Why would it be indefinite? People less likely to have kids exit the gene pool, and a smaller population of those more likely to have kids survive. In the small

Why would it be indefinite? People less likely to have kids exit the gene pool, and a smaller population of those more likely to have kids survive. In the smaller population land is cheaper, less crowded, there are more natural resources per person, and population grows again, from the lower level. Unless you try to short-circuit that adjustment process by keeping the human/land ratio where it is and importing people to keep land more expensive. And then you have to deal with all the costs of ethnic conflict. China, with a population of 500 million, would be a much more pleasant place to live. China with a population of 500 million Han and 800 million-strong hodge-podge of other groups constantly resenting each other and together resenting the Han? Not so nice. Things are never monotonically increasing or decreasing forever, and there is no reason to prevent population from adjusting up or down in order to reach better conditions for a given environment. Nor do we need to set public policy to focus solely on maximizing total GDP and real estate values.