[ExI] china's babies

Adrian Tymes atymes at gmail.com
Mon May 31 17:22:38 UTC 2021


On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 9:39 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Other countries are also concerned about low birth rates.  What is the
> world supposed to do, just get bigger and bigger no end?
>
> I understand about fewer young people to support old peoples' social
> programs, but growth and more growth is unsustainable.
>

Incorrect - at least over the next few centuries.  Lots of people confuse
"to INFINITY" with "realistic near-term growth".  More people confuse
"we've never had this many before" with "we can only have at most roughly
this many".  The carrying capacity of the Earth - not even getting into
space colonization, which will take decades to develop but seems likely to
start being available later this century - seems to be much larger than
current use, given the vast majority of Earth's surface that is currently
essentially unused by humanity, especially the potential to expand
sustainable aquaculture.  (If you've ever read sci-fi where a bunch of food
came from algae - well, kelp are algae, with many varieties already under
extensive commercial production, with uses including food.  And that's just
kelp.)

Granted, infrastructure (including mining & energy) will need to expand to
support more people - but there will be more people to expand it with.
More importantly, there will also be more automation, over time, to expand
it with.
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