I think we'll cope pretty well with a small drop-off, especially if that's coupled with much of the world getting better prospects at the same time.

You are correct that what matters is mostly the population living in soceities organized well enough for their inhabitants to have better prospects. But sadly becoming a country with "better prospects" is not a simple thing.

In fact, population decreasing in rich western countries, has a rather deleterious effect on the poor countries. I being from a third world country see everyday how people who could help to fix my country end up emigrating because rich countries need more people.

So it's not at all clear whether much of the world getting better prospects will compensate for population decreasing, or much of the world will get worse prospects because of population decreasing.

A lot of problems would be solved 'automatically' if the world population would be reduced.

The idea that the worlds population is a problem is in my world an antihuman stance which keeps popping up even tough it keeps being proven wrong. Wether Maltahus, Erlich or the UN.

Ok, I will stay in my pragmatically driven (being in favor of endless population growth is just another ideology, being in favor of neither is pragmatism), non population exploding enclave and become rich in the process. I'll be looking forward to seeing Africa mass produce poor people.

Your ideology requires technological progress to always be faster than human population growth, sure you can keep this up another 300 years but at some point you are going to trip.

Humans create resources we don't just find them. 300 years from now we are either harvesting the universe or we are just sitting ducks waiting for some giant cataclysmic event. At least my "ideology" gives us a chance where as yours just wait for us to join natures 99.9% extinction rate.

That's for different historical reasons than their booming populations. They are still very dynamic economic wise, but have to start from a very low bar.

But any country that was ever important had tons of people. Franch and UK and Germany were hugely important globally when they were among the top-5 most populous countries in the world (that was the case back in 19th century). Then the US took that role, and had a good run.

If you are big and successful, new ideas are the poison.The only vector for new idea implementations to make it big, is other behemoths want to eat old behemoths. Apple/Android eating Kodak.

The individual does rarely factor into that. Unless s/he knows how to move giants into funny game constellations. Which becomes ever less likely, as most giants today are owned by pension funds, who prefer stability over change.

Contrary what the propaganda tells us, nobody wants ideas, nobody wants change, not even those trying to emulate market capitalism to prevent political backlash. Which makes ideas worse then worthless. Its something the "No-Future"-coporate-cartel will come down upon you for.

The individuals DO factor into that but it require a framework the individuals best suited for solving these problems can work within which allow them to spend the time needed to create the knowledge to solve the problems which requires wealth which require growth i.e. requires society (i.e. us)

I hear this a lot, in the context of, we must keep growing the global population on the off chance that someone may be born who comes up with a way to live on an over-populated, polluted, resource-depleted planet. It's nonsense.

Resources is something we invent and use not something we deplete. We use these resources to make the world even safer, richers, to pull more people out of poverty all based on producing things of value that humans appreciate.

You are more than welcome to not use the computer you are likely to be using for writing your comments.

But you won't because it's valuable to you, more valuable than the "depletion" of the resources that was used to make it.

So now take you and multiply by 7 billion people and you will see why we are choosing to keep creating and coming up with new resources.

Rainforests are marine biomass and ozone and ice caps are things we invent and not deplete?

How do you think we were able feed the amount of people we are doing today if it wasn't for our ability to transform things like dead animal goo into energy to power our machines which then again provide wealth which gives us time to do other things.

Standards of living globally are better than at any time in the past, yet in spite of the continued failed predictions of disaster people have been making for the past couple hundred years, people still persist in making such predictions. Willfully ignoring humanity's ability to adapt and overcome, that's the real nonsense.

You have to free people from drudgery and spend tons on their education, and provide them with a stable environment in which to work, and cultural encouragement for the parents to nourish children's curiosity.

Only then can you hope to generate ideas that surpass our already quite formidable body of knowledge, and it's still not guaranteed.

> yet in spite of the continued failed predictions of disaster people have been making for the past couple hundred years, people still persist in making such predictions.

They only have to be right once. On a geological time scale, a disaster is certainly inevitable. Not that I necessarily agree with doomsaying all the time. Population growth isn't the biggest issue we're facing.

We are the one species that might just have a chance if we don't succumb to the dystopian pessimist view that is a much bigger risk than anything else.

As for resource depletion, 3.5 vs 7 billion people doesn't make that much difference, both are more than earth can support naturally without us constantly finding new ways to obtain resources.

After all the largest extinctions we have caused so far were megafauna extinctions 10k years ago and we managed to do that with just a few millions of people.

Progress takes many people working together to shape ideas and build things.

And an aging society would be less inclined to change and adopt it, run by more older people resistant to some new idea, and have less young people with the dynamism to put such idea in action even if it was adopted.

Theoritically. In practice they're more concerned with their own mortality, and weighing the merits of some new diet or therapy for hemmorhoids or some such...