Synopsis: Optimum depends on criteria and who matters most.
There is an upper limit to the possible human population, constrained by the total biomass the planet supports, and even more constrained if we wish to exist sustainably and also share the planet with other species. Clearly, population growth cannot continue indefinitely.
Simplistically, if you could get to the point where everyone is living the life of a billionaire, the smaller the population, the more luxurious a life everyone can enjoy.
Given population growth must end eventually, the next question “is a what number should population growth stop?” The answer depends on the goal. Possible options for a population goal include:
- Whatever number of people are required to produce the biggest possible economy.
- The maximum possible number of people.
- The highest possible living standard for everyone.
- Targeting population for maximum happiness and human development.
The caged-hens analogy.
If pursing the first option of the population required for greatest total economic output, then using the analogy of farming chickens for eggs, in a sense each worker produces “output” which is analogous to each chicken producing eggs.
The more workers, the bigger the economy, and thus the greater the GDP. What is discovered from considering how many people the planet can sustain, is that sustaining as many workers as possible does become like housing as many chickens as possible on a given size farm: great for those running the farm, but not necessarily so great for those who are the equivalent of “chickens”.
Like the farmer vs the chickens, option 1 does not afford everyone the same living standard, however then next two options do consider “what if everyone is equal”, because that is the easiest way to consider how many people the planet can sustain, as opposed just what is best for the economy.
The second option, maximum people, would be for everyone on the planet to live the lifestyle and with the level of wealth of the people Bangladesh, which could allow the planet to support perhaps triple the current population. Would everyone, or at least all but Setting sites higher to enable everyone to live the level of life of those in the USA, then the population would need to drop from the current 8 billion to below 2 billion. And this is not everyone living to a least the standard of the average person in the USA, as even the USA has homeless and poor people and eliminating those would require extra resources. Currently, we would need 110% of the Earth to even support everyone living life with the living standard of China, and although if we could progress further on the transition from fossil fuels, we could improve things, the only way to target a global living standard close to that of the USA is to reduce global population.
Now to the third option. Wouldn’t be great if everyone in the world could live like a billionaire? Sadly, calculations are that the more resources for each person, the less people the planet can support. For the entire planet to enjoy a living standard matching China, we would need 110% of this planet. To support 8 billion living the life of the USA, we would need four(4) planet Earths. To try and have everyone exist as billionaires would require a population well below 1 billion, and a very rapid population reduction.
For even the fourth option, maximising happiness, the population still need to fall, just not necessarily so dramatically. If instead of being very slow at measure for sustainability such as ending burning of fossil fuels, we implemented every possible measure to reduce our impact on the environment, maybe the whole 8 billion people could exist with a typical European living standard on just two Earths. Maybe. But realistically, if we want everyone to live as well as possible, the only answer is less people. Less people will happen naturally, it we let it, but just as further raising average living standards, it will take time.
Throughout most of history a gradual increase in population has been desirable. Reaching the point where a fall in population is new, and we only reached this state as result of population explosion, where the elimination of child mortality resulted an acceleration of population growth beyond what would have otherwise occurred.
It was during the 20th century that population growing from 1.6 billion to 6.1 billion that humans crossed the threshold from population growth being potentially good for everyone to instead only good for the wealthy.
But now in the 21st century, many countries are still blindly following the goal of maximum GDP, without stopping to consider that situation has changed, and longer this strategy continues, the smaller percentage of the very wealthy benefit. Increasingly the maximum GDP strategy creates conflicts between what is best for “farmers”, in the form of big business, billionaires and politicians, and what is best for “chickens”, in the form of the average citizen.
For the “farmers”, while their increase in wealth means their living spaces can still grow even as the world gets more crowed, the same population growth that reduces “average slice of the pie” allows them to grow their wealth and increase the size of their slice. This also makes the wealthiest most immune to problems to the environment from an unsustainable population level.
However, like every population strategy, there is a limit, and with the plan to grow GDP by growing the population, consequences of approaching the limit are already becoming evident.
