Infrastructure is utterly dependent on population. China is hoping that they can get around it with Robotic, but it isn't looking promising. There are thousand of diffent thing that have been added since the 60s that have to be maintain, that literally require billions more of people spread across the globe than was hear in the 60s. It is that infrastructure that is has reduce the average work each person needs to do for all those goods that they need. The infrastructure is already having lot of problems and automation is solving some of it. That infrastructure is also why we are producing less pollution, and returning so much land to forest. A huge amount of the technology we have is dependent on having, or even adding more infrastructure.
The second problem is the child to adult ratio. There are major problems when it is this low. Those are showing up in every norther hemisphere country, and are going to get worse. Your growth is mainly coming out of Africa, the north, and its culture, is dying off and being replace by those immigrants.
Even if we isolate to just the USA, the population is still growing. I will edit the article to add a chart for the USA population.
There are many forms of infrastructure. Perhaps less infrastructure would be a good thing? Fewer roads and smaller cities could give back more land to wildlife and farming. More efficient fiber optic cables could carry more data than the older wiring. Fewer people means less need to maintain infrastructure. If a road now has 100 vehicles per hour and that's reduced to 50 vehicles per hour, wouldn't that require less repair and maintenance?
Perhaps if the NSA didn't spy on us so much they wouldn't need so many computers (and the power to run them)?
I'm not seeing how more infrastructure leads to less pollution. I would think the opposite.
the decline in the US is offset by two main factors, immigrating, and immigrants tending to have more kids, and we have gotten better at keep the old and crippled alive. one of the first things to go would be that infrastructure keeping all those old and crippled people alive as that one requires the most manpower to maintain. The second biggest use the manpower the infrastructure bring you such a large variety of foods that even the poor can have meat every day. As far as less pollution that has been demonstrated, But part of the reason behind that is economy of scale. Example, one large dozer put out a lot of pollution, but lest that 1/10 what the 100 mini dozers would to do that same job.
The economy of scale aspect is very intriguing and one I hadn't thought of before. Yes, there are benefits to doing things at larger scale. For example a tiny population, say the size of the USA population at time time of the revolution and creation of the USA could never sustain maintaining the rail, airway and road networks of the USA today.
So of course we always get back to what is the "best" population size. Not too small, not too big. A "Goldilocks" challenge.
I'd contend that the 1960s population level would do just fine! Modern life with no shortage of people. Any trivial gains from a population the size of our current population are completely overwhelmed by the negatives (exhausting the oceans of fish, terrible nutritional quality of "food", widespread pollution and conflict).
Still, one of my main points of the article is refuting the claim that the population is shrinking and this is an immediate, alarming concern that we need to do something about. That narrative is false. The population is still growing.
In 1960s part of why the US was doing so well was the vast majority of the world infrastructure was built to service it. It got most of oil, minerals and export. Most could not complete with the US and Europe, for the cars, machinery and appliances and had to do without. 1960 size infrastructure means on 20% of the world's population does well. It isn't sufficient for getting enough people out of poverty. It can only produce a fraction of the tractors need for example, or medical equipment. The vast majority of which ended up in Europe and the US. There isn't infrastructure for more.
Without saying so, those who are in favor of open borders are also in favor of more people. LOTS more people. Given the fact that most large cities in the United States are desperately lacking in medical specialists, and physicians in general, more people will push a worry into a crisis quickly. Added to that is the fact that most of our population now lives longer, which adds to this equation. Now to address the reality of how to feed and house more peeps. We need to stop being so dependent on other countries for our food supply. Thankfully those who are willing and able are growing a lot of things themselves. But that number is fairly small. Unless we wish for the government to dole out commodities to each of us, again a much larger population would be not good at all. Regarding the ability to house more and more and more humans, we are already facing a housing crisis. Looking at this issue from a very practical perspective, I say nix to the notion that more is better.
There are two aspects: USA population and World population.
Both have continued to increase. Thus I find no justification to the worries over a "declining population".
An "aging" population is another matter too. Like I wrote, if you base your system on a "ponzi scheme" like our Social Security program then you have a major problem as older people expect to retire and collect SS, but there are fewer and fewer "working age" people.
An older population doesn't have to be a disaster, what is a disaster is the "hospice population". We can't just keep parking old people on the verge of dying and maintain their lives "forever". When my father was dying last year, I asked the doctor how much longer he would last. Her reply was that if we keep him in the hospital they can keep him "alive" forever. Cruel as it may sound, but death is a part of "life". We need to accept letting go of our loved ones who no longer are really living but are just technically "alive".
