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From: mcgeer%ji@UCBVAX.BERKELEY.EDU (Rick McGeer)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re:  Response to Keith Lynch's anti-mathematical flame
Message-ID: <8603102111.AA25770@ji.berkeley.edu>
Date: Mon, 10-Mar-86 16:11:45 EST
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Posted: Mon Mar 10 16:11:45 1986
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"For food grows like 1,2,3, and man liek 2,4,8..."

Malthus had fun extrapolating exponential growth curves, too.  So did
Forrester and Ehrlich.  Doomsday hasn't hit yet, and it doesn't look any
more likely to me than when Malthus wrote, or Forrester.

Exponential growth curves *always* flatten, for one reason or another.
Populations either get seriously whacked (a plague, war) or get rich and
thus stop breeding.  [True enough -- as Lady Jackson used to point out,
on a national scale the only *sure* method of birth control is national
wealth.  The United States would currently be suffering a population
*decline* if it were not for immigration.  Try that the next time some
character flames away about breeding like flies in East LA!]  For
this reason, space may well be the solution to our future population
problems, not because a significant percentage of humanity will emigrate,
but because space is gonna make us all stinking rich.

					-- Rick.