We have problems to feed the current 7 billion people, how do you think it will be at 10-15 billion people?
Several countries are reducing their agricultural output by producing organic products, because of climate change or simply in order to rescue their country from lack of genetic variation.
At the same time, modern food production depends on availability of cheap energy, so if energy prices rise, food becomes unaffordable. This way, food becomes connected to everything else, even though food itself is a small part of society.
Another connection is, that if food prices go down, the amount of money that is available for investments, goes up. However, if all your money is spent on food, you cannot buy a car, cannot buy education, cannot buy information etc. So if you want to increase the surplus of the individual, and maximize the investments per person, you need to put a limit on the people count.
I often hear that USA was unbeatable at 150 million inhabitans, weakened at 300 million inhabitans, and as the population keeps growing, USA will become beatable. There is some truth to that. Every time the population of USA doubles, the possible growth rates declines and the available resources per capita declines.
China has a plan for reducing the size of the population. The only reason why it is still growing, is because people get older. Regimes like Iran may collapse simply because of demographics - the population will perceive it to be the government's fault that the next generation has less per capita. |