My understanding is that is what they do currently with hospice. They basically stop providing care, dope the person up on pain killers and wait for them to pass away in a few days.
It seemed that my mom was receiving great care at the nursing home where she last resided. BUT when she had a stroke and stopped eating, they were going to allow her to starve until dead. I had to contact an attorney to give her medication to boost her appetite. She lived almost two years more. Were they "great" years? No, not really. But we were still able to make some lovely memories, and also had much needed time to get ready for the final good-bye.
How much of that growth that we see in the last chart for the U.S. is immigration influx (legal and illegal) rather than organic growth?
Yes, Earth does have limitations on its resources, which is why we should end the stupidity of strip mining those resources to make things like wind, solar, and EVs (none of these are green, and they are highly dependent upon subsidies and the petroleum products from which they claim to protect the environment). Nuclear would be a far better option if we want "cleaner" energy than that from traditional sources.
Funny thing about the correlation between population density and crime - notice the most densely populated areas tend to skew a particular direction on the political scale. But crime isn't just an issue of population - it's an issue of the human heart. Contrary to popular psychology, people aren't basically good and occasionally do bad things. No, people are inherently sinful, and sometimes manage to do good despite their natural inclination to evil.
As James Steinhaus pointed out, more people not only require more infrastructure, but they are needed to create it. More people means more manpower for greater manufacturing capacity, which also typically means greater quality of life (depending upon how you measure quality of life).
I'm sure given time, I could come up with other points/counterpoints, but I don't necessarily think population numbers (large or small) are really the issue.
We can only guess, but from published figures, 20% to 40% of the population growth may have been due to illegal immigrants in 2023.
My primary point stands that those people "freaking out" about declining population are incorrect as population has continued to grow. And it is debatable whether a larger population is a good thing or a looming disaster.
The Earth does have limited resources, it is naïve to believe that population can grow infinitely (without becoming a disaster). We may already be at that population limit.
Infrastructure is utterly dependent on population. China is hoping that they can get around it with Robotic, but it isn't looking promising. There are thousand of diffent thing that have been added since the 60s that have to be maintain, that literally require billions more of people spread across the globe than was hear in the 60s. It is that infrastructure that is has reduce the average work each person needs to do for all those goods that they need. The infrastructure is already having lot of problems and automation is solving some of it. That infrastructure is also why we are producing less pollution, and returning so much land to forest. A huge amount of the technology we have is dependent on having, or even adding more infrastructure.
The second problem is the child to adult ratio. There are major problems when it is this low. Those are showing up in every norther hemisphere country, and are going to get worse. Your growth is mainly coming out of Africa, the north, and its culture, is dying off and being replace by those immigrants.
Even if we isolate to just the USA, the population is still growing. I will edit the article to add a chart for the USA population.
There are many forms of infrastructure. Perhaps less infrastructure would be a good thing? Fewer roads and smaller cities could give back more land to wildlife and farming. More efficient fiber optic cables could carry more data than the older wiring. Fewer people means less need to maintain infrastructure. If a road now has 100 vehicles per hour and that's reduced to 50 vehicles per hour, wouldn't that require less repair and maintenance?
Perhaps if the NSA didn't spy on us so much they wouldn't need so many computers (and the power to run them)?
I'm not seeing how more infrastructure leads to less pollution. I would think the opposite.
What other infrastructure are you thinking of?
the decline in the US is offset by two main factors, immigrating, and immigrants tending to have more kids, and we have gotten better at keep the old and crippled alive. one of the first things to go would be that infrastructure keeping all those old and crippled people alive as that one requires the most manpower to maintain. The second biggest use the manpower the infrastructure bring you such a large variety of foods that even the poor can have meat every day. As far as less pollution that has been demonstrated, But part of the reason behind that is economy of scale. Example, one large dozer put out a lot of pollution, but lest that 1/10 what the 100 mini dozers would to do that same job.
The economy of scale aspect is very intriguing and one I hadn't thought of before. Yes, there are benefits to doing things at larger scale. For example a tiny population, say the size of the USA population at time time of the revolution and creation of the USA could never sustain maintaining the rail, airway and road networks of the USA today.
So of course we always get back to what is the "best" population size. Not too small, not too big. A "Goldilocks" challenge.
