[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.

[pixl97]

For every problem technology solves, 2 harder to solve problems are created.

[HPsquared]

The essence of technology is to reduce prices.

[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.