Finite resources: The more people, the less per person.
The biosphere: the limit to the possible human population.
While the recent population explosion was unprecedented, there has been human population growth throughout history. Yes, it was more gradual previously, yes there have been minor setbacks, but overall, a study of human history makes population growth appear normal.
Yet this pattern of continuing growth over such a long time is unique to humans. The Earths total biosphere is declining from its peak 500 million years ago, so overall, humanity is running against the trend. Without the total biosphere increasing, the percentage of all life that is human is gradually increasing. Instead of the “Eden myth” of humans emerging on an otherwise uninhabited planet, on a finite planet with a finite biosphere, all growth of human population requires a corresponding decline in the population of other species. Could it one day it become just us, our food and our pets? Logically, population growth must stop at some point.
Given the reality that population growth must stop at some point, the next question becomes at what number will, or should, population growth stop.
Should humans try for the maximum population possible within our finite space, like chickens in a maximum production egg farm, or should we go ‘free range’ with a lower population in order for each individual to be able to have a better life?
Environmental/Ecological Footprint: Sustainability can be the easy part.
For each person, their lifestyle determines an ‘ecological footprint’. This footprint determines the number of people, or feet, that can sustainably exist in an environment with a given total area. Exceeding that number and having “too many feet”, will damage the environment and eventually the environment collapse from being over carrying capacity. The area of the environment, divided by the people it can carry, provides a per person “footprint”, which is the amount of space required per person. An interesting calculation is to take the environmental footprint per person of a given lifestyle, multiply this by the number of people in the world, and then you have total space required for everyone in the world to live that lifestyle. Several web sites have already done this, and the “per square mile project” is one example.
On the data from the ‘per square mile’ site, dated 2012, if everyone lived as those in each of the following countries, the required percentage of the Earth’s land would be:
- Bangladesh: 33%
- India: 50%, Uganda: 75%
- China: 110%
- Costa Rica: 140%, Nepal: 190%
- France: 240%
- USA: 410%
- UAE: 540%
While I have not verified the data, although perhaps not exact anymore, the data was reliably sources, and will still be close enough for these purposes.
The second set of data is from a website dedicated to the concept: Global Footprint Network. They even have a ‘footprint calculator‘, which with the following answers:
- is vegan and only eats locally grown unprocessed food.
- lives in a freestanding home without running water made of straw and bamboo.
- that is tiny and shared with 10 people, very efficient and without electricity (and it is all renewable?)
- does not travel by car at all, but it if they did it would be electric and they would carpool.
- never needed public transport or flights.
This reveals that if everyone lived following all of those above principles, then the world would need only 0.2 Earths, and then in theory 40 billion people would be on live on Earth. Well from an emissions perspective at least, as providing even water for 40 billion would require desalination plants requiring technology that can use as it would create emissions. And then, there would still be the problem of food.
Other equations are possible, including:
- adding electricity and sharing the tiny home with only 4 people, only 80% of food being local, plus traveling 11 km per week by electric car and 3km by public transport, brought the quota to 0.4 Earths: 20 billion people supported.
- occasional meat, 30% local produce, multi-story concrete small highly energy efficient apartment with 2 people, 50% of power from renewables, similar trash to neighbours, 200kms per week in an EV 60% of time ‘carpooling’ and 34 kms of public transport and 1hr of flights per year, and 2.3 Earths are needed: 3.5 billion supported.
Notably, all those steps also require zero people who living the lifestyle of the world’s richest 1%, as this group alone who currently result in more than double the emissions of the worlds least affluent 50%.
How many people could the world support if everyone lived like billionaires?
The calculations above show only 2 billion people could live the life matching living standards across the USA, and the world’s richest 1%, as this group alone who currently result in more than double the emissions of the worlds least affluent 50%.
On the basis of emissions, what is not clear is who many people could live on Earth if everyone lived to matching the living standards of the worlds least affluent 50%, but as it would seem that almost everyone in Bangladesh is within that least affluent 50% group, then just tripling the number of people living to the living standard of the wealthiest 1% would be sufficient to reach the limit of emissions. Which suggest around 3% the 8 billion, or 240 million people could the lifestyle of the current top 1%.
