--- In spacesettlers, Don Davis wrote:
> overpopulation cannot be realistically addressed by
> space colonization.

O'Neill said it could be.
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/CoEvolutionBoo
k/Interview.HTML
http://tinyurl.com/5vc66s

========================
O'Neill: [...] The long-term plan, really dream,
that I would have is a situation in which, in
50, 100, 150 years, it would be so cheap to
replicate large communities that you would be
building quite large ones, many, many square
miles in land area for each one, and they would
be very thinly populated.
[...]
O'Neill: [...] this possibility if pursued, is
one that could occur both on the Earth and in
the communities of course. Because the
existence of the space communities as a place
to which many people might choose to move would
also be perhaps the only realistic non-violent
way in which the Earth's population might
really decrease.
========================

Combined with radical feminism's castrating anti-male dogma O'Neill's super-cans IMO would provide an ideal solution to earth over population. However, I don't think we're as over populated as much as poorly engineered-both physically and socially. Our urban centers are unlivable because of inadequate transportations systems and poor land use planning. Build some maglevs and monorails, vest pocket parks, mixed use Urban forms etc-I think we could actually bear a couple centuries more growth no problem-if it were planned well.

Then, there's our social engineering (perhaps a bad turn of phrase but work with me); the baseness, vulgarity, primitivism, and sheer crudeness and hostility in contemporary culture boggles the mind. It goes well beyond mere bravado and occasional posing machismo-it is in fact a deep seated contempt for ones fellow man that plagues us. Ayn Rand did a great essay on the difference between the crowds that went to see the Appollo lift offs and the crowd at that famous concert in 69-ha, can't believe it escapes me. I'll see if i can find it gotta run.

Here's my other website by the way, I've shown my sci fi thing here's my day job.

http://danthonydesign.blogspot.com/search?q=

To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.comFrom: hitssquad@...: Sat, 24 May 2008 12:02:35 +0000Subject: [spacesettlers] O'Neill's dream of vacuuming people off of Earth (was Overpopulation)

--- In spacesettlers, Don Davis wrote:> overpopulation cannot be realistically addressed by> space colonization.O'Neill said it could be.http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/CoEvolutionBook/Interview.HTMLhttp://tinyurl.com/5vc66s========================O'Neill: [...] The long-term plan, really dream,that I would have is a situation in which, in50, 100, 150 years, it would be so cheap toreplicate large communities that you would bebuilding quite large ones, many, many squaremiles in land area for each one, and they wouldbe very thinly populated.[...]O'Neill: [...] this possibility if pursued, isone that could occur both on the Earth and inthe communities of course. Because theexistence of the space communities as a placeto which many people might choose to move wouldalso be perhaps the only realistic non-violentway in which the Earth's population mightreally decrease.========================> Someone approached Paul Erlich> with such a statement and he laughed him off and for> months thereafter rediculed the idea. It took> several intelligent people he regarded as peers to> illuminate the true appeal of the O'Neills vision,> and he then had constructive opinions to offer which> are still valid today.

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That would be the Woodstock concert Rand was refering to.

"At Ford Hall Forum in 1969, Ayn Rand examined the cultural significance of two high-profile,
enormously well-attended but very different events: Woodstock and the Apollo 11 launch.
In her lecture, "Apollo and Dionysus," she showed how philosophical ideas play out in a culture:
she showed why these two events, so opposite in nature, were a product of a long-standing philosophical
dichotomy, reason versus emotion. She concluded her talk by noting that, against the bromide that mans
senses and reason confine him to the grubby, material world while his mystical emotions lift him to the stars,
Woodstock and the Apollo 11 launch "offered you a literal dramatization of the truth: it is mans irrational
emotions that bring him down to the mud; it is mans reason that lifts him to the stars."

When the soiled drunken crowds finally left Woodstock the fields were devastated and covered with trash. When the
crowds that had come to see the Apollo 11 launch left there was nary a piece of trash.