patrick.net

Yet still can't afford to stop growing.

Why? The USA was prosperous with 200 million, and would still be prosperous if we went back to that number. In fact, we would have more resources to go around.

Exactly why does the population need to grow?

Heraclitusstudent says

declining birth rates is only one way to get to the problem.

Absolutely correct. It would be logical to educate 3rd world in contraception and family planning, and perhaps provide FREE! contraceptives. But JESUS! and MOHAMMAD! are against family planning, so ain't gonna happen.

First world is already at or below reproduction levels, so no worries there. Even most of Latin America and SE Asia are catching up.

I can guarantee you that first world technology and innovation will solve any over population or climate problems WAY before eco-story teller SJWs like Al Gore and his cult.

Heraclitusstudent says

Not sure how you link AGW with immigration, and/or declining birthrate.

Europe for the most part has a below replacement birth rate. The Non-immigrant Americans are pretty much at replacement rate, 2.1 We could easily lower than by demanding sterilization of welfare hoes after baby #2 to continue benefits. Japan, Argentina, and several other 1st and 2nd world countries have birth rates near or below replacement rates.

However, immigrants typically have at least 3 kids per woman, esp. in Europe. One Honduran lady in the Caravan said she has 8.

This is the main reason Corpratists and Leftists want immigrants. The first wants high rents and low wages, which a shrinking population endangers. One knows that an aging population is more conservative while the relatively fewer youth will inherit without distribution to many more siblings, thus becoming richer and more conservative.

Who uses more CO2, developed or undeveloped countries?

Why bring in fecund people whose CO2 emissions will triple the moment they arrive, and have more kids to boot? How does that help the environment?

Why not advocate closed borders and high tariffs, buying only raw materials from the Third World like coffee and copper? And ban all medical and food aid?

That would not only control the population - Botswana can't make 95% of the medicine or medical equipment it uses - but reduce CO2 emmissions.

Goran_K says

I can guarantee you that first world technology and innovation will solve any over population or climate problems WAY before eco-story teller SJWs like Al Gore and his cult.

Yes, Malthus was wrong. Technology has far outstripped population growth. The real key is to stop subsidizing Third Worlders

People don't understand how third worlders operate - they run the AC at full blast with the front door open, they don't have the rubber stopper thing under doors, they throw trash out the window circa Route 66 in 1954. They can't maintain their birthrate without Western Assistance, so let's stop Assisting.

Heraclitusstudent says

First world needs the growth. When you stop growing, you've de facto hit the side of the dish.

If you believe that, you don’t even understand your original post. With the above statement, you’re conflating economic growth requirements with natural resource/waste disposal requirements for a population. They aren’t the same at all. Clearly! Because most of the world is not living in luxury like we are in the USA! Horrible economies also support large populations!

In order to have an argument, you have to stay on topic. You can’t suddenly bring up that time I said your mother looked fat in that outfit.
(Wonder if she’ll get this? Teehee!)

TwoScoopsOfSpaceForce says

Yes, Malthus was wrong. Technology has far outstripped population growth. The real key is to stop subsidizing Third Worlders

People don't understand how third worlders operate - they run the AC at full blast with the front door open, they don't have the rubber stopper thing under doors, they throw trash out the window circa Route 66 in 1954. They can't maintain their birthrate without Western Assistance, so let's stop Assisting.

Truth.

The third world has a lot of the same qualities as the Democrat controlled inner cities: poor housing conditions, destruction of the nuclear family, handout dependent population, generational poverty.

This is what leftism results in 100 out of 100 times. You can't expect people who are dependent on handouts to ever pull themselves out of poverty without letting them grow on their own. You're simply creating slaves to a socialized system. Which is what leftist/democrats want which is why most of their policies are against the nuclear family. Poor people and social instability keeps them in power.