The top 1% would be 80 million people, but there are at time of writing only 2,700 billionaires, and around 10,000 superyachts, so billionaires are still a much more affluent group than the overall “top 1%”.
However, consider how much land would be required to provide every inhabitant a densely populated city like Tokyo with their very own equivalent to Mar-a-Lago as just one of the residences of each person in the city! This is the type of transformation required for everyone in just one megacity to become a billionaire.
This page on medium claims that in 2021 a billionaire was minted once every 17 hours, which is credible give the acceleration of wealth inequality with billionaires currently being a group growing at an accelerating rate. But everything has limits, and the greater the wealth and the more resources allocated to each person, the lower the number of people who can live that way. While this planet can support 24-billion living as people in Bangladesh, and only 2 billion living as people live overall in the USA, it seems unlikely there would be sufficient resources to support even all the 80 million current 1% reaching the level of billionaire, and it seems logical that as suggested above, 240 million reaching the level of the top 1% without necessarily becoming billionaires, would be beyond what could be sustained.
Problematically, billionaires are less constrained by sustainability than most people, as their wealth can provide some protection from the negative consequences of going beyond sustainability.
How many people as “chickens” are required to support the billionaires?
As of 2023, there is another limitation. Billionaires and the very wealthy require more than just natural resources, they also require a huge population to create the wealth produced by humans. Not only their own homes and yachts and supercars, but also their entertainment and the infrastructure shared by all that provides power and roads.
The Pharaohs of ancient Egypt became wealthy because the population was large enough to produce the wealth. Billionaires become like the chicken farmers whose wealth increases as the number of chickens increase.
The other limiting factor on the number of billionaires, is just how many people can be crowded into the remaining space in order to produce the wealth for the billionaires. Well, at least until robots take over the wealth production, making those previously performing the roles of chickens redundant from the perspective of the billionaires.
Sustainable living alone does not support even 1 billion people without technology.
Consider paleolithic humans, who live on Earth for almost 300,000 years, and did so within all constraint of living sustainably. However, in all that time, their population never reached even 4 million, because as hunter gatherers, they could never achieve high population density.
This creates a catch 22: It takes technology to support high population density, but so far, societies producing technology have increased per-person ecological footprints.
So far, in the 21st century, sustainability requires inequality.
Ultimately there is a trade-off between total wealth produced by all workers, and workers access to natural resources which, since, as with anything finite, the more people to be allocated a share, the smaller the share each person gets.
Maximising total man-made wealth requires so many workers that on average workers must exist on very restricted allocation per person of natural resources. Producing the greatest possible economic wealth, inherently requires a population too large for the majority to enjoy a large allocation of wealth. The end result is that most humans make a contribution to ensuring a very small percentage of humans enjoy a level of luxury beyond that available to any previous generation.
The fewer people enjoying the extreme wealth, the greater the share of natural resources for each person, and while with 8 billion people some must live in crowded conditions, but given the size of the planet, there is plenty of room for that top 1% to have homes of a size that should satisfy even a very wealthy billionaires, and plenty of room in ports for double the current 10,000 superyachts.
To sustainably further increase the wealth of the world’s wealthiest people, the only solution is to continue to increase population densities and house sizes for most of the rest of the population, and as a result restricting the areas of the world equipped to produce the technology of the future, since the latest technology does not emerge from the areas with least access to resources.
This would mean something like a USA, or even just California, developing all the technology that is in the rest of the world, for use globally by a population mostly existing like people today in Bangladesh with a very small environmental footprint.
What becomes clear is that, as things are, maximum population existing sustainably depends on inequality.
The population threshold for growth to crossover from a plus to a problem.
It becomes clear from the “per-square-mile” data above that all else being equal, the lower the standard of living, the more people who can exist in a given area.
