Quote:
Originally Posted by kscarrol
They are the solution to many things but they are also the driver of deflation and stagnating economies. That's what we've seen in Japan for more than a decade now and we're seeing it in Europe as well. Flat to declining population usually mean no economic growth... That brings about its own set of problems.
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Yes, but the lesser of two evils by far.
I'd rather have a fundamentally sound economy that is has plateaued, rather than one which is growing like mad, but is not sustainable. At least, I dont want to still be around when the bubble inevitably bursts. Participating in a Ponzi scheme seems fun at the beginning, but not so much at the end.
If economic growth is fueled by ever-increasing consumption due to rising population, then there's only 1 way for it to not collapse eventually under it's own weight: if the resources needed to feed this growing demand are also capable of indefinite growth at the same exponential rate. How many natural resources can you think of that satisfy that criteria?
It took less than 12 years to go from 6 billion to 7 billion people. It took over 127 years to go from 1 billion to 2 billion. Exponentiation is fucking scary people. Our ability to accelerate the rate at which we create more consumers, vastly exceeds our ability to create more resources for them to consume.
In the wild, litter sizes of animals are observed to drop off if populations grow too high, too fast, for the resources accessible to them. Especially true if they are geographically constrained, like on an island or something.
With a few notable exceptions, nature manages the boom-bust cycle quite well.
If animals behaved like people, then litter sizes would remain at peak, until all the food was gone, then the generation who had the misfortune to be born at the end would end up all starving to death, and the entire herd on that island would be completely wiped out.