Population Disaster Thinking Is Usually Wrong
Jobs in the Asteroid Belt?
It is predicted that up to hundreds of millions of people [1] world-wide will become environmental, economic or political refugees over the next few decades. That number is far greater than the few million refugees who have fled the new millennium’s all too many wars and corrupt government economic disasters.
The predictors tell us this flow of people will destroy human civilization. Humanity will collapse in chaos and megadeath to rival the nuclear annihilation we have so far avoided. The consequent claim is that the globalist elites are “justified” in their genomicidal plans to make us infertile, sick and dead.
However, IMHO, as usual, the frightening potential for future failure of our species will likely fail to materialize.
Humanity survived the great plagues that killed up to half the population in various empires at various times over the past couple millennia. Our civilization, such as it is, survived the insanity of the 20th Century’s world wars (and before that, Mongol “Necromongers” and Roman “Make a Wasteland and call it Peace”, etc). The chroniclers knew there would be too few people left alive for humanity to continue… [2]
If you accept the “Eve Hypothesis” that we’re all descended from one mitochondrial mother, you understand about 70,000 years ago the human populations was reduced to a couple inter-related clans. We, as species, were almost gone. But we weren’t gone. We grew from a handful to about a half billion up to a few thousand years ago and then exploded from that number to more than 7.6 billion now.
Malthus was wrong; those predicting the collapse of everything during the Great Depression were wrong; those who expected no recovery from the Great Recession are wrong.
Those who predict the “too many people” disaster, while different from the Black Death, may be equally wrong. The effects of the Green Revolution [3] of the 20th Century in reducing famine while world population exploded suggests the “too many” claim is spurious.
Why? Because increasingly, especially in the “advanced” nations, Technology has a power of its own that drives constant change — unexpected and unpredictable changes that no prognosticator (or central planner) can know in advance. More minds on this Earth means more potential creativity and problem solving.
I don’t know what will “solve” the “problem” of “too many” humans moving around too much for some planner’s comfort, but I suspect it will surprise us all. What I do know is that minds matter and markets move us into the future.
Maybe millions of jobs waiting out in the asteroid belt.
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[1] http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/figures-at-a-glance.html and http://theconversation.com/factcheck-qanda-as-the-climate-changes-are-750-million-refugees-predicted-to-move-away-from-flooding-63400
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics — at least 4 times over the past couple millennia the Eurasian population has been decimated by great pandemics.
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution