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Comment by nntwozz | Hacker News Reader

Yeah I've seen this before, we could all drive V12s and eat only beef but it's not a very meaningful insight. We're going to stabilize around 10 billion by 2080 according to projections and then decline, hopefully reaching some kind of Star Trek utopia at some point.

We came from the caves, we didn't know any better we just multiplied like a cancer. More population also brings more benefits, more geniuses more inventions etc.

The trick is doing it without wars and inequality, good luck with that.

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It's pretty clear we're not going to hit 10B

At current trends, the global population will begin actively shrinking as soon as 2040, just 15 years away.

We have improved a lot on eliminating wars front.

Inequality not so much but much progress has been made in eliminating abject poverty.

> We have improved a lot on eliminating wars front.

Have we? After the nightmare of The War to End All Wars, did anyone in the mainstream honestly expect Europe to turn into an even bigger charnel house (~30-50 million dead) two decades later?

It's been 80 years since then, and we've not had a 'large' industrialized war since then. But we have all been living under an atomic sword of Damocles.

Do you think we're going to get to 200 years without that sword falling? What odds do you give on that (We've had many close calls since then)? How many people would die if it does fall? If in 2145, half a billion[1] people will die in nuclear fire, will we retroactively consider the brief stretch of history we live in to just be a brief ceasefire?

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[1] That would be a best case outcome for a nuclear war - a limited one, that wouldn't rise to the level of a global catastrophe.

> We're going to stabilize around 10 billion by 2080 according to projections and then decline, hopefully reaching some kind of Star Trek utopia at some point.

10 billion is gonna be the high end by the looks of things, and that decline is going to be hardly conducive to utopia. The math of dependency ratios is inescapably painful.

Utopia literally means "no place" for a reason. We're always going to be just what we are right now . . . humans.

Whatever subset of projections you're looking at seems to leave out any that take global warming into account.

> hopefully reaching some kind of Star Trek utopia at some point

it is so dangerous and naive to think that utopia is possible, even if we all could agree that Star Trek is one, which we shall not, because I certainly do not think its depiction of watered down "luxury space communism with military ranks" is a desirable society.

That’s the real trouble with Utopia, differing ideas on what kind of Utopia we want.

The world/utopia as described in Star Trek is a world where there is no poverty and free electricity. You describe Starfleet. Obviously, the series do contain elitism. Joining Starfleet is seen as prestigious. And even on Earth there are slums during the time of the federation. So the “Utopia” is not complete. And Starfleet is necessary to protect the utopia from outside influences.

It is largely based on the premise of having copious amounts basically free energy, free food (through replicators), safety, and a wide open universe for settlers to join when they do not want to stay in the Federation. Basically, it is based on the absence of contention of resources. Until we have that, either through shrinking or expansions of habitat, we will retain conflict.

Thank you Mr. Spockz.

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