
The New Population Bomb: Four Mega Trends That Will Change the World - robg
http://www.scribd.com/doc/24424882/The-New-Population-Bomb-the-Four-Mega-Trends-That-Will-Change-the-World
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ryanwaggoner
I fucking hate Scribd; here is the original article:

<http://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/65877>

And PDF version:

[http://andrewgrahamnyc.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/the-
new-p...](http://andrewgrahamnyc.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/the-new-
population-bomb.pdf)

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Sukotto
Scribd: bringing the worst of flash and PDF together in one annoying package.

Thanks for the links. I wish I could mod you up more than just +1

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billswift
I love your description of Scribd - does anyone here know what audience scribd
was intended for or what problem it was supposed to address? I can't see any
possible benefit from the way it works and wonder what I am missing.

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ryanwaggoner
The cynic in me says that the problem they were attempting to address was the
lack of money in their pocket, and the solution they came up with was to
release a platform ostensibly about displaying PDF files for the web (which is
ridiculous to start with, but whatever), so they could get users to steal
other people's content for them, and then run ads against that content.
Huzzah!

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CWuestefeld
Only read half so far, but so far it's interesting.

It's NOT just a return to Malthus and Ehrlich, although the latter is cited
several times as a sort of parallel. Even so, I think they miss the point of
why Ehrlich lost his wager with Simon. While it's true that prosperity is
helped by constant increases in manpower, it's not the biggest factor.

Our climbing prosperity is primarily due to improving know-how. And barring
really extreme circumstances, we're not going to forget the technology that
has allowed us to feed more with less work, and other feats.

That technology will still exist into the future, and because IP isn't
rivalrous (claims of Disney and RIAA notwithstanding), it'll be available the
whole world.

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billswift
>due to improving know-how

The biggest factor is _educated_ manpower. That is more important than any
other factor by a fairly large margin. Not least because increasing manpower
even without education increases market size, which is an independent benefit
of its own.

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joubert
I can't read this on my iPad.

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davi
Former CIA director agreed: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=414373>

(Link to this speech has now changed to: [https://www.cia.gov/news-
information/speeches-testimony/spee...](https://www.cia.gov/news-
information/speeches-testimony/speeches-testimony-archive-2008/landon-lecture-
series.html))

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applicative
The update on ye olde population hysteria seems to be this: Erlich thought
there would be too many people. He was wrong, but he didn't distinguish
between people. The real problem will be that will be too many of _the wrong
kind of people_ ... foreigners mostly.

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tjoozeylabs
Magnificent article, a great read