When the number of people is less than carry capacity for the living standard, then population growth can improve living standards for all, as was the case in the USA prior to the year 1900.
This means that if people in the USA today in 2023 were living with the “footprint per person” of people in Bangladesh in the per square mile data, then the USA would, for that standard of living and “footprint per person”, feel underpopulated. As a result, assuming people will naturally try to have the number of children that will best provide for each child, then people in the USA in that situation would be expected to have sufficient children to grow the population.
However, increasing either the standard of living, or the total population, would eventually bring the “footprint per person” to the limit for the area, and the number of children would fall to a level targeting population stability. Further increases in standard of living would likely trigger small reduction in the number of children.
In practice, in the real USA, both the standard of living and the population rose simultaneously during the 20th century, triggering the crossover from families having lots of children and population growth, to families having sufficiently less children such that there would be a decline in population if not for immigration.
The 20th century shift from farm expansion to “caged chickens”.
Until recently it was not always necessary to choose between what is best for the “farmers” and what is best for the “chickens”.
In was only in the 20th century, due to the combination of a population explosion driven by the reduction in child mortality, together with advances in technology that reduced the number of people required to farm or mine natural resources, that humanity passed the point where population growth could mean increased prosperity for everyone.
Globally, even up until some point during the 20th century, countries, such as the USA, still “had room for more free-range chickens” and population growth provided a near universal economic boost. While there were already a small number of crowded cities, in countries like the USA, up until late in the 20th century, an increase in population didn’t yet require denser living, because there was still vacant land for “expanding the chicken farm”. People in countries already at their limit could emigrate to countries like the USA. While a population increase can still be accommodated by expansion of where people live, then population growth can mean everyone wins.
When population is below the level where all resources can be accessed, then population growth provided scale that improves productivity. When the population is below the level to access all resources, then it is like a free-range egg farm with room for more chickens. While a country has not enough workers to farm all the land allocated for farming or mine mineral resources at the desired rate, then population growth could increase prosperity for all.
Until around the 20th century, there was land available somewhere on the globe for further population expansion. Progress meant taming of more of the planet. In the year 1900, the global population was below 1.6 billion, and living standards were well below current USA levels that would allow for 2 billion to live sustainably. Clearly, in 1900, there was no reason to yet limit population growth. Plus, in many countries, including the “new world” of the Americas and Australia, there was still “unused” land for future population expansion. If population had grown only at rates typical of the past 2,000 years throughout the 20th century, then we would still, in 2023, have a global population that would allow everyone in every country on the planet to enjoy 2023 USA-level living standards sustainably.
However, but by the end of the 20th century, almost every country had gone past the population level needed to tap into natural resources and had progress to the population level where more people then result in a smaller share of total resources for each person. In effect, all countries transitioned to beginning the move to “caged chickens” where further population growth is good for the “farmers” who don’t need to live like the “chickens” but can be problematic for the average per person.
Overall, prior to the 20th century, population growth could work for almost everyone, but by the 21st century, population growth was still a boost for total output of “the farm” as measured by GDP, but increasingly problematic for the “chickens”, who responded with lower birthrates that will in most cases, in the absence of immigration, end population growth.
Could “caged chickens” still be best if it means more chickens?
There is an argument that whatever it takes to allow more people may be worth the price.
The principle of Jeremy Bentham of pursuing maximum total happiness could arguably be used to suggest it may be worth having double the population, provided that each of those people can each be more than half as happy.
One point against this argument is that there is no guarantee that happiness per person would fall at a slower rate than the population increases. What if twice the people will make each person less than half as happy? Suicides are evidence that lowest possible level of happiness could be considered as not zero but below zero. At some point, doubling the population could lead to not just half the resources per person, but insufficient resources per person for survival, and that could lead to even negative happiness.
But perhaps an even stronger argument is that there are two ways to ensure the maximum possible people get to live a life and contribute to total happiness:
- The maximum population at any given point in time.
- Ensuring humanity survives for the longest possible time.
