Hussar
Legend
Then it cannot be done at all.
Humans *do not* stay static. No society on Earth has stayed static for so long, and we should not suspect it here. Yes, abject failure is catastrophic, but *the people know that*. Their situation, and the fact that hard vacuum is just outside, is not lost upon them.
Maybe not for so long, but, there are numerous societies that have stayed, more or less, static for centuries. And, to do so, created societies that were, by modern human rights standards anyway, shockingly repressive.
On the flip side, once you are hurtling through space... you just keep hurtling through space. The interstellar void is filled with a whole lot of nothing, and a whole lot of nothing people on the ship have to do other than regular maintenance, and you probably have wiggle room on exactly when that happens.
While there is potential of failure, that's *always* the case in space. *ALWAYS*. People die in space. Space is dangerous. If you're not up to taking on some risk of failure, don't start.
It's not a risk when it's a virtually guaranteed certainty. We can afford change and changing societies, even ones that murder 1/4 of their population (Cambodia) because the amount of "wiggle room" we have is enormous. On a space ship, you cannot have that degree of wiggle room.
Or, forced contraception measures, and working the occasional extra kid into your long term plan. We are talking about decades and centuries of travel time - the plan is long term population control, not "OMG, we have one extra kid, we are DOOOOOOooooooOOOOOmed!" If you have one unplanned kid, you just cut down on the planned births next year, and it evens out.
Your approach to this seems... always catastrophic. We have centuries to work with, not minutes.
For everyone who gets on board to start with, it is entirely voluntary.
For people who are born in flight - they are taught from a young age exactly what the stakes are. They can be taught the plan, and about population dynamics. They can understand that population growth needs to be controlled. And note for most of these people, it isn't that they *cannot* have kids. It is a question of when, and how many. And, if we are smart, some of that will be negotiable, and we can plan around it. If one couple doesn't want kids, that's cool, another couple that does want them can have more.
So, everyone in subsequent generations must be forced into a single culture and way of thinking because any deviation from the baseline isn't possible. And this is a morally justifiable position? Because, it's not just "understanding" that population growth needs to be controlled, it's "You have zero choice in this. We are going to control your reproductive rights (as well as a host of other personal rights) from birth whether you agree or not"
Or, can people choose to disagree?
I think you're failing to note how that we here on this board are, for the most part, highly privileged people. Most of the population of the planet you are standing on still aren't. Humans are already born into cultures they cannot control, many with aspects we think of as human rights violations, and they have no way out of them either. You are speaking as if the ship failing to be a utopia is somehow a major failing.
Umm, having basic human rights is hardly what I'd call a "utopia". Being able to choose when and with whom I have a baby is hardly a utopia. Being able to choose what kind of job I'd like to do for the rest of my life is hardly a utopia. Being able to disagree with policies is hardly a utopia.
Your bar for utopia is pretty darn low.
And, you claim that there is no way out for them. That's not true. They can, and often do, flee countries. Not everyone, true. But, that is an option. And, note, while they might suffer under these regimes, many of these regimes do change over time. So, the horribly repressive dictatorship of today becomes tomorrow's free democracy. It's a painful process, to be sure, but, it does happen. As you say, societies are rarely static.