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There are three important considerations here: 1. Service jobs such as haircutters are needed proportionally to population. 2. RnD and art. If the same propor
by im3w1l 6y ago
There are three important considerations here:
1. Service jobs such as haircutters are needed proportionally to population.
2. RnD and art. If the same proportion of the population does RnD / art, then a higher population means faster progress and more prosperity.
3. Fixed resources. For instance US has a limited amount of farmland. You cannot scale farming up. From one perspective there are a fixed amount of farming jobs. From another perspective people will go hungry if population is too high. The higher population California has, the more carefully it has to save water.
- seanmcdirmid 6y agoThe USA has a substantial surplus in arable land, so much so that it is a huge exporter of agriculture output. Now, if our population rises then we won’t export as much, which could affect say pork prices in China (they get a lot of animal feed from the USA). On the other hand, moving population from where food isn’t as abundant to a pace where it is would be more efficient overall.
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- randompwd 6y agoI don't think that's a justified comment. If the USA moved away from sub-standard factory farming and actually had decent conditions for ALL their farm animals then the supposde surplus land would rapidly diminsh.
- contravariant 6y agoThat seems unlikely, I reckon it would probably decrease the total population rather than just spreading the same population over more land. In which case the decrease in land required for animal feed would probably outweigh any increase in space per animal. Note that I said 'probably' a few times, these kind of global changes can have unexpected consequences (not necessarily bad ones, mind). Besides I'm pretty sure the US isn't currently optimizing their farming to use little land. If you were to compare the US and the Netherlands on output per square mile of arable land I reckon you'll find that there is still quite a bit of leeway in increasing production.
- rubber_duck 6y ago>Fixed resources. For instance US has a limited amount of farmland. You cannot scale farming up. From one perspective there are a fixed amount of farming jobs. From another perspective people will go hungry if population is too high. The higher population California has, the more carefully it has to save water. That's sort of related to zero sum thinking - if arrable land ever became scarce there are alternative methods that become viable at higher cost , same for water. (also with additional manual labor and R&D it's easier to solve those problems)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Retric 6y agoIncreasing total food production at higher costs to support a larger population is fine if the goal is a larger GDP, but it’s lowering per capita GDP. That extends to taller buildings and more congested cities etc. The curve is almost flat at +/- 5% population, but unlimited immigration could have seen the US population reach several times it’s current levels. Innovation isn’t a meaningful difference because global population is not changing.