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Re:China to begin two-child policy by Retric on Thursday October 29, 2015 @09:06PM (#10475569)
The top of the curve is unstable. A new plant virus destroys a major crop and suddenly billions starve.
Re:China to begin two-child policy by lotharbot on Thursday October 29, 2015 @11:54PM (#10476077)
Every part of the curve faces that sort of instability. The number of crops actually growing isn't particularly higher than the number needed to sustain the population, and we can't just spin up enough food for billions of people even if we do have plenty of land to do it on.

With humanity, "carrying capacity" is unlikely to be food-limited.

Re:China to begin two-child policy by Retric on Friday October 30, 2015 @09:26AM (#10477606)
The large number of overweight Americans is a huge pool of excess food and takes a lot of extra daily calories to maintain. As is the large number of livestock being produced and all that corn ethanol etc.

The top of the curve removes that as we can't pay for the inefficiency's of livestock or the extra daily calories to be overweight and feed 50+ billion people.

Re:China to begin two-child policy by lotharbot on Friday October 30, 2015 @12:25PM (#10478763)
"carrying capacity" is set by a lot more factors than just food.

Human population is expected to level off at 10-13 billion based on factors relating to social organization, not the 50+ billion that could theoretically be fed.

Re:China to begin two-child policy by Retric on Saturday October 31, 2015 @10:02AM (#10482648)
Replace food with water, land, etc and you get the same instabilitys. Social factors at the limits can easily lead to war, revolution, and or the breakdown of society.
Re:China to begin two-child policy by lotharbot on Saturday October 31, 2015 @03:19PM (#10483784)
sure, but you don't need to be at the limit to have that sort of instability. It becomes a bit more pronounced when there's less leeway, but it's not different in kind, only a little bit in magnitude.