A large population that puts pressure on the environment could easily reduce the total time that humanity survives, thus in the end reducing the total number of people who ever get to live.
An alternative goal could be considered, the “the optimum population to ensure development of technology that can extend humanities survival beyond the time the Earth can naturally support humans“.
Every population goal has limits and consequences.
Every population goal has its limits, and consequences of the limits begin to apply as the limits are approached.
Simplistically, taking 100% and dividing that by any of percentage numbers from the “per square mile” website data above gives the multiple of the current world population that could be supported sustainably.
For example, 100% divided by 33% for Bangladesh gives a 3x multiplier, and 100% divided by the 410% for USA gives a 0.24x multiplier, and for the richest 1% it could be a 0.03x multiplier.
Applying those multipliers to the current 8 billion population produces 24 billion people, 1.92 billion people, and just 240 million people respectively. However, that does not mean it is possible for the whole world to live that same way, but it does highlight that no matter how people live, there is still a limit to the number of people this planet can support.
Of course, these calculations all assume the same living standard for all, and in practice that is simple not going to happen without some extremely surprising new initiative for the redistribution of global wealth.
The reality is that each possible population goal has not just limits due to this planet being finite, but also limits in terms of the possibility of getting everyone who needs to agree to buy into such a plan.
Maximum GDP: Limits and problems to population growth to grow GDP.
Since an economy is measured by the “eggs” produced by the entire population rather than “GDP per capita” which is the measure of GDP per person, the simplest way to grow a countries GDP is to grow the population. As GDP is calculated by multiplying GDP per capita by the number of people in population, raising GDP per capita through raising productivity also raises GDP, but simply bringing more people is easier, and avoids the pesky and more difficult challenge of effectively also make the “chickens” wealthier.
Australia in 2023 managed GDP growth despite a per capita recession, which allowed the government to proclaim the country became wealthier even while the average person saw their living standards fall.
In short: Australia’s economy grew just 0.2 per cent over the December quarter, which was lower than the increase in population meaning that economic activity per person fell again.
At least one leading economist believes the RBA’s November rate hike was “unnecessary” in light of a “stand-still” in domestic demand and falling spending on non-essential goods and services.
March 6th 2024: ‘Tepid’ GDP extends Australia’s per capita recession
Australia is not alone in using population growth driven by immigration as a policy to ensure economic growth that can occur even when living standards fall. The following quotes from Joe Biden illustrate how US policy quite openly pursues the same strategy. It seems that both political parties in the US are unconcerned about the possibility that growing GDP through immigration could see US living standards fall.
“You know, one of the reasons why our economy is growing is because of you and many others. Why? Because we welcome immigrants. We look to – the reason – look, think about it – why is China stalling so badly economically? Why is Japan having trouble? Why is Russia? Why is India? Because they’re xenophobic. They don’t want immigrants,” Biden said, according to an official White House transcript released Thursday.
Biden calls US ally Japan ‘xenophobic’ along with India, Russia and China
The US president said during a campaign fundraising event earlier this week that Japan, India, China and Russia “don’t want immigrants”.
The White House has said he meant no offence and was merely highlighting US immigration policies.
Japan calls Biden ‘xenophobic’ comments ‘unfortunate’
Deception: Population growth for maximum GDP relies on votes not seeing the contradiction.
If everyone enjoys the same living standard, then the more extravagant life everyone lives, the less people this planet can sustainably support. The per square mile project has calculations on how many people can be supported for a variety of cases of the whole world lives at a living standard of specific countries.
If the population realises that population growth ultimately limits the possible wealth per individual, then you it would be expected voters would vote against governments supporting immigration as tool to grow GDP.
Clearly those in the “farmer” role including large corporations and the wealthiest individuals have motivation to support and donate to politicians backing this approach, but why do voting public support policy to achieve this goal?
Three key deceptions enable this policy:
- Even politicians such as Joe Biden still seem to believe in “trickle-down economics” and that what is good for the economy is always good for the people.
