Probably outdated but I'll include this 2012 study anyway (TLDR "no"):
Human population is projected to plateau at around ~10 billion, plus or minus a fudge factor
No advocating active population control.
Cuban living standards are said to be sustainable, though we probably could do a lot better if all technology was freely available to everyone and unlike Cuba we didn't have to work around sanctions.
Last time I divided the world gdp by population I believe it was around 14k, that's for every man, woman, other, and child. That goes a long way in some places but things would get more expensive if we evened out the wealth between countries. Still they'd be cheaper than current us prices. Production would go down a bit because people wouldn't be forced to work, but probably we wouldn't make as much stupid bullshit, let's call that a wash, so I reckon it's more than enough to put everyone at the level of a US lower middle class. Oh and call me a fascist but population would probably even out or drop in this scenario and that would've a good thing for the planet
what makes a population take ecofascist is when people start advocating for active population control, I think you're fine
Universal health care and sex ed and improving overall material conditions while also eliminating the millions (billions?) of bullshit jobs/work people are currently required to do would make socially necessary labor much more abundant. This alone would slow population growth.
Extreme armchair take but I think things could be pretty good, and in many ways better than they are now. We would have to forgo a lot of luxuries that even the poor in imperial countries take for granted - foodstuffs shipped from halfway across the globe, individual automobiles, abundant animal products, inexpensive electronics, and so forth. Much more focus on leveraging resources in a population's immediate surrounding area and less reliance on international shipping and global supply chains, though those would be used for essentials and what luxuries can be reasonably made available. On the other hand, much of the busy work we've made for ourselves and has been made for us would be gone. Most of the financial industry goes kaput, advertising is spun down to a much smaller public awareness initiative, and the newly freed up manpower from these and other vestigial sectors is allocated to more productive enterprises.
I don't know how helpful it is, but your question made me think about this representation of wealth redistribution. Without changing anything about our production or consumption, basically everyone outside Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand would gain wealth if it were to be meted out equally. Now what "wealth" constitutes is vague, but if there's even a loose correlation between it and tangible assets I think this is a positive sign. Again, this is not a particularly well informed opinion, but it seems reasonable to me that everyone could attain the same material quality of life as the lower US working class, but without all the maluses imposed upon them for suppression and wealth extraction. This all depends, of course, on absolute international cooperation and prioritization of a sustainable, equal future :copium:
two relevant hexbear threads about the doc "Planet of the Humans"
https://hexbear.net/post/52167
https://hexbear.net/post/21672
Also interested in rare earth takes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare-earth_element
They'd become more expensive to mine with the abolition of unsafe mines, but it looks like they can be recycled. No more upgrading your tech every year I guess.
1700s tech+
What is the +? Solar + wind in a very limited capacity, only when it’s available, and only for strictly essential things.
Not heating or cooling, not driving cars, likely not driving trains, not even electric light… basically refrigeration only. Battery banks for health care.
Imagine 1782 with modern hospitals and you’ve got it
I think this is basically how the Amish live
I think if we are not promethan about it, we could keep a higher level of development it really depends on stream lining and decarbonize steel and concrete production which is do able with current tech, I think the harder part of this the social acceptance aspect.
standard of living is so nebulous like its designed or simply exists in a conversation exalting consumption and i dont know we can really use the same terms envisaging a sustainable future
but i have high hopes for recycling. too many assume extraction is the way we make the trains and busses and public housing we require---when the very cars we want to get rid of, the burbs we want to depopulate---are full of already extracted and party processed resources
i should think if we melted down all the electronics we have & have thrown away everyone could get a reasonable amount. and there's so much waste in this world. all the crypto infrastructure, all the electronic surveillance, all the servers of bullshit jobs and bullshit data, all the call centers and all the advertisers... is there really not enough for everyone to get a phone or computer?
