4/5 What do you think the optimal human population of the Earth would be?
As in, what would provide the best balance of happy, safe population,
with enough people to conduct large-scale projects but minimize
competition for resources and damage to the environment?
What benefit is there, given current tech and resources, to having
more than say 500 mil people living at once?
\_ Why is 500 million people the mark? Why not 6.7 billion, the
current population? I've heard people argue that the population
will level off in the next 50 years, but don't know enough facts to
know if I should beliieve it or not. -dans
\_ Issue of poverty and population can be best examplified by
records of Imperial China. Through out the imperial history,
Emperor was obsessed with "average agriable land area per
person" as leading economic indicator. "Economic stimulous"
usually involves on how to increase "agriable" land, and
irrigation infrastures. It is true, that at much poverty was
due to imbalance in land ownership. But at some point,
one would reach the limit of how much agriable land one can
increase... limited by amount of water. Yellow River used to
be larger than Mississippi. It has literally being sucked
dry. Not to mention completely destruction of natural habitat.
\_ Because with the current population, the majority of the people
live in poverty, and we have a lot of pollution and environmental
concerns, and resource scarcity such as oil. With 500 mil
worldwide, we could all be relatively rich, and live in nice
places on the coast and such. Why is more better given the cost?
I doubt the population will level off soon globally (why will it
exactly?) but that is sort of irrelevant to my question.
\_ There is far more than enough food around today to feed
everyone, and enough space to house everyone. Poverty is
more due to inefficiencies in distribution and excessive
concentration of population than overpopulation. How you'd
solve this I don't know (we've seen that planned economies
don't help.) I think dans touches on a good point below,
that agrosubsidies in the rich world are a start. Now when
you start hitting 10-15 billion people, that's a new
ballgame. As for the "500 million people would all be rich
and happy", that's illusory; you wouldn't have the
concentrations of population to maintain a modern industrial
society. Maybe when we have robots for everything, that'll
be true. -John
\_ "There is far more than enough food" -- assuming oil &
natural gas are cheap and plentiful. It took 10 calories
of fossil fuel to produce every 1 calorie you are
consuming.
\_ I question the "more than enough food"... at least, I am
approaching the question not as what is physically possible
but what is optimal, i.e. what is most sustainable and
pleasant for those who are alive. I don't think it's
illusory; you would have as much industrial concentration
as is necessary... you wouldn't need that much of it and
anyway, modern industrial society has a lot of problems
and isn't unquestionably good as it currently exists.
\_ No, my poiont was that given what we currently have, 5
to 6 billion is very sustainable in terms of food,
resources and comfortable living space. It should be
a breeze keeping everyone fed and housed; the fact that
we are unable to allocate limited resources in a more
efficient (note that I don't say equitable) manner,
at least to some sizeable degree due to hokum such as
agrosubsidies, is pretty lamentable. I fear that 10
to 15 billion won't work out terribly well, although I
think it's possible--but we'll have a fairly unpleasant
time figuring out how to manage. In the meantime,
stupid shit like the catholic church railing against
contraception is pretty worthy of a good smacking. -John
Anyway I take it your answer is 10-15 billion? I think
many people seem to approach this issue as "how many CAN
we have" rather than thinking what is optimal.
\_ No, my poiont was that given what we currently have, 5
\_ No, my point was that given what we currently have, 5
to 6 billion is very sustainable in terms of food,
resources and comfortable living space. It should be
a breeze keeping everyone fed and housed; the fact that
we are unable to allocate limited resources in a more
efficient (note that I don't say equitable) manner,
at least to some sizeable degree due to hokum such as
agrosubsidies, is pretty lamentable. I fear that 10
to 15 billion won't work out terribly well, although I
think it's possible--but we'll have a fairly unpleasant
agrosubsidies, is pretty lamentable. We also have the
technology to grow massive amounts of food in a fairly
sustainable manner; we don't because it's currently
uneconomical to do so. I'm also convinced
that getting rid of a lot of the mechanisms standing in
the way of getting people fed would create more
prosperity for a lot of the currently "poor" world, and
prosperous people tend to crank out fewer babies. I
fear that 10 to 15 billion will be very tough, albeit
somehow possible--but we'll have a fairly unpleasant
time figuring out how to manage. In the meantime,
stupid shit like the catholic church railing against
contraception is pretty worthy of a good smacking. -John
\_ It may be sustainable. But is it better than if we
had 500 million instead? Would those 500 mil be
better off? That's my point. I guess it's debatable
whether, if that's so, we should expand to 10 billion
and be more crowded and "rat-racey" just for the sake
of having more people living at once... it's not
clear to me that there's any benefit to that.
\_ I can't argue whether it'd be "better" or not--I
suppose this goes pretty strongly into subjective
criteria. I like having big cities available,
but I'm not fan of huge crowds; off the top of my
head, I'd state a number of around 1-3 billion as
"optimal", but that's just an unfounded guess as
to how you'd have enough nice seaside plots for
everyone available. -John
\_ Is poverty a function of population, or a function of
relative wealth? If it's the latter it won't go away by
decreasing the population. Did you know that we produce way
more food than the current population of the food can
consume? Unfortunately, between subsidies and transportation
costs, it is not economically viable to ship food from the US
and Europe to feed starving Africans. Sad but true. The
argument for population levelling off is that population in
developed countries is in decline (or expected to in the next
1-3 decades), and that population in the developing world is
stabilizing due to hunger, disease, etc.. -dans
\_ Well I understand that removing population also removes
output obviously... but the fact remains that certain
things are obviously limited such as land and oil.
Lots of related environmental issues to that. And just the
simple economics of everyone owning a nice home instead of
being, say, packed into apartment blocks. Food is not
a big problem right now, however, there are related
issues to ever-increasing productivity demands and
industrial farming, and issues such as collapse of fishing
stocks. Pollution output would be much more manageable.
