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3.1 - A good thing because people with unusual interests and personality traits will be able to form communities of people with similar interests. For example,
by qrendel 11y ago
3.1 - A good thing because people with unusual interests and personality traits will be able to form communities of people with similar interests. For example, in a town of a thousand people, you might be the only one who enjoys an odd hobby like underwater hockey (it's a real thing). In a city of ten million, there may be hundreds or thousands of people to form an entire league with. "Deviations" as used wasn't intended to have a pejorative connotation.
3.2. Contradicts the basic premise (no immediate resource limit) and the original article. The world has become richer despite growing population, because production has outrun consumption. No reason to think it will stop in the immediate future, any more than it did in Malthus' time.
3.3. You're simultaneously saying the economic problems arise when population stops growing and becomes stable, and supporting ending population growth in favor of a stable population. If there's a limit where quality of life decreases due to increasing population, we haven't hit it yet, given that quality of life and per capita wealth is still improving globally, so there's no reason to put the brakes on before we even know where it is.
> it is also not ten to the hundred for obvious reasons.
We're assuming technology and productive capacity also improves to keep up. We're also nowhere near 10^100. Nor do we know where this hypothetical optimum is. Population controls should be a last resort to solving problems we are't facing yet, not done just because a theoretical optimum for quality of life may exist at some hypothetical large number.
- danbruc 11y ago3.1. But that also means that all the bad minorities can form stronger groups and be potentially more impactful. If you can not play underwater hockey you might pick some other form of hockey instead. Maybe it makes you a bit less happy but what is the effect of a less fragmented society? I am not dismissing the idea that there might be a positive effect but I am not obviously convinced. 3.2. I would argue that the increase in wealth is mostly due to increased productivity and not due to population growth and therefore could continue even without further population growth. Population growth is certainly not totally irrelevant due to scale effects but I don't see that simply doubling the population would lead to significantly increased wealth. 3.3. That is not what I am saying. Having a pyramid shaped age structure is an easy way to have a lot of workforce available to support the elderly but that structure is not the result of a large population but of an growing population. And in order to be a significant effect you can not have just a tiny bit of growth but a substantial amount of growth is definitely unsustainable. The limit definitely exists but I also think we will not hit it, we will not need any (large scale) birth control policies because the birth rate will drop enough with increasing wealth. Looking at developed nations it looks actually more like we will have to incentivize having more children in order not to go extinct.