This is why I was always skeptical of dystopias that depend on overpopulation. If life is so miserable why would people continue to have so many children?
Several of those feedback loops came from people seeing the theoretical scenario and the evidence for it mounting. Like literally the phrase "if we don't do something - this will happen" is the rallying cry. It's silly to say it was an oversight in the model that shows that things need to be done.
> If life is so miserable why would people continue to have so many children?
Something humans like to do to escape misery is: sex.
The sci-fi dystopias about overpopulation never really come up with a mechanism by which the birth rate remains high despite low infant and child mortality and low economic need for human labor. It always seems to boil down to "people are controlled by irrational instincts".
There are multiple grave markers listing children that died under the age of 10. Like a family had a 4 year old die, then had a baby 2 years later and then 3 years later buried that baby in the same grave as their older sibling.
This right here is why I'm child free.
First, My own upbringing did nothing to equip me to properly raise a child. I simply cannot trust myself to do a good job.
Second, why would I bring a child into a world where each year will only be worst than the last, and their lot in life is to suffer the decline of the natural world and perhaps civilization as we know it until they themselves have to make the same choice? I'm sure someday the future will look brighter but it sure as heck isn't today, or any time in the next 50 years.
With this realisation alone you might be in the top percentiles of the population.
> I'm sure someday the future will look brighter but it sure as heck isn't today, or any time in the next 50 years.
And yet it still might be better than at least 99.98% of human history (50 out of 300k+ years).
> 1. If the present growth trends... continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years...
> 2. It is possible to alter these growth trends...
> 3. If the world's people decide to strive for this second outcome rather than the first, the sooner they begin working to attain it, the greater will be their chances of success
Far from "missing the negative feedback loops", I think that amplifying that feedback was the whole point.
Also, we're only halfway through the original period, so it seems premature to declare victory.