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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (247158)	4/12/2002 1:22:29 AM
From: MSI	Respond to of 769670

It's mind-boggling, and makes one look for all the reasons it can't happen, such as increasing prosperity and density causes reduction in birthrate, expectations of lower immigration, etc. That might be wishful thinking, considering what prosperous California has gone through in the past 20 years, and the rest of the country looks likely to follow. The "stabilize below 1 billion" is relative, since after a century or so anything can happen, if people become comfortable with the density. Now since you've challenged the idea I suppose I'll have to go find that reference .... <gg> As a thought-experiment, with some major social & tech improvements, density could keep increasing over the next 400 years to stabilize at 60 billion or so, using ingenuity with oceans and other areas. By then tech should allow off-world real estate with Pournelle rings or L5 settlements. I'd settle for just social improvements to reduce crime & ignorance, and a steady increase planetary prosperity, regardless of population. But the off-world settlements would be neat. They would also insulate against major disasters wiping out our species.