Goran_K says

This is what leftism results in 100 out of 100 times. You can't expect people who are dependent on handouts to ever pull themselves out of poverty without letting them grow on their own. You're simply creating slaves to a socialized system. Which is what leftist/democrats want which is why most of their policies are against the nuclear family. Poor people and social instability keeps them in power.

Exactly.

Again, going back to that Honduran woman. She's probably had several divorces and "shack up studs" as Dr. Laura used to put it. Yet she is relocating, presumably leaving her kids in Honduras, and she'll probably get knocked up or drop inside the USA. Something a woman would have been ostracized from her village in her Grandma's day. Her fecundity is only possible because of token welfare benefits, generous foreign aid for "Mothers", and the breakdown of the family structure. All of which are caused by Leftism.

We need to make a deal with Mexico to build a maternity holding facility inside Mexico, so when pregnant Central Americans give birth after being caught by the BP, it's not on US Territory. It would have to be expressly designed as a Mexican Area with Mexican laws, simply leased as an operations center for the BP, so nobody can claim it's under US law.

TwoScoopsOfSpaceForce says

Exactly.

Again, going back to that Honduran woman. She's probably had several divorces and "shack up studs" as Dr. Laura used to put it. Yet she is relocating, presumably leaving her kids in Honduras, and she'll probably get knocked up or drop inside the USA. Something a woman would have been ostracized from her village in her Grandma's day. Her fecundity is only possible because of token welfare benefits, generous foreign aid for "Mothers", and the breakdown of the family structure. All of which are caused by Leftism.

We don't even have to look at the third world. Let's look here in America.

After LBJ (racist Democrat president who said he'd have "niggers" voting Democrat for 200 years):



The "Great Society" program was planned by a Democrat to keep blacks and other minorities dependent on the government and it has worked with startling success.

TwoScoopsOfSpaceForce says

Europe for the most part has a below replacement birth rate. The Non-immigrant Americans are pretty much at replacement rate. Japan, Argentina, and several other 1st and 2nd world countries have birth rates near or below replacement rates.

Most of the world is now at or below replacement rate. In map below, green, yellow, and red are above. Dark blue is below, lighter blue at about replacement.

Heraclitusstudent says

First world needs the growth. When you stop growing, you've de facto hit the side of the dish.

Totally false. Trees don't grow to the sky, and forests don't cover the whole planet, yet both have survived for billions of years.

Some first world countries have committed to debts and Ponzi pension schemes based on calculations that assume growth. They go to desperate lengths, including importing Muslims who hate them, to avoid the recalculations and possible haircuts that stability would require. Importing invaders who hate your civilization and will destroy it is a potentially civilization ending event. Financial recalculation, even bankruptcy or monetizing debt, can be extremely painful but does not necessarily end a civilization. Advancing technology and productivity is a better way to achieve growth without relying on immigration, especially immigrants who hate us. We don't need population growth, and we don't even really need economic growth.

Another way to illustrate the economic growth fallacy is to look at the combination of Obamneycare and the subsidies for the unhealthiest foods, e.g. soybean oil and corn syrup. You can subsidize unhealthy foods and then subsidize medicating the consequences, and the increase in spending will appear to cause GDP growth, but the people are unhealthy and miserable and dying. We have been subsidizing OxyContin and the resulting overdoses, and life expectancy has fallen. GDP is not wealth, and certainly not health.

Fetishizing GDP growth is a mistake. You could have a happier and healthier USA with a smaller GDP, although it would require some readjustments to the debt and pension Ponzi schemes. The merchants of war and the merchants of debt (but I repeat myself) tend to insist that we must increase GDP to pay the debts and pensions, but that is an artificial requirement that they have imagined or imposed. It is not an inherent requirement for a civilization or a species, and it is not even necessarily healthy. War can also increase GDP, and yet be extremely unhealthy, and Obamneycare is reducing life expectancy nationwide at a scale seldom seen outside war or epidemic.

Love these debates. So many knowledgeable people here.

Heraclitusstudent says

Saying we will survive by shooting at everything that comes doesn't quite cut it. No one here has what it takes to do that.

