5 ms·

Trouble is, that peak number keeps going up. I remember learning in school that it was 8 billion, now it's 10. You have to look over time, in 10 years it might

Trouble is, that peak number keeps going up. I remember learning in school that it was 8 billion, now it's 10. You have to look over time, in 10 years it might 11, but yeah we're definitely going to peak any time now. An-ny time now. And even if/when we do, having more old people than young will cause a load of other problems which we don't seem to be preparing for. Most economies seem to be built (to my inexpert eye) on having more net producers (workers) than net consumers (pensioners, kids, sick people, unemployed). It needs to change.

oblio 5y ago
You need to dig deeper. More and more countries are slowing down. That growth left is in a smaller and smaller number of countries. Which makes it, cynically, sustainable. When every country is growing out of a control, that's a worldwide disaster. When a bunch of countries are growing out of control... that's a local disaster. There's a reason we have countries/states/defense mechanisms.
- 29athrowaway 5y ago
  It doesn't matter. 1. The net world population is going up. Any non-zero growth rate will eventually saturate the planet. 2. We are already beyond capacity. Even if we kept the current population level for 100 years, we would still run out of resources. 3. The countries that slow down their growth tend to get more economically developed, causing each person to boost their resource consumption. In 4-2-1 families (Chinese one child policy), the one remaining person consumes far more resources than the 6 ancestors combined.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > The net world population is going up. Any non-zero growth rate will eventually saturate the planet. There's a huge difference between "saturating" 10 years from now or 1000 years from now. And population growth has slowed down to a crawl. It's enough to bring just a dozen, or less, countries out of poverty to achieve basically zero growth. > We are already beyond capacity. We are not. > causing each person to boost their resource consumption. Overconsumption is a problem, and should definitely be solved.
    - 29athrowaway 5y ago
      I don't have to prove you wrong, reality will.
dmitriid 5y ago
> Trouble is, that peak number keeps going up. It might. But it's nowhere exponential, or even linear.

oblio 5y ago

You need to dig deeper. More and more countries are slowing down. That growth left is in a smaller and smaller number of countries. Which makes it, cynically, sustainable. When every country is growing out of a control, that's a worldwide disaster. When a bunch of countries are growing out of control... that's a local disaster. There's a reason we have countries/states/defense mechanisms.

29athrowaway 5y ago
It doesn't matter. 1. The net world population is going up. Any non-zero growth rate will eventually saturate the planet. 2. We are already beyond capacity. Even if we kept the current population level for 100 years, we would still run out of resources. 3. The countries that slow down their growth tend to get more economically developed, causing each person to boost their resource consumption. In 4-2-1 families (Chinese one child policy), the one remaining person consumes far more resources than the 6 ancestors combined.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > The net world population is going up. Any non-zero growth rate will eventually saturate the planet. There's a huge difference between "saturating" 10 years from now or 1000 years from now. And population growth has slowed down to a crawl. It's enough to bring just a dozen, or less, countries out of poverty to achieve basically zero growth. > We are already beyond capacity. We are not. > causing each person to boost their resource consumption. Overconsumption is a problem, and should definitely be solved.
  - 29athrowaway 5y ago
    I don't have to prove you wrong, reality will.

dmitriid 5y ago

> Trouble is, that peak number keeps going up. It might. But it's nowhere exponential, or even linear.