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People (in our hypothesised Western industrialised nations) WANT density of population. People can already freely move to less densely populated areas, where t

People (in our hypothesised Western industrialised nations) WANT density of population. People can already freely move to less densely populated areas, where they avoid traffic jams, pollution, etc etc etc. They choose not to. Density of population creates opportunities that people decide are worth the extra problems to be part of. Halving the population wouldn't stop this happening. There would be a rush to the cities, a rush to create density of population and all the opportunity people want from it. What you're complaining about would happen again; particularly since people know what's possible with density of population, and they choose it over the alternative. I suppose you might be able to get the effect you want if you really, REALLY reduced the population. By an order of magnitude or more. We have to normalize, we have to batch, we have to have pyramids, a chain of command to manage things. Which allows us to have a society in which people are hundreds and hundreds of times richer than they were even a couple of centuries ago. The wealth of humanity under this is astonishing. We are all so much better off. And again, to reach the point where this efficiency became uneconomic and your alternative options would become optimal would require a population drop of far more than half.

sametmax 10y ago
Yes but: - I believe lowering the population density will not annihilate those benefits. Paris was still Paris with the half of its population, but you could find a pre-school much more easily 50 years ago. - the benefits of the current density can be achieved with a lower one given our current knowledge and technology - accumulating wealth is probably not as much as linked to population density (in our modern countries) as that we have added science (machines and software) to our optimized slavery and theft. - With a smaller population, we may be able on concentrate on quality of life. And education, which could lead to limit our current huge amount of wastes and appetite for superficial things. This could balance what we loose for a higher density population.

sametmax 10y ago

Yes but: - I believe lowering the population density will not annihilate those benefits. Paris was still Paris with the half of its population, but you could find a pre-school much more easily 50 years ago. - the benefits of the current density can be achieved with a lower one given our current knowledge and technology - accumulating wealth is probably not as much as linked to population density (in our modern countries) as that we have added science (machines and software) to our optimized slavery and theft. - With a smaller population, we may be able on concentrate on quality of life. And education, which could lead to limit our current huge amount of wastes and appetite for superficial things. This could balance what we loose for a higher density population.