It would give me a boner to mow down illegals with a M134 as they stepped foot across the border.

Goran_K says

Love these debates. So many knowledgeable people here.

Thanks!

curious2 says

Totally false. Trees don't grow to the sky, and forests don't cover the whole planet, yet both have survived for billions of years.

Except unlike forests we are not in an equilibrium with an ecosystem.
We are an outbreak species, just like protozoa on a petri dish. Please listen to the talk I linked at the top.

curious2 says

Fetishizing GDP growth

Quigley says

If you believe that, you don’t even understand your original post. With the above statement, you’re conflating economic growth requirements with natural resource/waste disposal requirements for a population. They aren’t the same at all. Clearly! Because most of the world is not living in luxury like we are in the USA! Horrible economies also support large populations!

I'm clearly not talking of GDP growth. I'm talking of growth of humanity taken as a single organism. We consume energy, consume resources and have individual roles doing that. The economy is just how we process energy, and GDP is one measure of that. So economic growth in that sense is a proxy.

People who have lived their entire lives in a growing society simply cannot imagine how toxic that society would become if it were but stagnating.
While I'm not talking of economic growth, the closest experience we have is a growth recession. So imagine a permanent growth recession. Imagine the political and societal implications. There is simply no historical example of such stagnating society that survived for very long.

TwoScoopsOfSpaceForce says

Yes, Malthus was wrong. Technology has far outstripped population growth. The real key is to stop subsidizing Third Worlders

Malthus was totally right. Population growth is obviously very limited and the case can already be made that we are overshooting the environment. Just count dead zones in the ocean.

Once the rest of world starts looking like Haiti, you will be invaded.

Goran_K says

I can guarantee you that first world technology and innovation will solve any over population or climate problems WAY before eco-story teller SJWs like Al Gore and his cult.

Technology is what enabled the outbreak, so, so far at least, it is the problem, not the solution.

Booger says

It would give me a boner to mow down illegals with a M134 as they stepped foot across the border.

I'm sure we have enough psychos to do that, but the rest of the US population will not allow it to happen.

Heraclitusstudent says

We are an outbreak species, just like protozoa on a petri dish. Please listen to the talk I linked at the top.

For many reasons, we are not "just like protozoa." We have self-awareness and other interests besides survival and reproduction; in fact, advanced civilizations are not even maintaining replacement rate.

Also, although I read very widely, I am not going to listen to whatever "talk" has hypnotized you into believing obviously false things. Scott Adams used to blog, but he had studied hypnosis and has now switched from blogging to vlogging, including a periodic "group sip" (of coffee or something) during his talks. I used to read his blog, but I do not watch his group hypnosis, and I am not going to listen to whatever "talk" has fooled you into believing obviously false things. Believing you are "just like protozoa" is very similar to flapping your arms and clucking like a chicken: it shows hypnosis, not reason. Claiming to be "just like protozoa" persuades me not to listen to your chosen hypnotist, just as if you were clucking like a chicken and flapping your arms: it is a caution, not an encouragement.

Heraclitusstudent says

Once the rest of world starts looking like Haiti, you will be invaded.

Haiti is incapable of invading the USA if the USA chooses not to be invaded by Haiti. These are policy choices. You make assumptions about political will, but those assumptions can be disproved.

Heraclitusstudent says

There is simply no historical example of such stagnating society that survived for very long.

Again, that is obviously false. Neanderthals survived for longer than all of human history, with little or no growth in GDP during most of that time. For most of human history, GDP growth was low, often negative due to plagues. There is no historical example of birth control, nor modern western living, so you are extrapolating from famines and plagues to assume what would happen in the case of gradual reduction in population numbers. Your extrapolation is false for several reasons, but perhaps most interesting it ignores the different effects of plagues in various parts of Europe: population reduction caused suffering in societies where the nobility controlled all the land and made the serfs work harder, but it caused higher wages in societies where scarce labor had more bargaining power. In the past, famines and plagues and wars were about the only way to reduce population, and technology enabled humans to spread further and conquer other humans, but that changed in the 20th century with birth control. We see current westerners living comfortably while reproducing at less than replacement level, due to advances in technology.

curious2 says

For many reasons, we are not "just like protozoa." We have self-awareness and other interests besides survival and reproduction; in fact, advanced civilizations are not even maintaining replacement rate.

