KC, 6 billion people isn't overcapacity.
People are the driving force and they create the demand. Lazy troppo types [Jay will be inclined that way for a while until he gets re-education back in Hong Kong] prefer to laze around, listening to calypso. That's not a problem.
Hong Kongese race around, jabbering flat out into cellphones, going 90 to the dozen to "get ahead". That's not a problem either.
Each does what they feel like doing to satisfy their needs to the extent that they can be bothered. There's no overcapacity.
I happen to think that every single person creates extra value and it's unusual for people to leave a net loss to the world after they die.
That's because every transaction creates surplus value to the buyer [unless the buyer gets buyer's regret because they bought a white elephant]. So every time a person sells their efforts or sells some product, they have created extra value for the buyer. There's even jargon for the surplus value the buyers get "consumer surplus".
For every 100 people who don't create some super-duper thing there's 1 who does and those 100 people support the creative people. As CB pointed out, there is now only 1% of the USA population producing the food [or some such number]. 100 years ago, most people were producing food in the USA. So, whereas in 1900, there were far fewer people mostly growing stuff, now there are 280 million, with only 3 million producing the food and the rest supporting the million people who are doing the really great stuff [such as inventing CDMA].
Worldwide, there are 6 billion people and the same effect is happening. Fewer and fewer are needed to produce the food, build the buildings and make the cars. More and more are capable of and free to invent amazing new things. There are more and more people to support those inventive people by fixing cars, building cellphone towers and the like.
Also, there's a long-lasting capital base. Roads and buildings from 100 years ago are still in service, creating wealth long after those who created them have died. People create wealth which goes into the capital base [of material goods and more importantly knowledge] which enables the next lot to build on those foundations.
People are the wealth and the world is getting richer in leaps and bounds with the capital foundation of material goods and knowledge accumulating rapidly. There are nearly 6 billion of us with increasing numbers doing really great things. 100 years ago there was about a billion of us [or maybe 2] producing grass, cows and buggy whips, machetes, guns and fighting territorial wars for empire and the old-style Aztec mathematics:
Land + Resources + Gold = Wealth
New maths is:
People + Brains + Civilization = Wealth
There is NO over-capacity in brains. We need all we can get and Google is coming on strong. It is not far behind. There is no over-capacity in people. We need all we can get. There is great under-capacity in civilization. We need a LOT more of that. Genetic engineering and continued eugenics will improve the ratio of very creative brains to cargo-cult brains. Women have been conducting a vast eugenics programme for thousands of years [millions really] and the process is very rapid now.
By tidying up Afghanistan and a few other places, civilization will increase. Just as China has shown that there was no surplus of people, just an under-capacity in civilization, India and other places can do the same. China's GDP per capita is growing in leaps and bounds. They had a huge one child policy, thinking that too many people was the main issue. It wasn't. Civilization, meaning private enterprise, capitalism, education, investment, trade, rule of law, were far more important. Soon, they'll be moaning about the shortage of young Chinese! The one-child policy will be ditched [if they haven't already done it - I bet they don't enforce it very much now].
If there are too many people and overcapacity, why don't you do the decent thing? If you ask that question of everyone, you will find that everyone considers that OTHER people are the over-capacity issue and they are okay with being here thanks very much. There are always [and always have been] unhappy suicidal people at about 1:100, but that's not an over-capacity issue.
We went to the end of Chinese New Year lanterns in the park gathering last night. It was at over-capacity, but everyone seemed to like that. The Haj is definitely over-capacity; a swirling mass of humanity going anticlockwise, but they seem to like that. The Superbowl is over-crowded too [very few can afford tickets - a big surplus of people].
People are good! The more the merrier. They just need civilization plus some genetic engineering to weed out the defective genes and clip in some really good ones.
Mqurice
PS: Oh! No! Groans DJ, same old thing....and I read all the way to here.
DJ, you should learn to skim-read. |
