First of all, thank you for this post. This, at least, it was useful to sit and think a bit about the matter. As I wear the clothes of the Devil's Advocate, I'd like to do a concurrent post to state why the arguments you put in front were not acceptable (when not actually impossible):
More geniuses
We can state without any doubt that the Earth population incredibly increased in the last decades. All I can experience, especially in the last decades, is the poor quality of the humans (at least, judging from their posts in the social networks). This means: - more recurring grammatical/orthographic errors (people who don't know even their home country's language); - people speaking about topics where they've got not minimal experience (hence, spreading out ignorance rather than knowledge); - people speaking not to add something to the debate but just on a "clickbait" basis.
And I mentioned only the too evident issues. There are many other issues, some related to the above. To cut a long story short: if you can't provide people a proper education anywhere (use of the technologies included), you are not increasing the chance of getting geniuses but the chance to widen the ignorance pool where the humanity is going to feed on.
More progress
Total investment. I wish it was so. This is (at least) a naive conception of humanity. I'm going to give you good news and bad news: good news are that the money for such investments already exist; the bad news are that the owners of their money don't want to spend a single penny for them. So, if you want to get more investment, you have to create politically and economically the reasons for they would find profitable (or more profitable) to do so;
Specialization. Here we go to a previous issue: if you can't provide people a proper education, you are not creating many more specialized workers but only more people who always have a worse knowledge of the basics of their job (and of the other jobs too, which means always more people wanting to have their say to "actually teach papa to screw");
Larger markets I'm going to give you the same bad news and good news I gave you before. These markets would actually exist already now, but we're using them in the wrong manner. Gandhi used to say: "Earth has enough resources to satisfy anybody's need but not to satisfy anybody's GREED. If only we could understand (and make it understandable to the right people) the difference between need and greed your hopes would be somehow possible;
More ambitious projects Stop. If you studied Ancient History properly you must know that the way Ancient Egypt took large masses of people to work to these more ambitious projects was force them to do that in SLAVERY. We should have put behind us that word from the Enlightenment Age (which - it is useful to remember - also made a significant contribution to the creation of the United States of America). Are you REALLY sure that you want to turn back the clock of Time to THAT? (not to mention that, in spite of that, still today in the 21st Century we have large portions of Earth where we keep on accepting, socially or politically, slavery).
"In fact, these factors may represent not only opportunities but requirements for progress. There is evidence that simply to maintain a constant rate of exponential economic growth requires exponentially growing investment in R&D. This investment is partly financial capital, but also partly human capital—that is, we need an exponentially growing base of researchers." - You keep on considering the issue in terms of QUANTITY, forgetting totally the QUALITY, which is what, in your perspective, really makes the difference.
"But in the long run, an exponentially growing base of researchers is impossible without an exponentially growing population. In fact, in some models of economic growth, the long-run growth rate in per-capita GDP is directly proportional to the growth rate of the population." - What kind of models of economic growth are we talking about? With numbers at hand, in the current models of economic growth that are applied globally from those self-named "civilized countries", the only growing thing is poverty. In favor of the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. Is this your conception of "growth" and "civilization"? All the above is also weakening Earth security. Because the poorer are people, the lesser are valuable their lives. And the lesser are valuable their lives, the easier would be they are going to devote them to criminal projects in exchange of some quid, whatever they may be. Just because they've got actually nothing to lose (neither their own life itself).
To cut a long story short, in the current models of economic growth the only thing growing is - with poverty - the manpower of criminal organizations (terroristic ones included, that you state you wanna fight in words but in the end you are feeding in practice).
More options
Better matching for aesthetics, style, and taste.
Better matching to careers.
It's the same old story: humanity will have more of these if they will be trained to. Otherwise, the only things growing - together with poverty and the manpower of criminal organizations - are Fascisms. There is an increasing list of countries where, foreign people are not only felt as an advantage, but rather a danger ("they come here to feed criminal activities", "they come here to steal our jobs", "they come here to steal our women", etc.). The reason is, from my point of view, quite simple. Let's say we have a house with three rooms: this house would be comfortable to - let's say - no more than 3-4 people (one room per person). If you wanna host some more people, you will have to increase the quality of services provided by the house, to compensate that there will be a bit lesser. Because one of the fault of your scheme is that you completely ignore that the Earth resources are limited. You want more people but you didn't tell us how to feed them, how to water them, how to educate them, in a world that's already at stake to do that with the current number. So, going on with my metaphor, we've got currently the three room house (that - it has to be clear - won't have any more room, at least in the short term) with about 6 people in it, where 1 person has his/her own room and the other 5 are fighting among them to compete for the remaining 2 rooms. Let's say that 2 of the 5 people fighting will find an agreement to get another room together in the end (hopefully, in an optimistic perspective). There are still 3 people remaining and fighting to compete for the only room left. And let’s also say that, if in a house there are three people fighting among themselves, cohabitation is not the maximum of happiness even for the other three who are trying to live in peace. And would you want to get in some more people in such a toxic environment? What exciting perspectives of life could you provide them?
Better matching to other people. Even on this side, it's the same old story. You won't solve the problem if you increase the number of chances without increasing the quality of chances. I can offer my personal single heterosexual man, if someone can find it useful. What I experienced on my own skin is that our consumerist vision of society has led us to also consider interpersonal relationships as "products". This means that we no longer want to build and spend on improving a relationship with anyone when, given the huge availability of choices, we can fuck off our partner and take another one with the same nonchalance we have in changing the brand of our washing machine soap. And when you've got another partner the game starts again. Women (I talk about them because I'm interested in women, but I guess I can tell the same thing about men) spend their lives collecting dozens of toxic relationships where they always pour on the new partners all the toxicity they have had from the previous ones, charging the righteous for the sinner. And in the end, the only thing left to do is escaping from that hell. The result is that, in the end, neither of them both will believe in a healthy relationship anymore, but they will always think the other as an automatic dispenser of money, favors and sex (if you manage to get to sex). And when they can't accept the other one has gone away and has the right to have a less toxic relationship, the story often ends with a murder or a suicide, when not with them both. I think this is not the right way to achieve an increasing Earth population. I think the time has come to provide our children with a "sentimental education" before a sexual one. Something that will teach them to respect other people and to treat people as people and things as things, and not people as things and things as people. But it's very hard to teach to someone something you haven't learnt for yourself yet. So, before teaching to them, we should start to learn this for us in advance! To cut a long story short again, we have to invest more in the quality of what we've got instead of more quantity!
More niche communities.
More niche markets. You will have to build up in advance a world with a social, cultural and economic system that would encourage this. Until then, your project is simply not possible, when not naive or incoherent. Because in the current one, you are doing exactly the opposite.
Network effects and Metcalfe’s law. Value in a network is generated not by nodes but by connections, and the more nodes there are total, the more connections are possible per node. Metcalfe’s law quantifies this: the number of possible connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes.
Metcalfe's law talks about the number of nodes. You can get all the nodes you want, but if the quality is poor, they're going to last the twinkling of an eye. And, in the end, the number won't be exactly what you expected!
A dynamic world
I assume that when Ehrlich and Goodall advocate for much smaller populations, they aren’t literally calling for genocide or hoping for a global catastrophe (although Ehrlich is happy with coercive fertility control programs, and other anti-humanists have expressed hope for “the right virus to come along”). - Nice one to talk about these good ideas. So, if maybe they still have not taken them into consideration (I can't believe that, but you'll see...), now they'll surely do!
A world with a large and growing population is a dynamic world that can create and sustain progress. - I remain with my opinion that, before thinking of a larger population on Earth, we should work on improving the quality of life of those who are still living here, in advance. And there are still loads of things to do just to make it become acceptable. I'd love to change my mind if you've got more consistent argumentations than those you already provided in that sense.
Thanks anyway for raising the topic, which is everything but not relevant. Best regards, A.F.
First of all, thank you for this post.
This, at least, it was useful to sit and think a bit about the matter.
As I wear the clothes of the Devil's Advocate, I'd like to do a concurrent post to state why the arguments you put in front were not acceptable (when not actually impossible):
More geniuses
We can state without any doubt that the Earth population incredibly increased in the last decades. All I can experience, especially in the last decades, is the poor quality of the humans (at least, judging from their posts in the social networks). This means:
- more recurring grammatical/orthographic errors (people who don't know even their home country's language);
- people speaking about topics where they've got not minimal experience (hence, spreading out ignorance rather than knowledge);
- people speaking not to add something to the debate but just on a "clickbait" basis.
And I mentioned only the too evident issues. There are many other issues, some related to the above.
To cut a long story short: if you can't provide people a proper education anywhere (use of the technologies included), you are not increasing the chance of getting geniuses but the chance to widen the ignorance pool where the humanity is going to feed on.
More progress
Stop.
If you studied Ancient History properly you must know that the way Ancient Egypt took large masses of people to work to these more ambitious projects was force them to do that in SLAVERY. We should have put behind us that word from the Enlightenment Age (which - it is useful to remember - also made a significant contribution to the creation of the United States of America).
Are you REALLY sure that you want to turn back the clock of Time to THAT? (not to mention that, in spite of that, still today in the 21st Century we have large portions of Earth where we keep on accepting, socially or politically, slavery).
"In fact, these factors may represent not only opportunities but requirements for progress. There is evidence that simply to maintain a constant rate of exponential economic growth requires exponentially growing investment in R&D. This investment is partly financial capital, but also partly human capital—that is, we need an exponentially growing base of researchers."
-
You keep on considering the issue in terms of QUANTITY, forgetting totally the QUALITY, which is what, in your perspective, really makes the difference.
