This is a common sentiment, and one that's been around quite a while -- at least two centuries, dating back to Thomas Malthus [1]. Back then, he thought the wor

This is a common sentiment, and one that's been around quite a while -- at least two centuries, dating back to Thomas Malthus [1]. Back then, he thought the world was at its max carrying capacity, and disaster was imminent. The idea keeps coming back, as with Paul Ehrlich in the '70s, which climaxed in the Simon-Ehrlich wager [2] (which was flawed, but still a pretty good demonstration). The thing is, we're always on the verge of disaster, but the price mechanism of the market continually motivates people to seek out alternatives. So we always find a new way to achieve something "just in time". Consider the history of lighting. There's no way we could continue to light our homes with candles or whale oil; as the whales got scarce, the price of oil increased, and that's a big part of what drove the invention of newer means of generating light. The fact is that the single greatest resource at our disposal is the human mind: that's what allows us to invent new alternatives, to get away from the things that become scarce. All of human history shows that the more people we've got, the better off we are. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon-Ehrlich_wager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon-Ehrlich_wager