[ehmish]

I think the thing that this article misses is that per capita growth (the thing that's important for people's experienced life satisfaction) can essentially grow a lot further with fewer atoms under cultivation if you increase density. Humanity probably doesnt have much more area under cultivation than 300 years ago, but it has several orders of magnitude more people. The way i see the future going is less people, but each one is a billionaire. Kind of like how when stars run out of fuel they don't just wither away, but turn into very hot, dense and fast spinning white dwarfs.

[AndrewGaspar]

World population in 1700 was 600 million, which is a single order of magnitude.

[ehmish]

Yeah probably should have double-checked that, thanks.

You prompted me to double-check my other claim (that land under cultivation didn't increase) and that was wrong too!

According to this it's gone up by about 5x https://ourworldindata.org/world-lost-one-third-forests

[Kydlaw]

Thank you for checking, I was dubious too about that claim.

[fallingfrog]

This was accomplished with profligate use of fossil fuel based fertilizer, it’s a trick you can only do once. And nobody produces enough value on their own to become a billionaire, you have to be in a position in an organization where you can skim off the labor of a lot of people.

[ehmish]

I'm thinking if population growth continues to shrink and go negative and automation continues to increase, production will stay constant or even increase, even while population decreases. Which would mean that each individual would get more riches with less work.