- Many people do not realize that population growth in developed countries like the USA and Europe always comes only as a result of immigration, with the people electing to have children at a rate that would result in a population correction.
- “Illegal immigration” becomes a scapegoat for social problems that result from population growth, even though in developed countries most population growth actually results from policies targeting GDP growth through legal immigration.
Limitations of seeking population growth to as a path to maximum GDP growth.
The first problem is that evidence so far is in almost all developed countries people living as “the chickens” have reduce family sizes to a level that would end population growth, which creates a reliance on immigration for population growth. The reduced family sizes can be seen from fertility rate data with developed countries almost all having birthrates well below the 2.1 required for maintain the current population level. People naturally target to have the number of children that would maximise in prosperity for their own children, so the population, at least instinctively, believes their children’s prosperity will be best served by a population reduction. The government, is using immigration to create population growth in a community targeting population reduction, relies on a combination of deception and the power of media to influence people into accepting a government that logically is acting against the instincts of the population for the wealth of future generations.
The second problem is that with humanity having globally passed “peak-child”, fewer and fewer countries have the level population increase that allows them to continue to act as “people farms” and continue to provide immigrants levels nations with GDP growth through population growth seek. This can create a reliance on wars, unrest and instability that forces people to become refugees as a source of immigration.
The third problem is competition for people from countries where population numbers are declining, which reduces the cost of living and cost of housing in those countries making them potentially very attractive places to live. Countries such as Spain, Italy, Portugal, Turkey, Costa Rica, all with falling populations, can lure people from countries targeting population growth like the USA.
Packing up your life and making a fresh start abroad is a dream for many, and new visa programs and tax incentives are making it a bit more achievable. Portugal, Spain and Costa Rica are some of the countries with popular digital nomad visas, and now there are two new options for remote workers.
Turkey’s vibrant cities and glorious coastline can be enjoyed with its new digital nomad visa which is open to citizens of 36 countries, including the United States, Canada, France and the United Kingdom, ages 21 to 55. You need to be earning a minimum of $3,000 a month or $36,000 a year.
Italy’s long-anticipated digital nomad visa is also now accepting applications.
Living the Italian dream just got easier, thanks to a new visa
The Hopper family from Texas left the States behind and moved to Costa Rica’s “blue zone,” one of the regions of the world where people live longest and are the healthiest. Seven years later, they tell CNN they’re feeling “more energized” and love the family-friendly sense of community.
In another adventure abroad, a TV editor from Los Angeles visited Italy for the first time in his 50s. Within 24 hours, he’d bought himself a house. “It’s just such a slower lifestyle here,” he says of Latronico, a town in the southern region of Basilicata. The town “will definitely help me relax.”
Living the Italian dream just got easier, thanks to a new visa
Finally, the fourth problem, is that AI and robots are threatening to very soon replace humans as the “egg producers” in society, leaving countries who have been pursuing population growth for the economy with a greater burden than they would have had otherwise.
Conclusion: It is inevitable that this will collapse as a strategy within at most 10 years, but in the meantime a lot of billionaires can growth their wealth.
Maximum population reality check: Could almost all live like Bangladeshis?
Simply applying the footprint suggests that if the entire world lived like the people of Bangladesh, then the emissions, not necessarily the water food and housing needs, of a population of 24 billion could be supported sustainably, but would even the emissions aspect of this really be possible, or desirable and if so, for who’s benefit? Issues to be considered include:
- Does Bangladesh rely on offshore emissions, and thus the economy is not scalable globally?
- Year after year, Bangladesh imports more than it exports, and significant emissions result from the production of those imports in the country of origin.
- Would this reduce levels of medical, agricultural and other technologies?
- Even a small drop in technology could affect population despite a drop in footprint as demonstrated by the reality that even after 300,000 years there were only 4 million Paleolithic humans globally.
- Desirability: The change could enable continued economic growth through population growth?
- But it requires a fall in living standards for the vast majority of the population, so who gets the economic benefits?
