How many human beings do you think are on the planet right now?

At the time of this writing there is about 8.1 billion

Meats X. We officially reached the 8 billion mark on November 15th

2022 according to estimates by the United Nations.

But how many people should be on Earth?

As far as how many people can Earth's limited resources comfortably provide quality lives for?

That is a more complicated question.

And it brings up all kinds of dystopian imagery,

like the 1973 film Soilent Green,

in which an overpopulated earth leads to the poor scrambling for food made from

human bodies after all the non-human natural food resources have been eliminated.

They're making our food out of people. Next thing they'll be breeding us like

cattle for food. You've got to tell them. You've got to tell them,

Soyent greed his people. Such a good Charlton Heston scene!

This dystopian fear can pretty much be traced back to one man, and it's not Charlton Heston.

Thomas Malthus, who posited in 1789 that while the population increases exponentially, the food supply and other resources increase linearly.

Linnerly, oh my god, linearly, there we go.

Meaning that population growth will ultimately outpace the resources needed to

sustain it, leading to famine, war, and ultimately chaos before a smaller population can

reestablish itself.

Doom!

The future of humanity is doomed!

...