Relative wealth isn't much of an issue in a world without
such inherent scarcity of productive land, water, etc.
(re: stabilization due to hunger/disease... the quality of
life by this point is atrocious. Plus they colonize other
places... Europe is on a path towards a Muslim majority.)
Could we sustain the consumption level of the first world
for all the current population? I doubt it. I think
increasing pop to the point where it's leveled by hunger
and disease is clearly not optimal.
\_ I share many of the doubts you have, but I disagree
with your implication that they are foregone
conclusions. Economists at beginning of the 20th
century projected that the world would be buried in
horse manure if the population trend and use of horses
for transportation continued. What they didn't predict
was the rise of automobiles. What point are you trying
to make about the growth of the Muslim population in
Europe? Are you suggesting that Muslim culture is
somehow backwards or incompatible with traditional
Western culture? Sure, the news is full of examples of
this, but you're also conveniently ignoring the
millions of Muslims peacefully co-existing in Europe
today that serve as the counter-example.
Unfortunately, $ETHNIC_MINORITY peacefully co-existing
usually isn't newsworthy. Many people are happy to
live in crowded cities, New York, San Francisco, and
Tokyo all serve as examples of this. -dans
\_ That point was simply that third-world immigrants
can and do come in to places where growth might
otherwise have stopped, and apparently retain high
growth rates. Please don't insinuate all this stuff
where it's not warranted.
\_ Moving people from place A to place B does not
create a net growth in population. -dans
\_ Not directly but it does allow a growing
population more room to continue high growth
rates. There's a minimum amount of food, water
etc etc that each person needs to survive. By
spreading out, there will be more people after
a generation or two than there would have been
otherwise.
\_ That's a rather simplistic model. As I
understand it, developed countries are
expected to have zero or negative population
growth rates even after you account for
immigration and the possibility that
immigrants will exceed the local birth
rate. You seem to make many of the same
wrong assumptions that proponents of planned
(ne utopian) communities, population
controls, and eugenics made in the early
20th century. -dans
\_ you seem to misunderstand what i'm saying
and actually make one of my points in
your response. the region the people
are moving to overall may end up with
zero population growth as you say but
that is only because the new comers
are in fact continuing to breed at
higher rates, as i said.
\_ Net zero or net negative. If the
same immigrants did not move to
developed countries, do you think
they would have fewer, the same, or
more children in their country of
origin? If you think they would have
more children in their country of
origin, how many do you think would
survive to adulthood? -dans
\_ I think in many cases they have
more than they would at home. Their
kids are cared for and educated by
welfare networks and the parents
are also taken care of with
generous unemployment support and
maternity sabbaticals. I think
one reason growth rates are low
in EU and Japan is the high freedom
of women. Culturally, third world
women don't have this freedom and
this is also embodied into orthodox
Muslim religion. But like I said
originally, this whole argument is
a tangent. -op
\_ Tangent to what? What is your
point? You can't have a
discussion about the `optimal'
population without considering
that maybe this will be
acheived naturally without
human meddling. Growth rates
\_ What? Why not? It's really
_not_that_complicated_.
I didn't talk about making it
so, just what it might be.
in the US are low too. The
above ideas about welfare
networks and `generous
unemployment support' are not
particularly informed. Also,
\_ Ok, why not?
did you know that the infant
mortality rate for families
below the poverty line in the
US is incredibly high? The
under 18 mortality rate for
people below the poverty line,
which includes infant mortality,
is also very high. You asked
\_ ok... so is that good?
maybe there wouldn't be
that kind of poverty if
there were a few billion
less humans.
about the `optimal' population
of the earth. That is,
frankly, a very scary idea
couched in unassuming, sterile
scientific terms. There are
only two ways to reach the
optimal population:
One is to let nature take its
course and hope things balance
out. This is scary because, it
might not work out and we might
make ourselves extinct. Then
again, a combination of human
ingenuity, foresight, and
nature's funny habit of
balancing things out might save
us.
\_ My question wasn't so much
directed at fears for survival
but on the academic question
of whether we'd all be better
off with fewer people.
The other is to assert an
optimal population number, and
try to engineer society to meet
it. This is really scary
because the only way to do this
is for someone(s) to
subjectively decide who
deserves to live, and who
should be killed (or not
allowed to live in the first
place). If you cannot see why
this is a sick idea, you have a
serious problem. -dans
\_ Again, this is all a bunch of
irrelevant posturing. You
freak out at the implications
of the question, but those
implications are your own
unwarranted fantasies.
\_ What wrong assumptions? Who expects this
growth rate and for how long into the
future? The point is, the Europeans
themselves that have low growth aren't
even a major factor. It's the rest of
the world that's growing, and declining
Euros means a demographic shift.
Growth is exponential.
\_ I mean this in the most genial way possible, but I think there's
a problem with the phrasing of the question. The issue is not
population control; it's lack of frontier. We need to terraform
some other planet, and quickly.
\_ yeah, because Europe has so many fewer people now than it did
before they colonized the Americas. -tom
\_ It's a simple question given the current technology and situation
which won't include a terraformed alien planet in the foreseeable
future (at least not supporting a significant pop). So, what's
the problem? Your answer is not to answer and just say we need
frontier. But we don't have it so that's a non-answer.
\_ What I'm trying to say is that thinking in terms of
conservation is smart, but devoting all of our energy to that
and none to solving the problem of limits is not.
\_ There *is* no realistic frontier. Period. Any possible
frontier offplant is tens of generations away from being
viable, and will never absorb significant "excess"
population. Unlimited energy could allow undersea
living in artificial habitats, and underground living,
but is that any way for humans to live?
\_ Yes. Make it possible, and see who goes for it. |
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