The entire point of this thread was to discuss the talk I posted. So if you are not listening it, that kind of defeats the point, isn't it?

And of course we are not in many ways "like protozoa". But we might be similar in the ways nature deal with outbreak species. In particular there is no sign that "self-awareness" leads to any smart control in the way we collectively spread and grow. So the differences with protozoa, while obvious, may not matter as much as you think.


curious2 says

These are policy choices. You make assumptions about political will, but those assumptions can be disproved.

I just answered the point that we can let the third world sink. But this doesn't matter to the point of this thread. What applies to the entire world, also applies to the USA taken in isolation.


curious2 says

Neanderthals survived for longer than all of human history, with little or no growth in GDP during most of that time.

Neanderthals were never an "outbreak species". But they first grew is number, then decreased, and went extinct.
Hardly an encouraging example.

curious2 says

We see current westerners living comfortably while reproducing at less than replacement level, due to advances in technology.

BS. Westerner societies have generally growing populations, or are simply benefiting from being part of a growing world. None of this is representative of what will happen in a stagnating /decreasing world.

Heraclitusstudent says

Technology is what enabled the outbreak, so, so far at least, it is the problem, not the solution.

No, bad policies enabled the outbreak.

The third world would not have the problem you're describing without 1st world welfare.

I think the humanity problem will solve itself, and not in a very pleasant way. Please read about Calhoun mice experiments:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun

After day 600, the social breakdown continued and the population declined toward extinction. During this period females ceased to reproduce. Their male counterparts withdrew completely, never engaging in courtship or fighting and only engaging in tasks that were essential to their health. They ate, drank, slept, and groomed themselves – all solitary pursuits. Sleek, healthy coats and an absence of scars characterized these males. They were dubbed "the beautiful ones." Breeding never resumed and behavior patterns were permanently changed.

The conclusions drawn from this experiment were that when all available space is taken and all social roles filled, competition and the stresses experienced by the individuals will result in a total breakdown in complex social behaviors, ultimately resulting in the demise of the population.

Calhoun saw the fate of the population of mice as a metaphor for the potential fate of man. He characterized the social breakdown as a "second death," with reference to the "second death" mentioned in the Biblical book of Revelation 2:11.[1] His study has been cited by writers such as Bill Perkins as a warning of the dangers of living in an "increasingly crowded and impersonal world."[3]

Heraclitusstudent says

The entire point of this thread was to discuss the talk I posted. So if you are not listening it, that kind of defeats the point, isn't it?

That's like saying you want to discuss a bad investment, but only with people who intend to buy it. Perhaps you should post a transcript of the "talk", including any subliminal components and audio cues.

Heraclitusstudent says

Japan is at the top of the game so that it can keep growing economically by exporting to a growing world. But I don't think it is obvious they could do it in isolation.

LOL! Japan having net export means it is producing more than it consumes. Innovation and production are the keys to maintaining/improving living standards and answer to how to support not only 10 billion people on this planet, but also eventually 100 billion (or more) people on this planet!

BTW, Japan is actually not self-sufficient in food production (import staple food), whereas the Phillipines actually is (and export staple food). So if the reality were anywhere close to the planet is approaching carry capacity (i.e. on the verge of starvation), Japan would have a hard time paying for the staple food import (and oil import) by selling the electronics and cars that they export.

