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stale2002

You don't have to look at just the last couple decades.

You can look at the last 200 years.

Every decade some smart academic makes the same, Malthusian, population bomb, peak oil, or whatever argument.

And every decade that person gets proven wrong, for the last 200 years.

Is this decade different? Are the Malthusians going to proven right NOW even though they have been wrong every single other time they make these predictions? Maybe. But I think I am going to wait a little while before giving that argument any weight at all.

No arguments, no predictions, only evidence.

We are in late stage capitalism once living standards stop going up, and they have yet to do that.

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The people that said you wouldn't be able to afford an apartment in overcrowded SF were dead-on right. The people who predicted widespread traffic jams were right.

The people who said that third world countries needed to cut birthrates before they could get richer turned out to be right everywhere.

The people that said Bengala-Desh would get to be like Bengala-Desh were right. As were the people who predicted overcrowding and exodus from the Sahel.

OK, and what does living standards look like for all of these people?

Would you rather live in 1950s SF or 2017 sf? Would you rather live in 1950s bengala desh or 2017 Bengala desh?

How about 1950s third word or 2017 third world?

Yes, there are costs to a growth centric economy. But there are also benefits. And apparently the benefits massively outweigh the costs.

I pick 1960 San Francisco, when it was the home of emerging 1960s culture and twenty year olds with unskilled 3/4 time jobs could buy a house and start a family. (That's the exact same house you need to make $550k to buy today)

I pick 1950s Bengala-Desh because you didn't have to risk your kids lives from flooding because of overpopulation and DDT was just ending the malaria problem (some came back after the ban).

Lots of 1950s third world countries are first world today, like Mexico or Korea. In that case, I'd pick today over 1950s.

There are lots of benefits to growth in per capita income. There are no benefits to growth in GDP from population increase while GDP per capita stagnates.

https://www.google.com/search?q=bangladesh+life+expectancy

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?locations...

> The people that said you wouldn't be able to afford an apartment in overcrowded SF were dead-on right. The people who predicted widespread traffic jams were right.

One doesn't need be a Malthusian to have predicted this. This is a simple consequence of Ricardo's Law of Rent, and the Tragedy of the Commons.

And in fact, the problems have been exacerbated by Malthusian-style rationing (ie Prop 13), the exact opposite of Georgist-style solutions for housing and traffic.

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