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Where does population control enter into this hypothetical? Because that's the only way you get to post-scarcity.
by ethbro 7y ago
Where does population control enter into this hypothetical?
Because that's the only way you get to post-scarcity.
- taneq 7y agoEducation, quality of life and equal opportunities for women. As these increase, the birth rate goes down. Most countries that score highly in these areas actually have below replacement birth rates and only grow in population due to immigration.
- krastanov 7y agoPretty much any study of the past century and any projection from reputable sources says that populations reach equilibrium and stop growing as the level of education, in particular education of women, rises. This is a non-problem that has always taken care of itself in any developed country and we have no reason to believe it will not take care of itself in the developing world as well. The UN for instance does not believe there will be 10 billion humans on earth ever (where "ever" means "as long as projections have any value").
- ethbro 7y agoThe belief that world population will self-level at some point does not mean that it will self-level prior to resource exhaustion. The fact that we're cooking the planet with ~8B does not bode well for what even 10B looks like.
- toasterlovin 7y agoFertility is heritable. Population will probably continue to rise.
- TulliusCicero 7y agoAnd yet, basically every developed country is below the replacement rate.
- ethbro 7y agoHow many countries are "developed"? And how quickly will the remainder join them?
- toasterlovin 7y agoBelow replacement fertility is a recent phenomenon (last couple of generations). Evolution works in multiples of generations. We’re at the very beginning of evolving resistance to modernity.
- unishark 7y agoI wouldn't quite call world population growth a non-problem, considering it is already a problem. The future predictions may well turn out correct, and have some solid reasoning behind them, but the numbers still look fairly crude to me. Plots of historic growth rates are bouncing up and down, while the prediction is they will suddenly turn a corner tomorrow and drop monotonically to zero and all will be peachy. How often has that happened? Considering the current record-breaking population numbers, the ultimate answer is it has never happened, at least not permanently. There's a lot of risk in betting on things to just work themselves out. Development can actually work against us in a sense, as new food production technology and cures allow faster-than-ever growth in new regions and populations.