31–40 of 164 posts
So when I think “every important thing in my life is scarce”, that is just incorrect imagination? 11 billion people can live on a lake with perfect child and health care?
I prefer the Forward to the UNEP 2024 Global Resources Outlook (181 pages): Natural resources are the basis on which all economies and societies are built, making their sustainable management critical to ending poverty and reducing inequalities. They are also essential to drive the transition to net-zero. To stay below a 2°C temperature rise by 2050, we will need over three billion tonnes of energy transition mineral…
Extreme taxes on luxury physical goods? How can these goals be reached?
So when I think “every important thing in my life is scarce”, that is just incorrect imagination? 11 billion people can live on a lake with perfect child and health care?
Living on a lake is a prestige goal, not a requirement for existence. There is no meaningful scarcity at tier 1 of Maslow's hierarchy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the right circumstances, birth control happens automatically. As people get more wealthy, there seems to be less incentive to have lots of children. Perhaps due to better healthcare (less deaths in childbirth) and more securities for old age (eg. pensions). Seems Africa is at the moment the only continent that still has population growth (and quite massive). https://www.statista.com/statistics/272789/world-populat…
Disagree, wealthy countries are labor resource constrained so the cost of child care balloons compared to wages. And I predict that as the cost of labor goes up, people will want to have more kids again because it will be profitable, not unlike subsistence farmers wanting kids to work on the farm.
At some point in population growth you run out of land to grow food on. Surely, there are limits?
Ultimately you are right. We will ultimately and inevitably face resource constraints. How we respond and which resources will provide the limiting constraint is unclear.
Pure ideology.
The irony is rich with this one.
At some point in population growth you run out of land to grow food on. Surely, there are limits?
At some point in population growth you run out of land to grow food on. Surely, there are limits?
> The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate. -Paul Ehrlich The Population Bomb [1968]
Of course there's a limit. What that limit is no one knows and most predictions will be wrong. Some day someone may be right in their prediction given the right conditions.