[odonnellryan]

This is more important. Also, transporting people when they'd die/have horrible conditions otherwise.

I think it is a silly argument to say it helped people by helping them exist in the first place. It is a weird argument for a larger population, which probably isn't a great thing.

[gumby]

> larger population [...] probably isn't a great thing.

Julian Simon would have strongly disagreed and he put his money where his mouth was in his famous bets with Erlich: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Simon

[odonnellryan]

Yes, but he actually got lucky. Given the average of any 10-year period in the last 100 years I believe Simon would have been wrong.

[jessaustin]

It might not have been Simon's good luck, because Erlich's luck when it comes to prediction has been consistently bad.

[gumby]

Can you show some data online to back that up? I'm genuinely curious.