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I've always believed in "Quality of Life", over "Quantity of Life". And reading stories like these gives me hope for the planet. I'm not sure we can handle 10 b

I've always believed in "Quality of Life", over "Quantity of Life". And reading stories like these gives me hope for the planet. I'm not sure we can handle 10 billion people living off of it simultaneously. Just look at all the problems we've got with only 7 billion and the upcoming food and resource shortages. Smaller populations living great full lives is so much better than massive populations living terribly. Economically, investors don't like shrinking populations because they make their money from growth and consumerism, but environmentally this is wonderful news. Looks like, in its own way, nature is starting to balance things out once again.

kiba 15y ago
10 billion human beings is nothing, especially when you consider that we absorb more energy from the sun in one hour than do humanity use in one year. Resource isn't much of a problem either if you consider nuclear energy and asteroid mining. Currently we either don't exploit it due to the political environment, or can't exploit it due to technological limits. I would argue that the food storage and resource storage are a result of institutional and societal problems. That is, war and corruption done more than enough to incite famine and other ills while undeveloped markets disrupt our ability to distribute food and other resources to those that need it the most. Plus, there's something to be said for humans as the storage of knowledge and expertise. Humanity built entire civilization based on division of labor and specialization, not on the back of a few genius. The more people there are, the more genius we have. Remember, we barely can absorb the energy of the sun for our own use!
- chii 15y ago
  The day we obsorb all incoming energy from the sun for solely our own use, is the day we destroy all other life on earth...
ekianjo 15y ago
At the beginning of the century (20th, that is), people were already afraid of a world with 2 or 3 billion people. They predicted mass resource shortage, wars and so on. But overall we could cope, and population has been increasing steadily ever since, and we have never had so few cases of starvation as in modern times. Most people on Earth live now better than their ancestors. There is a huge amount of progress in quality of live versus one century ago, even in the developing countries. 10 billions won't be more of an issue that jumping from 1 to 3 was. It's actually a smaller increment vs where we are right now.
- DanBC 15y ago
  > and we have never had so few cases of starvation as in modern times. Hunger kills more people than Malaria, HIV / AIDS and tuberculosis combined. About 925 million people are hungry (that's very roughly 1 in 7 people). Undernutrition kills 5 million children under the age of 5 each year. (http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats)
  - blvr 15y ago
    And all that's on the decline.
  - ekianjo 15y ago
    Yeah, while we should check the numbers, I am pretty sure there were far more poor and starving people 100 years ago, not in total number of course, but in proportion of the actual world population. When is the last time you heard about starvation in China, for example ?
- lkozma 15y ago
  Do you realize this argument works for any X and X+k ? I assume you are not thinking that an infinite number of people would get along just fine, so clearly there are some other constraints. It may well be that those constraint kick in at a higher number than many assume, but it might as well be smaller.
simplefish 15y ago
I'm not sure why you seem surprised; this is a very long standing trend. It's also pretty obvious. You aren't the only one to value quality of life over quantity; in fact everyone else does too. The only problem is that if you're very poor you don't have a choice. Wherever and whenever the human race manages to claw its way out of poverty, we immediately stop having so many kids. It's not magic. That being said... 1) What upcoming food shortage? Food production is largely a solved problem. We know how to sustainably produce large amounts of food from a given amount of arable land, and we have plenty of arable land to feed not just the current global population, but the projected maximum global population. It's true! We already have the ability to feed the largest population we'll ever have. True, Africa currently has food shortages, but as soon as Africa stops relying on peasant farming, that problem goes away. We can argue about when (or if) Africa is going to finally have their own Green Revolution[0], but...upcoming shortages? Do you know something the rest of us don't? :) 2) I might ask what upcoming resource shortage, but that's a more complicated question, and probably not worth arguing about. Still, you might want to consider the outcome of the Simon-Erlich wager[1], look at commodity price trends over the last couple decade, and then look at futures prices. Would you take Erlich's side in a repeat of the original wager? I wouldn't, and it's worth noting that Erlich and his ideological allies have repeatedly refused to do so. Again, what do you know that they don't? 3) Also, this is wonderful news for "investors" too (why beat around the bush? Call them "capitalists"; you know you want to...). Trust me, the slavering capitalist dogs are VASTLY more interested in having a rich China full of consumers than in having a poor China full of workers. It might be nice to have cheap Chinese labour making iPods to sell to 300m rich Americans, but it will be FANTASTIC to have cheap robot labour making iPods to sell to 1.3b rich Chinese. (And that's precisely the scenario you're envisioning.) Lower costs and higher sales is how capitalists make their money in the real world. 4) Finally, it remains to be seen how good it will be environmentally. In the short run (say, the next 50 years), it probably won't be. Much as with population growth, we see an inverted curve. Very poor countries can't afford to pollute, and very rich ones can afford not to - but right in the middle you end up polluting a bunch. We went through that period in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; now it's China's turn. They're producing less pollution for every dollar of GDP each year, but their GDP is climbing much faster. The environment is likely to get worse before it gets better. (Of course, look on the bright side: We are conquering global inequality, and the environment will recover eventually. Those are both GREAT. But let's not get carried away.) [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
yason 15y ago
The thing is quantity of life is growing where quality of life is low, and the quality of life is growing where quantity of life is low. So it's sort of the worst of both worlds: the developed countries could afford a population growth in a humane and civilized way but they won't. Conversely, developing countries with overly high population growth become a terrible mess that they couldn't afford. However, I also think that nature will balance itself back in a way or another. Of course, we won't be asked whether we would like to join or not, and necessarily isn't going to be a nice ride, but the tension we, as a species, are building will release at some point. The best part of unsustainability is that it can't be sustained.
- rsheridan6 15y ago
  There's nothing stopping high birth rates in areas where quality of life is low - it just has to be balanced by high death rates. Suppose there's a country where it's possible to feed a million people, and there are already a million people. There is no economic growth. Suppose about a quarter of the population is women of childbearing age, and they each have a baby every five years, so each year there are 50,000 new people. That's perfectly sustainable as long as 50,000 of people die each year. That's 1/20 of the population dying each year, so that implies high death rates and short lifespans. It would suck, but it would be sustainable. And that's pretty much how the world was for most of history.

