[mytailorisrich]

We can have sustainability and prosperity.

It's a triangle: prosperity, sustainability, population. Choose 2 (and obviously if you don't choose sustainability the sh*t is going to hit the fan at some point anyway).

The key issue is the global population.

(Edit: We're discussing life on this planet. Colonising space obviously means that human population may continue to grow, but not on Earth and not using Earth' resources)

[deltron3030]

It's a diffult situation and not easy to find the true culprit, because the society we live in is a cascade of hacks of nature that started aprox. 10k years ago with the dawn of civilization and agriculture.

Nomadic tribes intrinsically self regulate, what can't be carried can't be possesed beyond group boundaries and falls back to the environment automatically.

[aww_dang]

Malthus was proven wrong by productivity gains. England did not starve due to a rising population, but went on to become an industrialized nation. Increased population allows for greater specialization.

This only holds true as long as free markets are allowed to operate somewhat unimpeded. Typically the Malthusian position is one that advocates excessive government intervention. When taken to an extreme this can make the Malthusian catastrophe self-fulfilling as the market can longer allocate resources efficiently.

[BlueTemplar]

How exactly was he proven wrong ? The rising productivity gains are built-in in his model.

Where do you get the idea that he "advocated excessive government intervention" ? He was instead criticized for his anti-welfare stance ! Or do you think that "educating women" is "excessive government intervention" ?!?

[aww_dang]

There was not mass starvation as I clearly stated.

The Malthusian position is one of finite resources and productivity. Peak oil, population control and assorted doomsaying. It would not be unreasonable to characterize the one child policy as excessive.

Your comment attempts to misconstrue cherry picked historical facts against the broader definition of Malthusianism.

It becomes offensive when you attempt to inject identity politics into what had been previously a mostly polite discussion. I'm afraid there is nothing for us to discuss.

[BlueTemplar]

A "broader definition" that you haven't even bothered to give ? Equating Malthus and "malthusians"? Straw-manning much ? What about the Irish Great Famine (shortly after Malthus' death). And I see that it's often blamed on laissez-faire politics ?

Where did you get "identity politics" from ?

Do you realize that peak oil denial is a deeply anti-science position ? (Unless you're thinking of abiotic oil?)

[ericmay]

> Increased population allows for greater specialization

Can you elaborate on this point w.r.t the OP you’re discussing?

[mytailorisrich]

IMO, he puts forward a purely economic approach about how to produce enough to ensure a growing population remains materially prosperous.

This blissfully ignores the key issue under discussion: Our impact on the planet in doing so.

[paganel]

> This blissfully ignores the key issue under discussion: Our impact on the planet in doing so.

It still baffles me that we choose to ignore externalities in part because we cannot attach any “rational” prices to them, it’s like they don’t even exist to us as long as we cannot put them in an exact Excel sheet with a well-defined value.

[aww_dang]

In terms of political economy we could easily tabulate the money paid to lobbyists. For example, it is much cheaper for a coal fired power plant to pay politicians to implement their desired environmental regulations.

Instead of being liable for damages caused by their pollution, these energy producers can simply claim that they are within the regulations set forth by the EPA. The price discovery mechanism has been hampered by the victim's inability to collect damages.

[aww_dang]

Yes, but it would help if you could be a bit more specific. I fear this reply may be too general.

The post above suggests that we cannot have a sustainable, prosperous growing population. A rising population allows for greater specialization in that the general population can rely on specialists (auto mechanics, computer programmers, bakers, farmers) to handle their respective field of expertise. You do not need to farm wheat to eat bread in a modern society. Bread is lined up waiting for you in the nearest market. You can go online and have your groceries delivered by a truck.

[nickik]

His point is that you need less human labor to produce the same amount of stuff. Thus with a growing population you have ever increasing productivity, helping you offset potential negative effects of population.

That is just one of the effect that work together to over and over again prove the 'over-population' crowd wrong.

[ericmay]

> Thus with a growing population you have ever increasing productivity, helping you offset potential negative effects of population.

I’m not sure I follow. How will we prevent over-fishing for example? Traffic? Deforestation? I think you can blunt the effects of overpopulation for humans (we probably won’t starve) but at what cost?

How will specialization affect human health and happiness? Are people who specialize in a very specific thing more happpy (or less) than people who do general tasks?

I would argue even right now we have plenty of people without meaningful work - how will increases in population improve that?

[aww_dang]

Fish farms, new more efficient methods of transport and agroforestry.

Consider all of the time saved with today's technological advancements and specialization. Years ago peasants would lay idle on near starvation diets for most of the winter. During the growing season they would work from dawn until dusk, just to enjoy a sustenance lifestyle.

So while work may not be as meaningful as we would like, our leisure time is increasing. Mass automation will likely provide even greater leisure and cheaper goods.

