Muslims with their turbans and their djellabas (traditional, hooded, long wool coats)? You can see that they are not French. Try and integrate oil and vinegar. Shake the bottle. After a moment they separate again. The Arabs are Arabs, the French are French. Do you think that the French can absorb ten million Muslims who will tomorrow be twenty million and after tomorrow forty? If we carry out integration, if all the Berbers and Arabs of Algeria were regarded as French, how would one stop them coming to settle on the mainland where the standard of living is so much higher? My village would no longer be called Colombey-les-deux-Eglises [the two churches] but Colombey-the-two-mosques."
Other countries can adopt English as an additional official language, and allow children to be educated with English as the language of instruction.
This would be particularly advantageous in Europe, where the population of many smaller countries with their own language is falling. It would also attract inter-EU migrants.
The problem is that jobs are over, but we are still taxed the old fashioned way - mostly to pay for the healthcare and pensions of baby boomers who had steady careers and cheap housing.
Healthcare and pensions make up 66% of the US Federal Budget. Its a similiar case in most other Western countries. If we could somehow find a way to relieve ourselves of that burden, taxes on labour could be much lower and life significantly better.
I think this is partly why we've seen such a huge boom in freelancing. Its much easier to optimise your taxes that way, instead of working for a company.
Teens watch Youtube more than TV. Youtube has been far more censorious and disregarding of Free Speech than anything the Australian Government has done.
How would that solve the problem of dangerous bacteria in some people's donations?
The free market version of solving this problem is counting on some transplant places to do adequate testing of donations. The ones that don't will accidentally kill more people, and presumably they'll lose business over it, and eventually they'll be forced out of the market - maybe.
