I encourage everyone to read Merchants of Despair by Robert Zubrin.
https://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Despair-Environmentalists-P...
IMO, this is the most important book written in the 21st century. Don't read the whole thing, just read the first chapter. The first chapter will give you what you need to know.
Here's a summary:
Every new person born has a mouth to eat, but they are not a useless eater. They are also born with hands to work. They work to produce what they consume. We ensure they consume no more than they produce with a system called money.
The more dense a population, the higher the per-capita income. This is because the main thing that determines your standard of living is the technology your society has access to. The technology your society has access to is directly proportional to the total number of man-years lived before that date. This is because humans create tech at a constant level. For every X man-years lived, a new invention will be created. Every person is both with a mouth to eat, hands to work, and a brain to invent.
But won't we run out of resources? Sure, we ran out of whale oil. That did not matter. We invented a bad replacement (town gas) which killed a lot of people, then we invented a better replacement called electric lights. Humanity marches on.
Here's a summary:
Every new person born has a mouth to eat, but they are not a useless eater. They are also born with hands to work. They work to produce what they consume. We ensure they consume no more than they produce with a system called money.
The more dense a population, the higher the per-capita income. This is because the main thing that determines your standard of living is the technology your society has access to. The technology your society has access to is directly proportional to the total number of man-years lived before that date. This is because humans create tech at a constant level. For every X man-years lived, a new invention will be created. Every person is both with a mouth to eat, hands to work, and a brain to invent.
But won't we run out of resources? Sure, we ran out of whale oil. That did not matter. We invented a bad replacement (town gas) which killed a lot of people, then we invented a better replacement called electric lights. Humanity marches on.