The world's population should be at most 50 million.

[Rev. Rye]

We may be able to increase the amount of resources (presuming we can somehow halt global warming or create sustainable resources to replace the non-renewable ones) in concert with our population growth, but it'll probably not mean that much if we can't create social roles for people to fill. We've already got a generation of people who've reached employment age and found that there weren't any jobs to get, and if there were, credential creep ensures many will never be qualified enough to get them.





Some have said Calhoun's experiments are less applicable to humans because, well, the mice were trapped, and unlike the natural thing they do when peak social density was reached, they couldn't find someplace to colonise that had resources, and, most importantly, not a shitton of other mice to deal with. But, these days, humans really aren't that different in this regard. If you've ever tried moving house, it's a logistical nightmare, and hinges on actually finding another place to move to, often in a place that's not too differently populated from the place you left behind. And even then, there's still psychological ties that may prevent one from doing so, ultimately trapping people in the same place like they're in The Exterminating Angel.

But still, it's not like there's much of a practical solution that doesn't involve killing a shitton of people. And now, Avengers: Infinity War may very well be my favourite film of 2018 so far because someone manages to do it, albeit by killing off half the life in the universe randomly.





#thanosdidnothingwrong. I've said before that I recently watched the entire MCU in order specifically to lead up to this one moment, by the way. This is what being part of the solution looks like. Why, yes, it does suck that things are so messed up that I think this is a viable solution. And even then, things may just get worse again.