Demographic collapse?

[Starscapion]

Ngl, It feels like there is a demographic collapse, especially in the first world. Imo it sort of dissapoints me as people overestimate how much of the world is actually used by humans. Ngl Imo I think we could comfortably hold tens of billions of people on a small part of earth comfortably. This isnt even talking about how there is such a large amount of space. Like even people I know IRL think that earth is "overpopulated" and the 1 child policy should be worldwide. idk, I think I might be a bit biased though because I do personally think that we need more human beings for more diverse ideas. What are yall thoughts on it?

[Drashner1]

I would suggest that the issue of overpopulation is less about the absolute number of people vs land area and more about the scale of the impact that those people (or some number of those people) are having on the planet as a whole, whether in concrete terms of our own well-being (there is only so much arable land, so much drinkable water, and negative impacts on the planetary biosphere (aka species or environment destruction) can often (almost always) turn out to have negative impacts on us.

While I have seen various writings over the years that have proposed/described ways that humanity could live such that the planet could hold anything up to a trillion people (and no - not in any way that even remotely resembles Trantor or Coruscant), there are vast unanswered questions about how our civ could go about shifting to that kind of lifestyle, whether or not we even currently have the necessary technology, what side effects such a lifestyle might have that make it undesirable or even non-viable, etc. Plus the very real question of whether or not we want to live that way.

Having a lot more people as a source of more ideas only works if those people are living in a way that allows them to spend time coming up with ideas rather than just surviving and/or having the wherewithal to turn those ideas into something that can have a (presumably positive) impact on their lives and civilization as a whole.

As far as the 'ideal' number of human beings - I'm more of a mind that one person per square km of planetary surface - so about 510 million people - seems like a reasonable number that balances maintaining a high tech/industrial civ and maintaining large chunks of the planet in a pre-industrial state to just go on about their business.

My 2c worth,

Todd

[ProxCenBound]

Agreed that a one-child-policy is bad, because it's authoritarian and it also results in a difficult population structure where there are eventually far more older people than younger people. This puts a burden on healthcare and retirement systems, as these need enough working young people to support them. That said, I doubt the Earth could support many more people than it already does at a decent standard of living; in fact some argue that even the population we have, to be sustainable, will require reductions in consumption for large sections of the world. I don't think this is true, and that clean technology has a great deal of still-unrealized potential, but it is ultimately finite. Population requires not just space to live, but also farms and mines to provide all the many products for which there is demand.

[stevebowers]

That said, I doubt the Earth could support many more people than it already does at a decent standard of living;

Well, yes it could, many more; but it could not support a viable biosphere at the same time. If we were to collect all the energy incident onto the Earth, with sufficiently advanced biotechnology we could convert that into artificial food sufficient to support a trillion people without hunger. But there would be no room for a natural biosphere on such a world.

I'm not very fond of the historical elements in OA associated with the Sundering; especially the Technocalypse, the Last War and the Great Expulsion. Too many deaths. However the Great Expulsion made the Earth a much safer and more pleasant place to support a diverse biosphere, so I can (sort of) understand why GAIA thought this was necessary. In several locations around the Terragen Sphere certain worlds have adopted the strategy of maximising population rather than encouraging natural biomes; this usually does not go well.

[stevebowers]

The demographic collapse will cause a shortfall in the number of 'carers' available to look after the rest of the population in old age. Already in some countries there are not enough carers to look after old people, the sick and infirm, and even childcare is challenging in a declining population. One solution may be robotic carers - Japan is leading the way in this direction, it seems.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9wdzyyglq5o
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01...re-robots/

I think that improved technology over the next few centuries might help to free up more real humans for carers roles - this may even be the most significant and useful form of employment is a century or two, assuming that many other forms of industry will probably become increasingly automated.

It may be possible that an increase in leisure time and general wealth will help to reverse the demographic collapse, and people will find time to have more babies, but this optimistic view of the future does not take into account the likelihood of environmental collapse (which will be an even greater challenge than demographics).

[DSPE]

Agreed that a one-child-policy is bad, because it's authoritarian and it also results in a difficult population structure where there are eventually far more older people than younger people. This puts a burden on healthcare and retirement systems, as these need enough working young people to support them.

Agreed too! Such a policy assumes that everyone (or at least most) can have children and thus the population can remain constant, but I doubt that would be the case; thus the population would steadily decrease... also another unfortunate consequence would that nobody would have siblings.