kiba 15y ago

10 billion human beings is nothing, especially when you consider that we absorb more energy from the sun in one hour than do humanity use in one year. Resource isn't much of a problem either if you consider nuclear energy and asteroid mining. Currently we either don't exploit it due to the political environment, or can't exploit it due to technological limits. I would argue that the food storage and resource storage are a result of institutional and societal problems. That is, war and corruption done more than enough to incite famine and other ills while undeveloped markets disrupt our ability to distribute food and other resources to those that need it the most. Plus, there's something to be said for humans as the storage of knowledge and expertise. Humanity built entire civilization based on division of labor and specialization, not on the back of a few genius. The more people there are, the more genius we have. Remember, we barely can absorb the energy of the sun for our own use!

chii 15y ago
The day we obsorb all incoming energy from the sun for solely our own use, is the day we destroy all other life on earth...

ekianjo 15y ago

At the beginning of the century (20th, that is), people were already afraid of a world with 2 or 3 billion people. They predicted mass resource shortage, wars and so on. But overall we could cope, and population has been increasing steadily ever since, and we have never had so few cases of starvation as in modern times. Most people on Earth live now better than their ancestors. There is a huge amount of progress in quality of live versus one century ago, even in the developing countries. 10 billions won't be more of an issue that jumping from 1 to 3 was. It's actually a smaller increment vs where we are right now.

