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Comment by milesf | Hacker News Reader

I remember as a teenager hearing in the 80's about "The Population Bomb", and idea popularized by the book of the same name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb. It didn't happen. In fact, we are facing a crisis in the world where many countries are not seeing their populations replacing themselves because families are not having enough babies http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/11/03/141943008/when-...

Societies and cities are complex entities, as are economies. Perhaps "premature optimization" is a problem in civics just as it is in software development. Better to solve real problems rather than those that might or might not happen.

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There's no population bomb? http://blog.dssresearch.com/?p=229

The population growth will continue to decline as more people are lifted out of poverty. It might take a while and a large part of the world might not notice it right now, but it's happening. It's (relatively) not long now before we will see a shrinking world population.

Yes you're right, but also the richer a country is the more resources it needs. So I think there should be some limits in population growth for certain countries and areas. Also, we have to note that it's not that we're overpopulated but we're living in just a few places of our planet, that's why we have issues I believe

There's also an enormous waste of resources. In my small delta country (the Netherlands) an acre of soil could yield in some cases 5000 times the amount of crops when compared to barren regions like Afghanistan, with (due to automation) very little effort. There's plenty of water, perfect temperatures and very vertile soil. It's not a coincidence that the Netherlands is the worlds #2 agricultural exporter. But there's an enormous lobby to convert more and more acres back to unmanaged nature.

In the grand scheme of things this is beyond stupid, but when you're living here you might enjoy a walk through a nature reserve better than a walk through fields full of corn.

>The population growth will continue to decline as more people are lifted out of poverty.

That may remain true for a few generations, but sub-cultures that are pro-procreation won't stop growing exponentially.

Well then some subcultures will die and others will take their place.

Why would exponential growth kill off a subculture before it grows to become the dominant culture?

This is why I'm sceptical of any doomsday scenario. Too many times they turned out to be damp squibs. Think population bomb, peak oil etc.

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