I remember a discussion of population growth as a "healthy" thing. Was discussing immigration as a way of bringing in younger people into the population to help sustain the "young to old" ratio in a more favorable tilt (more young people to support the old people.) VERY short term thinking, as those new YOUNG people eventually will BECOME the OLD people, so you are creating a Ponzi scheme were you have to continue to swell the population to sustain the right "young to old" ratio. Whether the max this planet can support is 4 billion or 10 billion or 50 billion, the point is that it is NOT infinity and if the population continues to grow it will eventually hit that point UNLESS something (war, famine, disease, or voluntary or enforced reduction of procreation occurs.)
Bringing this back to Rocketry topics, I think there was a time people thought eventually via space travel we would "export" the excess population to other planets. Not sure it ever was a viable idea. At this point we have at least two major problems.
First, we have yet to find ANYWHERE we can confidently send anyone to permanently set up shop (oh yeah, maybe we can SURVIVE on Mars, but thrive?) Our survey of the nearby galactic neighborhood hasn't come up with any really strong candidates either. I still enjoyed Heinlein's "Farmer in the Sky", unfortunately not realistic.
Second, we don't have (and aren't likely TO have) the technology to transport large numbers of people to the nearest PLANET let alone the nearest star system that MIGHT have an earthlike planet (funny, seems like every star had an earthlike planet on Star Trek.)
Had an idea for a Suspense/Thriller book/movie. Group of scientists are closing in on a cure for cancer. But one by one the group members start to die of suspicious causes. Turns out the government is knocking them off. Government knows that a cure for cancer would break the Medicare/SSN bank. Can you imagine what would happen to the U.S. population of nursing home patients if we cured cancer.
Of course, there is always the "Logan's Run" solution.
None of this stuff is new, by the way.
Thomas Robert Malthus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born
14 February 1766
Surrey, England
Died
29 December 1834 (aged 68)
Bath, England
Malthusian growth model
The Reverend (Thomas) Robert Malthus FRS (13 February 1766 23 December 1834[1]) was a British cleric and scholar, influential in the fields of political economy and demography.[2] Malthus himself used only his middle name Robert.[3]
Malthus became widely known for his theories about change in population. His An Essay on the Principle of Population observed that sooner or later population will be checked by famine and disease. He wrote in opposition to the popular view in 18th-century Europe that saw society as improving and in principle as perfectible.[4] He thought that the dangers of population growth precluded progress towards a utopian society: "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man".[5] As a cleric, Malthus saw this situation as divinely imposed to teach virtuous behaviour.[6] Malthus wrote:
That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence,
That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and,
That the superior power of population is repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice.[7]
