Re:"Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026 (1960)
by lo_zamoyski on Friday November 13, 2026 @06:53PM
(#50491879)
> Essentially all of our problems are caused by excessive population
Except they aren't. This is the old Malthusian claim and it has been debunked time and again.
> Wars
Historically, war has been on a downward trajectory for a long time, certainly when measured by the violence and death any given person is likely to experience. Most war is not about the scarcity of resources. It is usually about power, the desire to dominate others, greed, and other intangibles, and of course defending oneself from such actors.
> migration
Like war, this claim is reducible to the one about limited resources, because "overpopulation" (whatever that means) per se is not a cause of anything. People generally migrate because somewhere else looks better in some way, usually because the destination is economically better developed and have better institutions. This has nothing to do with absolute resources, but with the standard of living in their home country relative to the standard elsewhere. Refugees and so on are a very small percentage of any global migration.
> resource depletion
This claim begins with a current understanding of the available resources. What we have found instead is that with more people, we have more resourcefulness and discovery. Farming is an excellent example. Innovation in agriculture tracks population growth. Today, we have more food than any of our ancestors would have dreamed of. We waste enormous amounts of food.
> hunger, water scarcity
Famine is nonexistent in the developed world and almost completely absent everywhere else. Most hunger is a matter of resource misallocation, not because there isn't enough to go around.
> we can finally see a way to a possible future without scarcity
This misunderstands scarcity, as if it were some fixed piece of pie on the table before us. According to this simplistic understanding, yeah, sure, you'll have to slice up that pie into thinner and thinner pieces until eventually everyone gets close to nothing. But this is not how things work. In practice, the more people there are, the more labor and ingenuity there is that scales non-linearly (including those caused by agglomeration effects and specialization). People will not only find new pies, but they will find things other than pies, or ways to replenish the supply in a renewable way.
> The economic engine will never be more powerful than it is now
Bold claim. History does not support it. Population contraction doesn't have to last forever and we can't know how economies will unfold.
> where growth isn't purely consumptive
I will say here that consumerism is a real problem, because it is not only wasteful in a number of ways, but it entrenches a habit of thinking that consumption is the purpose of life rather than a means to support it. Look at where the most consumption and waste occurs and you'll find it doesn't align with population density as a simplistic account of human beings would suggest.
What population contraction might achieve in the interim is that it may force a course correction. People are very stubborn and easily attached to bad habits, to the point that entire economic and political orders are reshaped and become dependent on those bad habits to function, entering into a vicious cycle that entrenches these very habits and bakes them into a common cultural sensibility of what is normative. We have refused to wean ourselves off the drug of consumerism, which I claim is one of the primary, fundamental, and underlying ideological and cultural causes and drivers of population contraction because the imperatives of consumption conflict with having children. As a result, we suffer the self-destructive consequences, and these consequences may very well force us into abandoning consumerism because it will have been made impossible to sustain. Time will tell.
Except they aren't. This is the old Malthusian claim and it has been debunked time and again.
> Wars
Historically, war has been on a downward trajectory for a long time, certainly when measured by the violence and death any given person is likely to experience. Most war is not about the scarcity of resources. It is usually about power, the desire to dominate others, greed, and other intangibles, and of course defending oneself from such actors.
> migration
Like war, this claim is reducible to the one about limited resources, because "overpopulation" (whatever that means) per se is not a cause of anything. People generally migrate because somewhere else looks better in some way, usually because the destination is economically better developed and have better institutions. This has nothing to do with absolute resources, but with the standard of living in their home country relative to the standard elsewhere. Refugees and so on are a very small percentage of any global migration.
> resource depletion
This claim begins with a current understanding of the available resources. What we have found instead is that with more people, we have more resourcefulness and discovery. Farming is an excellent example. Innovation in agriculture tracks population growth. Today, we have more food than any of our ancestors would have dreamed of. We waste enormous amounts of food.
> hunger, water scarcity
Famine is nonexistent in the developed world and almost completely absent everywhere else. Most hunger is a matter of resource misallocation, not because there isn't enough to go around.
> we can finally see a way to a possible future without scarcity
This misunderstands scarcity, as if it were some fixed piece of pie on the table before us. According to this simplistic understanding, yeah, sure, you'll have to slice up that pie into thinner and thinner pieces until eventually everyone gets close to nothing. But this is not how things work. In practice, the more people there are, the more labor and ingenuity there is that scales non-linearly (including those caused by agglomeration effects and specialization). People will not only find new pies, but they will find things other than pies, or ways to replenish the supply in a renewable way.
> The economic engine will never be more powerful than it is now
Bold claim. History does not support it. Population contraction doesn't have to last forever and we can't know how economies will unfold.
> where growth isn't purely consumptive
I will say here that consumerism is a real problem, because it is not only wasteful in a number of ways, but it entrenches a habit of thinking that consumption is the purpose of life rather than a means to support it. Look at where the most consumption and waste occurs and you'll find it doesn't align with population density as a simplistic account of human beings would suggest.
What population contraction might achieve in the interim is that it may force a course correction. People are very stubborn and easily attached to bad habits, to the point that entire economic and political orders are reshaped and become dependent on those bad habits to function, entering into a vicious cycle that entrenches these very habits and bakes them into a common cultural sensibility of what is normative. We have refused to wean ourselves off the drug of consumerism, which I claim is one of the primary, fundamental, and underlying ideological and cultural causes and drivers of population contraction because the imperatives of consumption conflict with having children. As a result, we suffer the self-destructive consequences, and these consequences may very well force us into abandoning consumerism because it will have been made impossible to sustain. Time will tell.