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Did you forget the /s tag? It's pretty well understood that population growth curves are logistical, rather than exponential (e.g., https://www.britannica.com/
by kbutler 10y ago
Did you forget the /s tag?
It's pretty well understood that population growth curves are logistical, rather than exponential (e.g., https://www.britannica.com/science/population-growth/images-videos/In-an-ideal-environment-populations-grow-at-an-exponential-rate/158213 https://www.britannica.com/science/population-growth/images-...)
The appearance of exponential growth is always temporary.
As the population increases, negative feedbacks reduce the population growth rate. Examples of these feedbacks include cost to raise children, reduced dependence on large family for security in old age, etc.
Estimates of the "replacement fertility rate" are about 2.1 per woman in a developed society (higher in less-developed societies). Many first world countries are already below this rate, and without immigration, will have declining populations as their native populations age.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...
Malthus and his disciples have been wrong for 200 years.
Paul Ehrlich in particular, because he used to like giving short-term dates for his predictions, so we could watch them slide by. Then he decided time was different to him than to an "average person".
“How many years do you have to not have the world end” to reach a conclusion that “maybe it didn’t end because that reason was wrong?” -- Steward Brand, former disciple of Ehrlich
- snrplfth 10y agoWell, Paul Ehrlich is an entomologist, so it's not too surprising that he should consider human populations to be essentially automatic, mindless swarms.