Therein lies the real problem with the premise behind the original question: the idea of carrying capacity for a rapidly technologically advancing human society is silly. Carrying capacity is only a real problem for an economy that only knows simple replication: like that of the protozoa and all the education-centric societies that only make copies and scale up numerically (they have to deal with mass die-off cycles, like the French Revolution, German World Wars, Soviet/Chinese/communist mass starvation and gulag camps. The entrepreneurship/commerce-centric societies can find new solutions and new ways to support additional population: via open competition in a relatively free market place. For example, if we only need to maintain the food composition of mid-20th century, then even today's corn and soy output can support 10 billion people: just by feeding people less meat. Our technological progress on food production is actually out-pacing population growth, and that's why we can afford to have a higher percentage of meat in our diet worldwide. In case anyone hasn't been paying attention, meat prices (from beef to hog to chicken to milk) have collapsed in recent months.

I'm no fan of GDP (IMHO, it's a fraudulent set of statistics equating government waste to real productivity; I had many debates on this against IWOG many years ago). The real problem with a shrinking GDP would be debt service problem: our monetary system is based on debt money creation. Shrinking GDP would mean not having enough money in circulation to service existing debt, and many institutions and individuals would face bankruptcy. If it's just various government institutions going bankrupt, that wouldn't be a bad thing. However, governments tend to become violent when they face bankruptcy.

BTW, I believe I have mentioned this before: "resources" is a false concept planted in the minds of over-educated people with too little real market exposure and not insight enough to be perceptive about real life experience vs. textbook concept. Think about everything you have touched since getting up this morning; besides the free air, was there a single thing that you have touched/consumed during the whole day that is not the fruit of someone else' labor?

In a relatively free market place, an average individual in society would be a net resource-generator. It is the welfare system that turns too many people into net resource sinks that make a society unsustainable.

In summary, it's not the population count that is the problem, but the count of free-loaders and dead-weights (created by a rotting societal structure).

curious2 says

Financial recalculation, even bankruptcy or monetizing debt, can be extremely painful but does not necessarily end a civilization

This.

The Babylonians did small ones every 7 years and big ones every 49 years to keep their credit based system (which actually predates currency by thousands of years) afloat.

We know it via the BIble as a "Jubilee"

dr6B says

Most of the world is now at or below replacement rate. In map below, green, yellow, and red are above. Dark blue is below, lighter blue at about replacement.

Great News!

curious2 says

Advancing technology and productivity is a better way to achieve growth without relying on immigration, especially immigrants who hate us. We don't need population growth, and we don't even really need economic growth.

One thing we could do is look beyond Light Water Reactors and consider Sterling Engines/Molten Salt Plants, smaller in scale, but more of them.

Heraclitusstudent says

Malthus was totally right. Population growth is obviously very limited and the case can already be made that we are overshooting the environment. Just count dead zones in the ocean.

Once the rest of world starts looking like Haiti, you will be invaded.

But he was wrong. Since he made his prediction, humanity has increased in size several fold, but wealth has increased even more substantially; not just absolutely but per capita.

I'd much rather be an Mumbai Carpet Weaver OR a Manchester Janitor today than in 1820.

My God we are even supporting alcoholics on the dole and not even requiring they go to the Poor House or Botany Bay. We pay people just to get drunk and watch Sally Jesse Rafael or whatever the current equivalent is.

Goran_K says

The third world would not have the problem you're describing without 1st world welfare.

1. The Black Plague was a great thing in Europe! It gave the serfs and journeymen "crofters " a ton of political power and increased ability to innovate. It weakened the nobility as well, and gave an extra kick in the ass the re-implementation of old technologies like the wind and water mills.

Rather than sending Europe into a dark spiral of death, the Black Plagues and the NAO disruption ("The Year without a Summer") launched a pantload of social and technological transformations.

2. Absolutely correct. The populations would decline to a level that is more sustainable, and then slow and increasing contact and trade would emerge, instead of a barbarous rabble fighting over scraps with a handful of warlords and their relatives made milionaires and living in NYC as UN Representatives

The best thing for Africa would be to cut them off from the world, though that's unrealistic. Very quickly the murder rate would drop via famine, disease, and running out of bullets and even machetes.

