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India to surpass China as most populous country in 2023: U.N. report (reuters.com)
2 points by samspenc on July 12, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments



The maximal world population is on track to be 10b by 2080. But, this is a slowdown. It's wonderful that even under eradication of disease, we can see the trend flatten, the economics of childbirth are strong proof that more wealthy economies have lower birthrate.

We don't have to go to Soylent Green to solve the worlds problems. At present, there are just under 8b people and it's estimated we mal-apportion and waste a significant proportion of food, so its tenable to argue that climate aside, we can feed 10b with what we know we can do growing food for 8b, if we distribute it better and waste less. "If" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there and I expect both AGW, and continued food waste and malapportionment will plague the world.

It is also worth bearing this trendline in mind discussing Covid. the deathrate under covid has soared: It's not fundamentally altering this trajectory, as much as eradication of malaria and malnutrition will: If parents see less child death, they will seek less child birth.


> we can feed 10b with what we know we can do growing food for 8b

But what about giving them other things like homes, phones, tvs, educating them, cars etc? Food is just one of the issues, the larger question is- will rest of the society treat them with respect - even if they are not useful to society? Looking at all the homeless in one of the richest cities in the world, my guess is no.




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