All of this ignores the rampant inflation of the money supply, which is silently taxing our leisure, labor and consumption. There are many who would like to increase this and would do so by indulging the fears you listed at the top of your comment.

[ericmay]

Respectfully, I disagree with the spirit of all of this excluding how peasants lived. I think saying "tech will solve it and we'll have great lives where everything is cheap" is equivalent to saying Jesus will come save us all.

[nickik]

Specialization is not an end to end solution. It is one specific effect where increase population gets you higher per-item efficiency. There are many other such effects we could be talking about.

> I’m not sure I follow. How will we prevent over-fishing for example?

Fishing is increasingly done in fishing farms. The scale of such farms in the open sea is only worth it for very large markets.

However for most fishing, the solution is actually property rights for a sustainable amount of fish and that is already done in many places.

> Deforestation?

Forest were actually smaller in the middle ages. Modern markets/technology leads to the ability to regrow forest. All the Western world is now reforesting, because proper forestry is actually a sustainable business, no need to deforest.

> I think you can blunt the effects of overpopulation for humans (we probably won’t starve) but at what cost?

The cost are really not that high. High traffic in the densest places is really not that high a cost. Our rivers are cleaner, our food higher quality, our food is cheaper, wild life is actually making a comeback in the Western world, the amount of commercial land use is decreasing, air quality is increasing and the list goes on.

> I would argue even right now we have plenty of people without meaningful work - how will increases in population improve that?

If people have work has far more to do with the political conditions of specific countries then with overpopulation as a whole. Historically places with high population growth and high overall economic growth correlate very well, more people creates lots of demands and new problems that need to be solved. There is really no evidence at all that population increase leads to increase in people out of work.

[chii]

why can humans not expand interplanetarily? Then, inter-stellarly, then finally, inter-galactically?

[paulintrognon]

Because that's still science fiction. We have enough ressources to sustain current population/economic system for a few decades, a century at most (i'm thinking gas, rare earth, phosphore, etc). It's been 50 years since we got to the moon and we're still stuck on low-orbit earth. Even getting to Mars is still very very hard. Do you think we'll be technologically ready to colonize an earth-like planet by the end of this century?

While we can't rule it out fure sure, it would be crazy to bet on that possibility.

[mft_]

I’d argue not that we’re ‘stuck’ here on Earth (just) because it’s hard, but because there’s been no major incentive to do otherwise for decades.

The original incentives for the space race were political during the Cold War - rockets, satellites, then landing on the moon. Since then, NASA has mostly stagnated without a clear vision to deliver. Likewise (until recently) the major aerospace providers were happy just doing well enough to make some dollars from their lobbying and ‘cost-plus’ contracts.

The only game-changer is SpaceX, set up to deliver the vision of a slightly eccentric multi-millionaire (now billionaire, of course). But I’d argue that SpaceX isn’t doing anything so revolutionary that it couldn’t have been done earlier by various others (including NASA itself) if they’d had the right vision and incentives. Sad, really - all of that money, time, effort, and human potential effectively wasted.

[pacala]

Because of interplanetary transportation costs, due to physically unavoidable planetary gravity wells, the existence of other inhabited planets has essentially zero effect on the prosperity of the average Earth inhabitant. There is physically no way to build the space equivalent of cheap maritime shipping.

[b0rsuk]

Even if we successfully build a space elevator and putting stuff on orbit becomes relatively free, we would still need to build a 100% sustainable spaceship. Or a completely game-changing technology like teleportation, and there's no proof such thing is practically possible.

[pixl97]

>we would still need to build a 100% sustainable spaceship

Yet for the purpose of this article, or at least discussion, people are acting like the Earth is.

[jotm]

It seems to me that's an achievable goal... if everyone throws risk aversion/mitigation out of the window.

No rules about nuclear power on ships, no worrying about contamination on other planets, laissez-faire attitude about risks that come with space launches/travel and fully automated control of rockets/spaceships, massive investment in life support systems and AI, etc.

[newsgremlin]

We can, we just need to not burn out our resources and single planetary home before then.

[goatlover]

If humans can expand inter-galactically, then it likely it would have happened already by some other species, given the size and age of our galaxy. But since we're not part of some prior alien galactic empire, it's probably not feasible. And we would also be able to see the energy output from other galactic civilizations nearby. But we see nothing. Not from Andromeda, not from anywhere in our local cluster.

[logicchains]

>If humans can expand inter-galactically, then it likely it would have happened already by some other species, given the size and age of our galaxy.

That's only true if we assume the chance of life arising is relatively high. It could actually be incredibly massively low, and we wouldn't notice, because we're observing from a position of extreme selection bias. I.e. probability(intelligentLifeInUniverse given weAreObservingIt) = 1.0.

