09-18-2017, 01:31 PM
(09-18-2017, 09:30 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:(09-16-2017, 10:39 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: > Wars, even crisis wars, do not generally result in a reduction in
> the number of people. For example, the US had a higher population
> in 1865 than in 1860, despite the terrible toll of the Civil
> War.
...
So there's really no choice. There has to be something -- wars of
extermination, disease, famine -- at regular intervals to redress this
imbalance. And that's why it has to be true that generational Crisis
wars have to kill off enough people so that everyone else can be fed.
However, the exact mechanisms that bring that about have to be
researched.
Sure, there's something. It's not war, though; local depopulation through war cannot solve the problem when overall population still increases.
In addition, agricultural output has actually outpaced population growth so far in the industrial age. That will of course end eventually, but in the meantime, we still have crises, so they're not just driven by population growth outstripping food production.
