We don't have too many, we have too few people on this earth. Imagine a world where everyone could potentially have a personal, exclusive doctor, personal tutor for their children, personal tech support, hell, even a family geneticist whose only job is to examine a single family's genetic makeup to look for potential issues. That can only happen with more people.
but it seems 'population control' nutters are popping up more these days and we have some of our own on this board
The more people we can sustainably support, the better, though not because it would provide a larger labor pool. Simply because filling the universe with happy life forms is a noble goal.
In fact, almost all jobs nowadays are either irrelevant or replaceable by automation. Even much of the tasks that are currently done by professionals like doctors could be easily automated. There are already
machines on the market that can analyze genomes, and they are rapidly coming down in cost. Then the data could be anonymously collected and filtered by computers to look for patterns. It would be outright silly to have humans doing this enormous task. You could do similar things by continuously monitoring vital signs and blood markers with cheap monitoring devices and stream the data to the Internet.
Agriculture was automated away a long time ago. The technology to automate manufacturing is already here, and even despite cheap labor abroad we can now produce things like cars with very minimal human oversight. ATM Machines, vending machines, and washing machines have long eliminated the need for laborers. Self-checkout lines and more efficient bagging systems like Wal-Mart has are eliminating thousands of jobs, not to mention all the jobs they have already eliminated in the back end by more efficient logistics and warehousing. Food service, construction, janitorial services, and such are next on the chopping block. Think about roomba, etc. Why should we assume that even relatively skilled jobs won't go the same route? Tech support and all other sorts of telephone support is already being replaced by automated systems that are continuing to improve both their voice recognition and artificial intelligence engines.
Humans shouldn't be forced to be like robots. We should reorganize our society so that the fruits of our automated systems, which have been bequeathed to us by the collective genius of humanity, can be distributed in such a way that every individual can obtain the necessities of life as a birthright. Whether by stimulating the
Technological Commons or providing a
Basic Income. If we don't we will just forever have people toiling away in sweatshops trying to compete with the cheap and efficient machines, and others not even lucky enough to have such miserable jobs.
Unfortunately, by depending on such incentives and education systems, successful and responsible regions will be overwhelmed by the unsucessful, whimpering and failed hoards of the uneducated, unwilling and irresponsible. In some instances, a restrained fertility rate can create a virtual genocide of a population hosting the incentive programes.
While I would rather have no more than 7 billion people on the earth, the existing means of reducing fertility levels is rather one-sided and certian groups are taking on a burden that cannot be balanced for the lack of will in others who refuse to stop breeding at any cost.
Matters of population control are most likely going to be overlooked until a problem occurs which drastically affects the livelyhood of the major control centers of the world. Much like the famed frog on a hot plate, the situation seems quite bleak. Living conditions around the world are most likely going to devolve into 3rd world environments with space per capita rapidly shrinking. I can already sense the response of our future leaders, "Crowded living conditions? Third world poverty, crime and quality of life? You need to have a more positive attitude, my dear citizen. Be a part of the solution." - To which there shall be none.
This is a standard malthusian argument, and as such falls prey to the standard malthusian fallacy. That is, the underestimation of technological progress's capacity to create abundance. The costs of providing a decent standard of living are constantly falling, which is why there is now a lower percent of the world's population in poverty then ever before. Of course the population is also much larger than ever before, and so the total number of people in poverty is also larger than ever before. Whether that is good or bad depends on your perspective.
A country doesn't need to become incredibly rich in order for the fertility rates to level out, it merely needs to rise above the sort of extreme poverty which characterizes the regions with insane birthrates (afghanistan, somalia, the congo, haiti, etc). Yet, the essentials of life are not that hard to provide once you have the correct mindset. Usually aid from developed nations is in the form of supplies. Yet, it makes no sense to ship water, which is quite heavy, thousands of miles. That is why decentralized solutions like
LifeStraw or perhaps Dean Kamen's new invention the
Slingshot would be far better alternatives.
Here is a great example of a
community tech workshop in Afghanistan. Open source designs can be tailored to any region. Their FabFi wifi system is constructed out of wood and some cheap off the shelf technologies, and this is allowing internet connectivity even in remote regions of Afghanistan. Mix this with projects like
OLPC, and I'm sure you can see the possibilities. Once you have Internet connectivity, the sky is the limit. You have access to knowledge bases like wikipedia... access to weather reports and news... communication between farmers to facilitate trade and efficiency, etc.
Speaking of farmers, there is already a project in the works to produce open source farm implements like
tractors that are orders of magnitude cheaper, and far more standardized. They have also developed a
Compressed Earth Brick (CEB) press that can make bricks from local clay at a fraction of the cost of proprietary machines.
Cheap housing can take a number of forms. CEB is just one route. You could also go for something like the
HexaYurt,
UtiliHab,
ReconHouse, or even refurbished
shipping containers seeing as there are 30 million unused ones just lying around.
Looking at the open source tractor, CEB press, etc in combination with cheap decentralized manufacturing tools like the
RepRap, the
Multimachine, or even just an
Afghan Lathe.... and you can suddenly see how it would be possible to
leapfrog not just cellphones but all the fruits of civilization for peanuts.
Sure this stuff is still in early stages, but if prizes were created for these sort of open source projects, then these technologies could be advanced for a tiny fraction of the cost of our current aid projects that try to apply band-aids to problems after they've occurred and often create dependence in the process.
Edited by progressive, 19 January 2010 - 07:07 PM.