[chii]

> And we would also be able to see the energy output from other galactic civilizations nearby

or they are utilizing an energy source so efficient that no leaks happen (that we can observe).

[nickik]

> It's a triangle

That is wrong. In fact we have a much larger population, in many ways human life is more sustainable then it ever was and its easily more prosperous then in the past.

Just like in the 60s the people over-hyping population growth are just as fundamentally wrong as the people who wanted to force cut of trade and foreign aid to India to force them to adopt population control matters.

These same terrible dangerous and fundamentally wrong ideas pop up over and over again.

In fact, with a growing population humans have been using less of earths space. More people live in much denser areas. And even with billions more people we are far below the peak amount of agro culture land. In fact all over the western world wood and wild lands are growing.

With Nuclear, Solar, Wind, Water energy the environmental impact will be far less then what we currently have (and countries with nuclear had for a long time). We could double and triple world population again and there would be no energy issue other then a temporary scale issue.

[mytailorisrich]

We have continuously expanded our use of land and resources.

That fact that forests are expanding in e.g. Europe, a continent that has already been completely devoid of wilderness should not mask what is happening in continents that are 'behind' like Africa, South America, and Asia.

This is the key issue at hand and is driven by population growth coupled with less poverty, and what is causing current climate and environmental issues.

Ignoring this is what is fundamentally dangerous and we can see the effects on the planet right now.

[atemerev]

So, which country would you want to depopulate first?

[oblio]

I vote that we start with the country that uses the most resources per capita, and that pollutes the most per capita :-P

[CaptArmchair]

Decreasing population is a function of increasing prosperity.

Prosperity includes increase in literacy and general education levels of the population. Most notably, women will have less children and shift towards actively taking jobs, opening businesses, research, civics,...

Lower birth rates and an ageing population then become a challenge to tackle.

Those who age stop actively working - adding direct economic value as taxes or as marketable goods & services - and their income is replaced by a pension provided by a public social security system and/or a pension fund they contributed to.

Now, this is where some will throw their hands in the air and yell "Doooooommmm! A dwindling active workforce can't possibly create enough wealth to sustain the pensions of those that don't!". hey then go on predicting how entire economies will collapse and how everyone will end up becoming working poor.

But that narrative hides tons of naive and downright wrong assumptions.

Like, how literally everyone should, can and will retire at 65 and spending their golden years on long holidays. Or, how it's impossible for anyone over 60 to be as productive or flexible as a 20 year old. Well, you can come up with a ton of other stereotypes.

In reality, tons of people over 60 or even 70 are able and willing to work and contribute to society. For instance, guess who makes up for a lot of the volunteering force in charities, public services and (libraries, archives, social work,...)? Young retirees. These are important fields that are publicly underfunded, and so retirees take up an important place here.

But you also find seniors taking up jobs again simply because their state pension is insufficient to make ends meet. That happens too.

The big challenge in this isn't the elderly population, it's adjusting our work culture to include older age cohorts. Because right now, workfloors and work in developed nations is entirely geared towards young people in their 20s, 30s and 40s.

The other big challenge is wealth inequality in general. As long as the system is geared towards extracting wealth to the top at the expense of the workforce - labor rights, minimum wage, healthcare,... - it's only to be expected that older people will drop out earlier rather then later.

So, that's basically what we're looking at. If you can balance an economy between sustainability and prosperity, you also solve the problem of population.

Now, guess what you need to do that? A proper, healthy social democracy that puts humans as their top priority. Not the interests of a few elites.

[ericmay]

In a perfect scenario you’d just have people have fewer babies. The issue is that countries want growth at all costs - the incentive is always more, bigger, faster.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

> fewer babies

That is happening.

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#growthrate

[ericmay]

Yes but is it happening fast enough, and at what level does the population stabilize at?

[mytailorisrich]

Current forecasts are than we'll add about 3 billion human beings before population stabilises.

If you also take into account that the majority of human beings are poor by Western standards you can see that, IMO, sustainable global prosperity is likely impossible with these numbers, not least if we want to keep at least some wilderness on this planet.

[virmundi]

Europe, Japan and the native population of the US have elected themselves. Africa probably won’t have the population boom since education is spreading, which tends to slow reproduction rates. Problem is solved in about 30 years with the death of the boomers and the non-replacement rates.

[ericmay]

What worries me is will we do enough damage in 30 years that it doesn’t matter? And will economies be able to adjust? Even if this happens, do we get to a steady state of 10bn? 9? I think our global population should be closer to 1bn if we want an ideal world.

Also boo to those who are downvoting you about the US comment. Either you can’t read or you’re intentionally not reading. The OP was referencing people who are citizens in the US who do it have as many kids as immigrants and without immigration would be below replacement rates.

[modo_mario]

>the native population of the US

They're already tiny af tho