Between the offshore emissions that do not count in the footprint calculator numbers, and a potential fall in access to technology, the sustainable population could be well below that theoretical 24 billion, but if everyone adopted this living standard and there was no more top 1%, it would certainly allow for further population growth.
The contradiction is that the motivation for further population growth is to allow the economy to keep growing, and if the economy keeps growing, who will own all the wealth? The only answer that would allow almost all the population to live like people in Bangladesh, is for the wealthiest 1% to still exits and be the reserve for that wealth, making them even richer than today. Of course, this wealthiest 1% already consumes around 1/3 of the world’s available total footprint, so the potential population falls to 10 to 12 billion.
In fact, this picture of falling wealth for the majority of the population with a small ultra wealthy group absorbing the proceeds of economic growth is exactly the pattern where things are already heading in many western democracies in the 2020s.
Conclusion: A realistic maximum of a very poor but perhaps sustainable 10-12 billion population, but it is unrealistic to expect all to accept such a target unless some catastrophe makes it inevitable, and hypothetical in this scenario no one has the motivation to growth population beyond current levels.
All living like the wealthy 1% reality check.
The Earth could sustainably only support 240 million people living like the wealthiest 1% if they were the only people on the planet, which is just 3x number of the current wealthiest 1%.
The richest 1% of humanity is responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%, with dire consequences for vulnerable communities and global efforts to tackle the climate emergency, a report says.
The most comprehensive study of global climate inequality ever undertaken shows that this elite group, made up of 77 million people including billionaires, millionaires and those paid more than US$140,000 (£112,500) a year, accounted for 16% of all CO2 emissions in 2019 – enough to cause more than a million excess deaths due to heat, according to the report.
Richest 1% account for more carbon emissions than poorest 66%, report says
The key problem is that while the wealthiest 1% are responsible for that huge share of world environmental footprint, they are dependent on populations of billions for the creation of their wealth. So far, great wealth requires “farming humans”. Take a wealthy entertainer, sports star or billionaires like Elon Musk, or Jeff Bezos and their wealth would be halved if the population was halved. The wealth of the wealthiest 1% depends on people who create that wealth and build and provided the assets and services they use that wealth to enjoy.
Billionaires love the planet. They have to, right? They spend so much money on developing green tech and combatting climate change, it all must mean something to them. They’re in it for the good of humanity, so surely they’re practising what they preach, right?
Maybe not, according to new research from Oxfam. Rather than making the personal choices they seem to wish upon all of us, it seems the ultra-wealthy are happy making all the carbon emissions they please — so much, in fact, that 12 billionaires emit as much as 2.1 million homes.
Just 12 Billionaires Produce More Emissions Than 2 Million Average Homes
But need dependence on the masses always be the case? AI provides the potential for all the world’s housing, cars, computers and other goods to be constructed without human labour and all the world’s food to farmed without human labour. AI means all the wealth enjoyed by the wealthiest 1% could one day be provided without the need for a supporting population. This would completely rewrite the rules on how the wealth is established as it could no longer result from “the masses”, but in a world of artificial intelligence and robots, a super wealthy existence for perhaps 240 million individuals could be sustainable. As more and more power rests in the hands of the extremely wealthy in the “Bangaldesh” scenario playing out in many countries right now, the risk of this dystopia increases.
If we are worried about AI making humans obsolete, perhaps we should be more worried about a super wealthy upper class using AI to make the rest of humanity obsolete.
Conclusion: Hypothetical unless AI and robots do the work for the 0.25 billion population, and creates the problem of how to dispose the people who become ‘excess’.
Happiness goal reality check: Living standards of the happiest countries for all?
The happiest countries are in Europe and have generally have less than 10 million people, but that seems to be a limitation of not just living standards but also the politics or highly populated countries. From the point of view of living standards alone, it could be assumed that Europe, the US and most other developed nations have the living standards Taking into account Without a huge change This option requires the global population to fall to less than 2 billion.
We could get down to 2 billion through some type of disaster, but the disaster itself would reduce the carrying capacity of the globe, and the disaster itself would reduce living standards. The only way to achieve both the target number and living standard is by a gradual easing of population which over a hundred years.