DanBC 15y ago
> and we have never had so few cases of starvation as in modern times. Hunger kills more people than Malaria, HIV / AIDS and tuberculosis combined. About 925 million people are hungry (that's very roughly 1 in 7 people). Undernutrition kills 5 million children under the age of 5 each year. (http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats)
- blvr 15y ago
  And all that's on the decline.
- ekianjo 15y ago
  Yeah, while we should check the numbers, I am pretty sure there were far more poor and starving people 100 years ago, not in total number of course, but in proportion of the actual world population. When is the last time you heard about starvation in China, for example ?
lkozma 15y ago
Do you realize this argument works for any X and X+k ? I assume you are not thinking that an infinite number of people would get along just fine, so clearly there are some other constraints. It may well be that those constraint kick in at a higher number than many assume, but it might as well be smaller.

simplefish 15y ago

I'm not sure why you seem surprised; this is a very long standing trend. It's also pretty obvious. You aren't the only one to value quality of life over quantity; in fact everyone else does too. The only problem is that if you're very poor you don't have a choice. Wherever and whenever the human race manages to claw its way out of poverty, we immediately stop having so many kids. It's not magic. That being said... 1) What upcoming food shortage? Food production is largely a solved problem. We know how to sustainably produce large amounts of food from a given amount of arable land, and we have plenty of arable land to feed not just the current global population, but the projected maximum global population. It's true! We already have the ability to feed the largest population we'll ever have. True, Africa currently has food shortages, but as soon as Africa stops relying on peasant farming, that problem goes away. We can argue about when (or if) Africa is going to finally have their own Green Revolution[0], but...upcoming shortages? Do you know something the rest of us don't? :) 2) I might ask what upcoming resource shortage, but that's a more complicated question, and probably not worth arguing about. Still, you might want to consider the outcome of the Simon-Erlich wager[1], look at commodity price trends over the last couple decade, and then look at futures prices. Would you take Erlich's side in a repeat of the original wager? I wouldn't, and it's worth noting that Erlich and his ideological allies have repeatedly refused to do so. Again, what do you know that they don't? 3) Also, this is wonderful news for "investors" too (why beat around the bush? Call them "capitalists"; you know you want to...). Trust me, the slavering capitalist dogs are VASTLY more interested in having a rich China full of consumers than in having a poor China full of workers. It might be nice to have cheap Chinese labour making iPods to sell to 300m rich Americans, but it will be FANTASTIC to have cheap robot labour making iPods to sell to 1.3b rich Chinese. (And that's precisely the scenario you're envisioning.) Lower costs and higher sales is how capitalists make their money in the real world. 4) Finally, it remains to be seen how good it will be environmentally. In the short run (say, the next 50 years), it probably won't be. Much as with population growth, we see an inverted curve. Very poor countries can't afford to pollute, and very rich ones can afford not to - but right in the middle you end up polluting a bunch. We went through that period in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; now it's China's turn. They're producing less pollution for every dollar of GDP each year, but their GDP is climbing much faster. The environment is likely to get worse before it gets better. (Of course, look on the bright side: We are conquering global inequality, and the environment will recover eventually. Those are both GREAT. But let's not get carried away.) [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager

yason 15y ago

The thing is quantity of life is growing where quality of life is low, and the quality of life is growing where quantity of life is low. So it's sort of the worst of both worlds: the developed countries could afford a population growth in a humane and civilized way but they won't. Conversely, developing countries with overly high population growth become a terrible mess that they couldn't afford. However, I also think that nature will balance itself back in a way or another. Of course, we won't be asked whether we would like to join or not, and necessarily isn't going to be a nice ride, but the tension we, as a species, are building will release at some point. The best part of unsustainability is that it can't be sustained.

rsheridan6 15y ago
There's nothing stopping high birth rates in areas where quality of life is low - it just has to be balanced by high death rates. Suppose there's a country where it's possible to feed a million people, and there are already a million people. There is no economic growth. Suppose about a quarter of the population is women of childbearing age, and they each have a baby every five years, so each year there are 50,000 new people. That's perfectly sustainable as long as 50,000 of people die each year. That's 1/20 of the population dying each year, so that implies high death rates and short lifespans. It would suck, but it would be sustainable. And that's pretty much how the world was for most of history.