HEYYOU says

I love debates especially when I can delete comments that don't completely agree with me.
3? 6? 8? 12? 21? 22? 23?

The comments were not deleted. A growing number of people are choosing to ignore you, because your posts and comments have become so obviously unhinged. Seriously, honestly, you should quit or change whatever drugs you have been taking, or seek help, because something is definitely wrong. That is not to insult you. It is intended to save your life.

Goran_K says

No, bad policies enabled the outbreak.

Bad policies enabled the "outbreak"?
Jeeez, if you listened to the material I posted you would understand the meaning of work "outbreak" in this context: i.e. humanity started to grow beyond the limit of equilibrium with its ecological environment. Contrary to most other species in nature.
Clearly GOOD policies enabled the outbreak.

curious2 says

That's like saying you want to discuss a bad investment, but only with people who intend to buy it. Perhaps you should post a transcript of the "talk", including any subliminal components and audio cues.

If you don't understand the thesis made in the original post, then why would you feel you can comment on it?
Are you afraid to be "hypnotized" by a 10min talk?

Reality says

the idea of carrying capacity for a rapidly technologically advancing human society is silly.

Divide the land area of this planet by 10 square feet lots, I can assure you you'll get a finite number.
I can also assure you the planet has a "carrying capacity" that is less than that number.
Who is silly, really?

And btw, counting on exponential technological progress to forever support your exponential growth is also silly.
This assumes that the rate of technological innovation will get continually faster and faster, forever. That's an idea as silly as claiming that the idea of "carrying capacity" is silly.

When I was in school in the final quarter of 20th century, I too was taught that the Black Death was a great thing for Europe. Over time, however, I realized there were several problems with that narrative:

1. The Middleast was just as devastated by the Black Death / Great Plague as Europe was (if not more so), but they didn't seem to have reaped any of the alleged benefits typically ascribed to the 30-60% population reduction.

2. Far higher percentage of people in the cities died than the percentage in the country side. 50-60% in major cities such as Paris, Hamburg, Bremen, whereas the countryside in Germany and England had death rates around 20%. That couldn't have been good for commerce; nor craftsman (in the cities) or the serfs/peasants (less market demand for food going into cities).

What I suspect really happened to benefit western Europe were:

1. The drastic reduction of existing banking centers (e.g. the population of Florence was reduced by 60-70%) and administrative centers and their dependent population (i.e. the urban poor and the wasteful rich that had become a tax/interest burden on the rest of the society especially farmers outside the cities). Because the economy was heavily agricultural at that time, the reduction of urban population as ratio to rural population served as a tax-reduction on the rural farmer population.

2. Disruption of Mediterranean trade (especially from Egypt and from Black Sea bread-baskets) removed the price cap on farm output from Western European farms (which didn't have the most productive farms, due to weather, compared to Egypt and Black Sea coast)

3. The mass death of the clergy (serving final rites) put in people's mind that the clergyman was perhaps not as godly, giving rise to religious reformation

4. The Black Death hit the Islamic empires even worse, causing to implode, giving Western European Christinadom an opportunity to "reconquest" (i.e. Spanish reconquest of Iberia from the "moors" accelerated shortly).

Heraclitusstudent says

And btw, counting on exponential technological progress to forever support your exponential growth is also silly.
This assumes that the rate of technological innovation will get continually faster and faster, forever. That's an idea as silly as claiming that the idea of "carrying capacity" is silly.

The rate of technological innovation has geometrically increased every century since the beginning of the industrial revolution. That’s over 250 years.

What data do you have that it will actually slow?

Heraclitusstudent says

Reality says

the idea of carrying capacity for a rapidly technologically advancing human society is silly.

Divide the land area of this planet by 10 square feet lots, I can assure you you'll get a finite number.
I can also assure you the planet has a "carrying capacity" that is less than that number.
Who is silly, really?

