[ben_w]

Well duh, the only other ways are “be more energy efficient” (hard because they’re already good at that) or “get everyone to do less” (I’d approve of that, but most people don’t seem to).

Likewise, the cost of less people living there (or in any defined region) is less taxpayers, less people making stuff, and less people supplying stuff.

[corerius]

I can't say that an economic model built on continuous population growth makes any sense. The piper will get paid at some point. Even the current notion of driving down the average age via mass immigration will only last so long.

In any case, what really matters is the per capita wealth, not total.

[ben_w]

All growth has to stop at some point, not just population. But if we want population to grow as much as possible, we can add a few more digits before we hit the planetary limits of anything other than stupidity and political short-term-ism.

(On the other hand, stupidity and political short-term-ism are exactly why we now have problems with loss of biodiversity, antibiotic resistance, a disrupted nitrogen cycle, phosphorus waste, a quarter of the CO2 in our air being artificial, boom-and-bust economic cycles, etc.)