In practice, targeting perhaps 4 billion people by 2100 seems not only possible, but currently seems not far off the most likely future.
It currently seems unrealistic that this future would have close to the equality of people living at a quite homogeneous living standard. While the idea that the current system provides the increased wealth to those who truly deserve it, at least a far more equal form of meritocracy is still desirable.
By 2100, a world with 4 billion is feasible, but in a world changing so rapidly, it is not only difficult to plot the path beyond 2100, it will also be quite a challenge to reach 2100.
Two things, hopefully beyond 2100, can be predicted:
Given this planet cannot sustain complex life for too much longer, progress on expanding beyond one planet is key to survival.
A second population explosion will happen following the near elimination of old age mortaltiy.
One thing that can be predicted, is that the world would be so changed it really difficult the future beyond that point.
Where I do take a perhaps radical step, is that the goals align with the stated goals sustainability++ of this site:
- Sustainability: There needs to be a path to sustainability on this planet while it is our only home.
- Plus: Here for a good time is the goal of maximising the quality of life experienced by each individual.
- Plus, Plus: Here for a longer time means perusing the goal of being able to extend life beyond the limitations of one finite planet.
Conclusion: Between 4 and maybe as low as 2 billion is possible, but only until the next population explosion.
Economic Theory.
This section is still in draft.
In general, most economic theory seems to ignore the reality that we live on a finite planet, and thus everything has limits. The consequence of ignoring these limits is that growth is seen as potentially never-ending.
“Anyone who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical, on a physically finite planet, is either mad or an economist.”
Attributed to Kenneth Boulding in: United States. Congress. House (1973)
Many studies are by economists and consider maximum economic output as a goal never to be questioned.
Overview: Maximising overall happiness and/or economic output vs the individual experience.
Strangely, the position modern society typically applies to chickens in an egg farm is often not applied to population goals for humans. The organic egg farm would fail tests many see as critical for optimum human population, where:
- An increase total economic output is seen as sufficient justification for population increase.
- Low living standards can be seen as acceptable if that allows for a population increase.
In some ways, with that same attitude the near elimination of childhood mortality could be seen as mistake, since the children who previously died at a young age at least were able to live a short time. Similarly, following the logic to its conclusion, would be to recommend ending the lives of the elderly or and those who become disabled, in order that the resources these people would use can instead be utilised to provide for a greater population.
There is an argument that twice the people living with half the happiness is a greater amount of total happiness, yet we do not accept that for the chickens, or to excuse animals born only to be used in laboratory experiments who would suffer in those experiments.
I did have a dilemma deciding between allowing more people to live and allowing those who live to have a better life, which for me is resolved by focusing on the goal of extending the total number of people who can ever live by focusing on the solutions to extending the time and locations for people to be able to live beyond the constraints of one finite planet.
Individual vs total happiness: Millian vs The Benthamite criterion.
Probably the most diffused approaches (at least in macroeconomic theory) are average and total (or classical) utilitarianism, respectively based on the so-called Millian and Benthamite criterion. The former says that social welfare coincides with per-capita utility while the latter that social welfare is the sum of individual utility across the population (per-capita utility multiplied by the population size, if agents are homogeneous).
Reassessing Edgeworth’s Conjecture when Population Dynamics is Stochastic: Simone Marsiglio
There is also disagreement as to whether total utility (total utilitarianism), average utility (average utilitarianism) or the utility of the people worst-off[3] should be maximized.
Utilitarianism: Wikipedia
Resources.
- Optimum Population: An Introduction, Klaus F. Zimmermann
- Economic discussion: The Optimum Theory of Population
- Utilitarianism
- Encyplopedia.com: OPTIMUM POPULATION
- to be added
Updates.
- 2024 May 6th: Second edition, fully revised to hopefully improve clarity.
- 2023 July 23 : Added ecological footprint and sustainability data.
- 2023 April 10 th: intial version first published.