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by lotharbot
5518 days ago
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The vast majority of natural populations that I've looked into have s-shaped population growth without any particular unpleasantness; as population nears its carrying capacity, birth rate naturally tapers off, leading to near-zero population growth. Humanity appears to be in the tapering-off stage of this already (since around 1980), and I don't see any reason to presume there will be unusually high levels of conflict or tragedy as that tapering-off process continues. The typical Mathusian "overpopulation" argument (based on a shallow misreading of Malthus) is not that we'll have an S-shaped population growth curve, but an A-shaped one -- that we'll have population grow out of control, and then come crashing back down through some massive tragedy (akin to the Kaibab Deer population [0]). The A-shaped scenario is reasonably unlikely for humans. [0] http://depts.alverno.edu/nsmt/youngcc/research/kaibab/story3... |
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