I'd contend that the 1960s population level would do just fine! Modern life with no shortage of people. Any trivial gains from a population the size of our current population are completely overwhelmed by the negatives (exhausting the oceans of fish, terrible nutritional quality of "food", widespread pollution and conflict).
Still, one of my main points of the article is refuting the claim that the population is shrinking and this is an immediate, alarming concern that we need to do something about. That narrative is false. The population is still growing.
In 1960s part of why the US was doing so well was the vast majority of the world infrastructure was built to service it. It got most of oil, minerals and export. Most could not complete with the US and Europe, for the cars, machinery and appliances and had to do without. 1960 size infrastructure means on 20% of the world's population does well. It isn't sufficient for getting enough people out of poverty. It can only produce a fraction of the tractors need for example, or medical equipment. The vast majority of which ended up in Europe and the US. There isn't infrastructure for more.
Without saying so, those who are in favor of open borders are also in favor of more people. LOTS more people. Given the fact that most large cities in the United States are desperately lacking in medical specialists, and physicians in general, more people will push a worry into a crisis quickly. Added to that is the fact that most of our population now lives longer, which adds to this equation. Now to address the reality of how to feed and house more peeps. We need to stop being so dependent on other countries for our food supply. Thankfully those who are willing and able are growing a lot of things themselves. But that number is fairly small. Unless we wish for the government to dole out commodities to each of us, again a much larger population would be not good at all. Regarding the ability to house more and more and more humans, we are already facing a housing crisis. Looking at this issue from a very practical perspective, I say nix to the notion that more is better.
There are two aspects: USA population and World population.
Both have continued to increase. Thus I find no justification to the worries over a "declining population".
An "aging" population is another matter too. Like I wrote, if you base your system on a "ponzi scheme" like our Social Security program then you have a major problem as older people expect to retire and collect SS, but there are fewer and fewer "working age" people.
An older population doesn't have to be a disaster, what is a disaster is the "hospice population". We can't just keep parking old people on the verge of dying and maintain their lives "forever". When my father was dying last year, I asked the doctor how much longer he would last. Her reply was that if we keep him in the hospital they can keep him "alive" forever. Cruel as it may sound, but death is a part of "life". We need to accept letting go of our loved ones who no longer are really living but are just technically "alive".
Are you suggesting assisted suicide? Please please tell me you’re not.
My understanding is that is what they do currently with hospice. They basically stop providing care, dope the person up on pain killers and wait for them to pass away in a few days.
And let them starve to death. I need to think on this some more. At what level of decline is when hospice stops providing care?
This is not a subject upon which I have any significant knowledge, just a couple personal observations.
It seemed that my mom was receiving great care at the nursing home where she last resided. BUT when she had a stroke and stopped eating, they were going to allow her to starve until dead. I had to contact an attorney to give her medication to boost her appetite. She lived almost two years more. Were they "great" years? No, not really. But we were still able to make some lovely memories, and also had much needed time to get ready for the final good-bye.
How much of that growth that we see in the last chart for the U.S. is immigration influx (legal and illegal) rather than organic growth?
Yes, Earth does have limitations on its resources, which is why we should end the stupidity of strip mining those resources to make things like wind, solar, and EVs (none of these are green, and they are highly dependent upon subsidies and the petroleum products from which they claim to protect the environment). Nuclear would be a far better option if we want "cleaner" energy than that from traditional sources.
Funny thing about the correlation between population density and crime - notice the most densely populated areas tend to skew a particular direction on the political scale. But crime isn't just an issue of population - it's an issue of the human heart. Contrary to popular psychology, people aren't basically good and occasionally do bad things. No, people are inherently sinful, and sometimes manage to do good despite their natural inclination to evil.
As James Steinhaus pointed out, more people not only require more infrastructure, but they are needed to create it. More people means more manpower for greater manufacturing capacity, which also typically means greater quality of life (depending upon how you measure quality of life).
I'm sure given time, I could come up with other points/counterpoints, but I don't necessarily think population numbers (large or small) are really the issue.
We can only guess, but from published figures, 20% to 40% of the population growth may have been due to illegal immigrants in 2023.
My primary point stands that those people "freaking out" about declining population are incorrect as population has continued to grow. And it is debatable whether a larger population is a good thing or a looming disaster.
The Earth does have limited resources, it is naïve to believe that population can grow infinitely (without becoming a disaster). We may already be at that population limit.
Fair enough.