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It's a good point but I think what people averagely "produce" is of a different substance from that which they consume. People consume resources that are large

It's a good point but I think what people averagely "produce" is of a different substance from that which they consume. People consume resources that are largely non-replenishable, or at least are not replenished in a manner strictly related to the number of people. As abstractbill says, people don't produce water. Similarly, more people doesn't typically mean more food either, although it might indirectly through the increased needs of more people leading to more farmers etc. What people "produce" is generally 'order' or increased labour output. Whether this leads to supporting more people I'm not sure.

randallsquared 17y ago
"As abstractbill says, people don't produce water." People can easily produce water in the same sense that they "consume" water (since consumption in this case merely means to pollute a little bit, and cleaning water only requires energy and physical plant). If you use prices as a proxy for measurements of how much we have available, it's clear that the vast majority of the resources we use are, in practical terms, more plentiful now than a century ago, and given that we can see how to switch to more plentiful resources still, I don't see that trend stopping for at least a century or two, at current rates. Even if our technology didn't improve fundamentally past what we know how to do now, we'd have at least a century before we had to go get more resources elsewhere, and we already know how to do that (though we'll need a lot more engineering to actually do it, of course). Meanwhile, the more people there are, the more engineers and innovators there are. If we don't get hit by an asteroid or literally destroy ourselves, the future is pretty damn bright. :)