The New Population Bomb: Four Mega Trends That Will Change the World | Hacker News Reader

The New Population Bomb: Four Mega Trends That Will Change the World

scribd.com

32 pointsrobg12 comments

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I fucking hate Scribd; here is the original article:

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/65877

And PDF version:

http://andrewgrahamnyc.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/the-new-p...

Scribd: bringing the worst of flash and PDF together in one annoying package.

Thanks for the links. I wish I could mod you up more than just +1

I love your description of Scribd - does anyone here know what audience scribd was intended for or what problem it was supposed to address? I can't see any possible benefit from the way it works and wonder what I am missing.

The cynic in me says that the problem they were attempting to address was the lack of money in their pocket, and the solution they came up with was to release a platform ostensibly about displaying PDF files for the web (which is ridiculous to start with, but whatever), so they could get users to steal other people's content for them, and then run ads against that content. Huzzah!

I got a login required on the FA site. Thanks for the pdf.

Arg...I found it through Google, so they didn't give me that. Sorry :(

Only read half so far, but so far it's interesting.

It's NOT just a return to Malthus and Ehrlich, although the latter is cited several times as a sort of parallel. Even so, I think they miss the point of why Ehrlich lost his wager with Simon. While it's true that prosperity is helped by constant increases in manpower, it's not the biggest factor.

Our climbing prosperity is primarily due to improving know-how. And barring really extreme circumstances, we're not going to forget the technology that has allowed us to feed more with less work, and other feats.

That technology will still exist into the future, and because IP isn't rivalrous (claims of Disney and RIAA notwithstanding), it'll be available the whole world.

>due to improving know-how

The biggest factor is educated manpower. That is more important than any other factor by a fairly large margin. Not least because increasing manpower even without education increases market size, which is an independent benefit of its own.

I can't read this on my iPad.

Former CIA director agreed: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=414373

(Link to this speech has now changed to: https://www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches-testimony/spee...)

The update on ye olde population hysteria seems to be this: Erlich thought there would be too many people. He was wrong, but he didn't distinguish between people. The real problem will be that will be too many of the wrong kind of people ... foreigners mostly.

Magnificent article, a great read

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