Stats for nerds
2recommend
12mentions
2people
2019–2024years
92% recommend8% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- > The relationship of absolute population size to progress may be one of the most important facts about human history and why we only developed shockingly recently.
Dr. Robert Zubrin said this in Merchants of Despair, which is the most important book published this century. Just read the first chapter. There are 2 graphs that changed my thinking.
It is illogical to ask for green tech to clean up the environment while also asking for population reduction because a smaller population means fewer inventions.
- Very true.
The most important book written in the 21st Century is Dr. Robert Zubrin's "Merchants of Despair." Just read the first chapter is all you need to absorb.
OTOH, I would love for someone to disprove Dr. Zubrin's claims.
- Before you decide whether "Limits to Growth" is credible, please read just the first chapter from Dr. Robert Zubrin's "Merchants of Despair."
IMO, "Merchants of Despair" is the most important book of the 21st Century so far.
Dr. Zubrin points out that every person is given a mith to eat and a pair of hands to work and a brain to invent.
- Yes, Dr. Zubrin's models can be peer reviewed.
The more dense the population, the higher the per-capita GDP.
The more man-lives we have records of, the more technology we have access to. Inventions are directly correlated to man-lives (or man-years) we have records of.
Read the first chapter of Merchants of Despair.
I see a lot of silly criticisms in this thread. I want to point out the one point Dr. Zubrin makes brilliantly: Mathus' and the Club of Rome's claim that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. History shows us that that is not the case. As our population increased over thousands of years of recorded history, we did not become poorer or unable to feed ourselves. Instead, as our population went up, our per-capita GDP increased and the percentage of our income we spent to feed ourselves decreased.
Please, prove me wrong. Prove Dr. Zubrin wrong.
I will not address other silly straw-man arguments.
- I will repeat this because people want to launch off-topic attacks:
The more dense the population, the higher the per-capita GDP.
The more man-lives we have records of, the more technology we have access to. Inventions are directly correlated to man-lives (or man-years) we have records of.
Mathus' and the Club of Rome's claim that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. History shows us that that is not the case. As our population increased over thousands of years of recorded history, we did not become poorer or unable to feed ourselves. Instead, as our population went up, our per-capita GDP increased and the percentage of our income we spent to feed ourselves decreased.
Please, prove me wrong. Read the first chapter of Merchants of Despair and prove Dr. Zubrin wrong.
- I will repeat this because people want to launch off-topic attacks:
The more dense the population, the higher the per-capita GDP.
The more man-lives we have records of, the more technology we have access to. Inventions are directly correlated to man-lives (or man-years) we have records of.
Mathus' and the Club of Rome's claim that food production and wealth can not scale with the population is absurd. History shows us that that is not the case. As our population increased over thousands of years of recorded history, we did not become poorer or unable to feed ourselves. Instead, as our population went up, our per-capita GDP increased and the percentage of our income we spent to feed ourselves decreased.
Please, prove me wrong. Read the first chapter of Merchants of Despair and prove Dr. Zubrin wrong.
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