[evincarofautumn]

When I said “food production is not enough to eliminate starvation” I did not mean “we don’t produce enough food to eliminate starvation”, I meant “producing more food is not enough to eliminate starvation”. So yes, I agree and already stated that the problems are economic.

Suppose this principle did not hold. Then how would the human population of Earth continue to grow? In other words, what would all the new people be made of?

[ajuc]

Population won't grow forever, not because of lack of food, but because (most) people would have better things to do than care for 6 kids, and 6 kids won't have positive effect on their wealth (it's already the case in the developed world - check out natural growth in Europe or Japan).

So more food = more people is not true.

[userulluipeste]

People may indeed limit themselves to having only two, one, or even no children at all, but that will only lead to extinction of such self-limiting groups. Besides these, there also are people that see nothing more important (but not necessarily better) than leaving behind their own kind as offspring. Unless some effect kicks in, like a social drive that instill in the masses the idea of breeding less as it's in western culture, or a government-enforced program to artificially control the demographic dynamic as in China, these kind of people will prevail in the long run. And that's a good thing, I think.

[ajuc]

> People may indeed limit themselves to having only two, one, or even no children at all, but that will only lead to extinction of such self-limiting groups.

This is not "if" this is "when".

But it will take centuries, a lot things can change in the meantime, so we don't know what will happen in the end, but assuming constant growth when the growth in devleoped countries is over already is weird.

Prognoses for world population already show the growth stopping in next few decades.