Overpopulation

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, wrote:
>
> over population based on what? The land mass of the Earth? The
total volume of the land to sustain?
> -snip-

I would say some standard of quality of life is thge threshold.
It is probably doable to barely sustain a trillion people, in
conditions like Calcutts spread across the entire habitable surface,
allowing for food production. Minor fluctuations in crops would result
in more deaths from starvation than those who died in 20th century wars.
It is important to have open spaces for people to get away from it
all. There should always be places, for instance, where you can shoot
a pistol into the air and not worry about someone getting hurt when it
reached the ground.

>
> MORE people are required, not less, since it seems that from volume
of people we get the larger potential for "brain" types with flashes
of insights needed to carry the rest of us.

Alas, the more people there are the more likely the 'toxic
component' of the population can lash out at the system as a whole. As
religous movements grow in members, for instance, a faction in many
such groups agitate for crusades or jihads against those outside their
belief standards. As such simmering pools of malcontent grow larger
the odds increase that technological means to pack immense destructive
power will fall into the hands of dedicated individuals fired up to do
terrible things.

Incidently, overpopulation cannot be realistically addressed by
space colonization. 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.

Don Davis