The total number of hydrogen atoms in the Sun is also finite. Why is solar energy considered a "regenerative energy source"?

A finite number can be so large that, in practical terms it's unlimited.

Here's a back of the envelope calculation: the earth's surface area is 196.9 million square miles, or 5.1 trillion acres! That's 51 acres of either land or water-front property per person even when the earth has 100 billion human population! If there is enough technology to spread people out entirely evenly (like you suggested). If the technology exists to grow corn at current per acre rate (150 bushels per acre), that's over 7500 bushels or over 400,000 pounds of corn per person per year; even if producing meat via the very inefficient cattle at 10:1 feed-to-meat ratio (instead of the typical fish at 2:1 feed to meat ratio), that would be 40,000 pounds of meat per person per year, or over 100lbs of meat per person per day! That's with 100 billion human population! with everyone gorging on beef (one of the most wasteful/luxurious ways of producing food) instead of eating corn directly. We are far far away from the earth's carry capacity.

BTW, the conversion rate between corn and ethanol is about 21.6 pounds of corn per gallon of fuel produced. So, setting aside 20,000 pounds of corn to give everyone steak for brunch and steak for dinner every day (would require much less corn if you prefer fish, chicken, milk or eggs), the remaining 380,000 lbs of corn per person can produce 17,600 gallons of fuel per person per year! I don't know about you, but I burned less than 1000 gallons of fuel in the past year.

Heraclitusstudent says

If you don't understand the thesis made in the original post, then why would you feel you can comment on it?

I saw the obvious error in what you wrote, and SIWOTI did the rest.

Heraclitusstudent says

Are you afraid to be "hypnotized" by a 10min talk?

No, but I will not give it another view/download whatever metric they count. It has obviously only damaged your perspective, or confirmed some bias you wanted to believe. I see no benefit in wasting time listening to it.

As for tech, we're right now, somewhere in that early to mid-S curve zone for so-called nanotechnology where design/building on the molecular level is petering out, with existing tools, for the next wave to pull it into another geometric ascension.

Eventually, what that will mean is that we'll be able to construct things on a molecular scale, just like we could on a bulk scale, during the mid-20th century.



So if that's the case then we'll have solar satellites (note: not stupid panels on ppl's houses), microwaving energy everywhere on earth for assemblers to build anything we want and need, including food. Yes, that's the year 2200!

Reality says

A finite number can be so large that, in practical terms it's unlimited.

We also have all the energy coming from the rest of the Milky Way, so I wouldn't be too concerned about the Sun mailing it in.

Reality says

1. The drastic reduction of existing banking centers (e.g. the population of Florence was reduced by 60-70%) and administrative centers and their dependent population (i.e. the urban poor and the wasteful rich that had become a tax/interest burden on the rest of the society especially farmers outside the cities). Because the economy was heavily agricultural at that time, the reduction of urban population as ratio to rural population served as a tax-reduction on the rural farmer population.

In 1200 before the plague, metropolises were considered Cologne (biggest city in the Germanies, I believe) with 40,000. Aachen and Trier, big Wool Trade cities, maybe 20,000, also considered massive in their time. 40,000 is about the population of (Greater) Eureka, California. The only city remotely sizable was Naples, mostly because of it's well preserved Roman infrastructure.

London had maybe 30,000, and the second biggest city in England, by far, was Bristol with a whopping 12,000 people. Rome maybe had 40,000 permanent residents in a fraction of the area Roman Rome was.

In contrast, the Renaissance that launched in the 1300s featured the explosion of cities, including of course Florence. But also London, Paris, Milan, and many other cities

1200s Europe was definitely far more agrarian than the centuries after it.

What should be revised is the overreaction to making the Dark Ages less Dark. From a population, technological development, trade, and economic/standard of living perspective, the Collapse of the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages were definitely, definitely Dark. Thatched Houses reappear in Italy for the first time in a millenium.