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> We are slowing down population growth because of education, gender equality, the rural-to-urban transition, and birth control. Apart (afaik) from rural-to-urban transition, all of those are heavily promoted by people who are concerned about population growth.
While the author is correct in terms of population growth, he has missed one critical point. We are heading into a population bomb not because of continued explosive population growth, but rather because of dwindling energy reserves. Industrialization and fossil fuels are what have allowed the population to exponentially grow this far. But now that energy is more expensive to extract, food is becoming more and more e…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Technology races ahead faster and faster while population flattens out yet lots of people insist on doom against reason. It is a psychological problem.
Technology requires support from resources. You can't respond to claims that our resources are limited merely by arguing that we will develop more technologies that use resources.
While the author is correct in terms of population growth, he has missed one critical point. We are heading into a population bomb not because of continued explosive population growth, but rather because of dwindling energy reserves. Industrialization and fossil fuels are what have allowed the population to exponentially grow this far. But now that energy is more expensive to extract, food is becoming more and more e…
Malthus said the same thing - that we wouldn't be able to produce enough food because of whatever reason. And yet we humans found some way to continue living and producing food just fine. We increased our food yield and continue to do so. We found creative solutions to our problems with our available resources and there isn't any reason to think that we'll sudden lose the capacity to do this because of peak oil or la…
I'd far rather live in a world with 10b Elon Musks, where each was contributing a huge surplus, vs. 3b sub-today's-median-ability, though, so it's not absolute numbers which matter.
> We are slowing down population growth because of education, gender equality, the rural-to-urban transition, and birth control. Apart (afaik) from rural-to-urban transition, all of those are heavily promoted by people who are concerned about population growth.
Don't forget abortion and euthanasia. I'm breathing better already.
Euthanasia really needs to step up its game, though.
Even if you believe in the "growth rate leveling off as women are educated" thing, it still means in 30 years the world's population is going to be more concentrated in countries and cultures which today lag the most in virtually everything I like. Even within the US, few of the people I respect in tech have children (or want children), and then they do, it's 0-2. I'd far rather live in a world with 10b Elon Musks, w…
If people you respect in tech don't have children, it'll be someone else's children that get to do the cool stuff in the next generation. It's not as if the demand for new technology is going to decrease as a few hundred million Chinese (hopefully) hit the middle class in a couple of decades.
So we can't predict the future, but the other guys' 50-year predictions "were wrong" [sic] and my 50-year predictions are right. Did I get that right?
His argument can be summarized as "Everything will probably work itself out. Trust me, brah. I'm a futurist."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Malthus said the same thing - that we wouldn't be able to produce enough food because of whatever reason. And yet we humans found some way to continue living and producing food just fine. We increased our food yield and continue to do so. We found creative solutions to our problems with our available resources and there isn't any reason to think that we'll sudden lose the capacity to do this because of peak oil or la…
Malthus said that our population would eventually outgrow our capacity to produce food. What I'm saying is that we've already outgrown our future ability to produce food, and are now in a race against time to stabilize our energy supply before the population bomb goes off. And unless we do come up with a novel source of cheap energy, it WILL go off.
The only answer shy of taking state power and forcing powering down (deeply improbable) is building resilient local communities and food systems.
Even if you believe in the "growth rate leveling off as women are educated" thing, it still means in 30 years the world's population is going to be more concentrated in countries and cultures which today lag the most in virtually everything I like. Even within the US, few of the people I respect in tech have children (or want children), and then they do, it's 0-2. I'd far rather live in a world with 10b Elon Musks, w…
What difference does that really make? Plenty of people today doing what you like had parents who didn't. If people you respect in tech don't have children, it'll be someone else's children that get to do the cool stuff in the next generation. It's not as if the demand for new technology is going to decrease as a few hundred million Chinese (hopefully) hit the middle class in a couple of decades.
I believe China might accomplish that, but I don't have much confidence in a lot of other countries, including those with very high populations or current growth rates (and high inequality, largely supported by natural resources). And I think much of the US is regressing -- the son of a random unemployed Detroit person is less likely to become a first-class member of society today than the son of a factory worker was 30-50 years ago.