Talking about population numbers, what should we consider to be a long term sustainable population figure? Eight billion or more? Less than that? Or is perpetual growth a possibility?
At out current tech level it's about 12 billion, and it will only continue.to go up from there.
Long term sustainable?
Yes.
And it we could significantly mitigate the corruption in third world nations, that number would probably go even higher. When you have mostly free markets and fair trade, more people results in higher productivity on a per person basis. Think specialization and division of labor. The more people you have, the more each can produce, the more people you can support.
Yet everything that is produced comes from raw materials, growing, mining, processing, construction, clearing land for more housing, supply of building materials, etcetera.