"But in the long run, an exponentially growing base of researchers is impossible without an exponentially growing population. In fact, in some models of economic growth, the long-run growth rate in per-capita GDP is directly proportional to the growth rate of the population."
-
What kind of models of economic growth are we talking about?
With numbers at hand, in the current models of economic growth that are applied globally from those self-named "civilized countries", the only growing thing is poverty. In favor of the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. Is this your conception of "growth" and "civilization"?
All the above is also weakening Earth security.
Because the poorer are people, the lesser are valuable their lives.
And the lesser are valuable their lives, the easier would be they are going to devote them to criminal projects in exchange of some quid, whatever they may be.
Just because they've got actually nothing to lose (neither their own life itself).
To cut a long story short, in the current models of economic growth the only thing growing is - with poverty - the manpower of criminal organizations (terroristic ones included, that you state you wanna fight in words but in the end you are feeding in practice).
More options
It's the same old story: humanity will have more of these if they will be trained to.
Otherwise, the only things growing - together with poverty and the manpower of criminal organizations - are Fascisms.
There is an increasing list of countries where, foreign people are not only felt as an advantage, but rather a danger ("they come here to feed criminal activities", "they come here to steal our jobs", "they come here to steal our women", etc.).
The reason is, from my point of view, quite simple. Let's say we have a house with three rooms: this house would be comfortable to - let's say - no more than 3-4 people (one room per person). If you wanna host some more people, you will have to increase the quality of services provided by the house, to compensate that there will be a bit lesser.
Because one of the fault of your scheme is that you completely ignore that the Earth resources are limited. You want more people but you didn't tell us how to feed them, how to water them, how to educate them, in a world that's already at stake to do that with the current number.
So, going on with my metaphor, we've got currently the three room house (that - it has to be clear - won't have any more room, at least in the short term) with about 6 people in it, where 1 person has his/her own room and the other 5 are fighting among them to compete for the remaining 2 rooms. Let's say that 2 of the 5 people fighting will find an agreement to get another room together in the end (hopefully, in an optimistic perspective). There are still 3 people remaining and fighting to compete for the only room left. And let’s also say that, if in a house there are three people fighting among themselves, cohabitation is not the maximum of happiness even for the other three who are trying to live in peace.
And would you want to get in some more people in such a toxic environment?
What exciting perspectives of life could you provide them?
You won't solve the problem if you increase the number of chances without increasing the quality of chances.
I can offer my personal single heterosexual man, if someone can find it useful.
What I experienced on my own skin is that our consumerist vision of society has led us to also consider interpersonal relationships as "products". This means that we no longer want to build and spend on improving a relationship with anyone when, given the huge availability of choices, we can fuck off our partner and take another one with the same nonchalance we have in changing the brand of our washing machine soap.
And when you've got another partner the game starts again.
Women (I talk about them because I'm interested in women, but I guess I can tell the same thing about men) spend their lives collecting dozens of toxic relationships where they always pour on the new partners all the toxicity they have had from the previous ones, charging the righteous for the sinner. And in the end, the only thing left to do is escaping from that hell.
The result is that, in the end, neither of them both will believe in a healthy relationship anymore, but they will always think the other as an automatic dispenser of money, favors and sex (if you manage to get to sex). And when they can't accept the other one has gone away and has the right to have a less toxic relationship, the story often ends with a murder or a suicide, when not with them both.
I think this is not the right way to achieve an increasing Earth population.
I think the time has come to provide our children with a "sentimental education" before a sexual one. Something that will teach them to respect other people and to treat people as people and things as things, and not people as things and things as people. But it's very hard to teach to someone something you haven't learnt for yourself yet. So, before teaching to them, we should start to learn this for us in advance!
To cut a long story short again, we have to invest more in the quality of what we've got instead of more quantity!
You will have to build up in advance a world with a social, cultural and economic system that would encourage this. Until then, your project is simply not possible, when not naive or incoherent.
Because in the current one, you are doing exactly the opposite.
Deeper patterns
Metcalfe's law talks about the number of nodes. You can get all the nodes you want, but if the quality is poor, they're going to last the twinkling of an eye.
And, in the end, the number won't be exactly what you expected!
A dynamic world
I assume that when Ehrlich and Goodall advocate for much smaller populations, they aren’t literally calling for genocide or hoping for a global catastrophe (although Ehrlich is happy with coercive fertility control programs, and other anti-humanists have expressed hope for “the right virus to come along”).
-
Nice one to talk about these good ideas.
So, if maybe they still have not taken them into consideration (I can't believe that, but you'll see...), now they'll surely do!
A world with a large and growing population is a dynamic world that can create and sustain progress.
-
I remain with my opinion that, before thinking of a larger population on Earth, we should work on improving the quality of life of those who are still living here, in advance.
And there are still loads of things to do just to make it become acceptable.
I'd love to change my mind if you've got more consistent argumentations than those you already provided in that sense.
Thanks anyway for raising the topic, which is everything but not relevant.
Best regards,
A.F.