> Nice idea, but I don't believe it. USAians (and many of us in the west)
> can only consume so much because of what the others produce. There is
> also a limit to how much we can reasonably eat, and not that many
> obvious alternative uses for the land that would not need to be farmed.
I would point out that as said earlier in this thread, there is not
just consumption going on. For telecommunications or languages we all
know about network effects, how extra participants raise the value of
the overall network to every participant.
Extra people also means greater possibilities for specialisation and
greater resources that can be thrown at technology development.
Now I know that the internet is an extreme example. Extra participants
don't take anything away from the existing users, but may add content.
Still, it's far from clear that 600 million people is necessarily
better for the environment than 6 billion. If the latter number means
there is sufficient critical mass to develop clean energy and farming
methods, and the former means that there aren't sufficient resources
to do so and we are stuck polluting.
Of course, we don't have a choice between 600 million and 6 billion
starting now, not really, short of anybody having the powers of
persuasion to convince 90% of humanity to commit suicide ;-)
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