Are there really seven billion or so people on earth?
I can think of a few reasons to exaggerate population numbers. Most have to do with a socialistic type government system. Simply put: There is a reason to exaggerate numbers if there is money in it.
In the rural county where I live, there are supposed to be ten thousand people. I'd like to know where they are. The biggest town in the county has two thousand, they say, and there isn't even a close second town.
Reasons to exaggerate:
More population means more money for social programs. Public schools can get more money by exaggerating student population. Jails can get more money by the same process.
More road building. By exaggerating the need for roads, more can be built, and more money for contractors and such. SAme with hospitals, schools, and even churches.
More charity aid. Such as for black Africa. By exaggerating the number of starving children in Africa, the charity promoters can tug at hearts and purse strings a little better. Also perhaps exaggerating the number of AIDS victims, and tuberculosis victims, thus commanding more money.
in China, because of central planning, there is great pressure on local officials to always report to their superiors that their district is growing, expanding. The same sort of thing happens in the USA, only by a different sort of mechanism, and maybe not so demanding.
Some evidence, perhaps, that numbers have been exaggerated;
Large 'ghost cities' in China. Maybe there just isn't enough people to fill them?
Many dead people found still drawing a pension. In Japan just a few months ago, there was a news story about looking for some old pensioners, only to find they were dead, and hidden by the family, so they could continue to receive the government dole. Japan brags about having such a long life span in their population. Maybe the dead just aren't being reported?
Cities in the USA going broke. Maybe it's not so much the economy, but just that there aren't enough people to pay the taxes. Of course, one reason is that the cities are full of aliens who don't pay any taxes; that a big part of it. But maybe they are trying to run a city on a budget for, say, two million people when there are only a half million?
Another opinion. From Frank McManus of Australia. Put here 17 September 2017
For example, I live in a four bedroom house with a double garage, 3 toilets and 2 bathrooms, 2 living areas, a large dining area and kitchen on a quarter acre block of land (1000 sq m). That house could easily house 7 or 8 people in considerable comfort. For comparison, my English grandparents raised 11 children in a considerably smaller house in Birkenhead. For the sake of argument, let's accept the official estimate of the world population as being just under 7,377,490,000 at the time of writing and growing at the rate of 46,500 per day. https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ .
Again, for simplicity, lets imagine that the entire population of the world was housed in this manner with an average of 7.4 people per household, … a manner which we have been told is "unsustainable" and the "people in the west" can't expect to have this way of life forever. The arithmetic starts to tell an interesting story. The entire population of the world could be comfortably housed in an area of 250 million acres of land, an area about 50% bigger than the US State of Texas which is 172 million acres (https://www.google.com.au/search?client=opera&q=the+area+of+texas&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#q=the+area+of+texas+in+acres).
Now imagine that this area is divided into 10,000 cities of equal size. This would mean that these cities would each be 25,000 acres... the equivalent of a square of land 10km wide by 10km long. These cities, each with a population of 740,000 people, could be dotted around the earth and we would be unobservable by satellite imagery (that is a little joke btw... I don't "believe" in satellites so we are never going to be observed by them anyway).
Now lets play with the thought of living in cities like this. Each dwelling is on a quarter acre (1,000 sq m). The rainfall of every roof is collected and possibly stored commonly for 100 households. Every toilet is connected to a central unit where the nutrient is collected and digested to produce methane and electricity and nutrient recycled in farms and gardens. The land between the houses is used for growing food and fish based hydroponics. People walk to whatever place they need to walk to. At any time they can walk out of the city and into the vast wideness of the planet. The adventurous souls could set off to explore the world on foot, passing through the wilderness or travelling the oceans to the other ten thousand cities.
On this scale, the Earth is vast and munificent, with no person being limited by time or space or opportunity. All people could live well, free of the tyranny of machines, so close to their friends that they wouldn’t need to use facebook or mobile phones.
For example, I live in a four bedroom house with a double garage, 3 toilets and 2 bathrooms, 2 living areas, a large dining area and kitchen on a quarter acre block of land (1000 sq m). That house could easily house 7 or 8 people in considerable comfort. For comparison, my English grandparents raised 11 children in a considerably smaller house in Birkenhead. For the sake of argument, let's accept the official estimate of the world population as being just under 7,377,490,000 at the time of writing and growing at the rate of 46,500 per day. https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ .
Again, for simplicity, lets imagine that the entire population of the world was housed in this manner with an average of 7.4 people per household, … a manner which we have been told is "unsustainable" and the "people in the west" can't expect to have this way of life forever. The arithmetic starts to tell an interesting story. The entire population of the world could be comfortably housed in an area of 250 million acres of land, an area about 50% bigger than the US State of Texas which is 172 million acres (https://www.google.com.au/search?client=opera&q=the+area+of+texas&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#q=the+area+of+texas+in+acres).
Now imagine that this area is divided into 10,000 cities of equal size. This would mean that these cities would each be 25,000 acres... the equivalent of a square of land 10km wide by 10km long. These cities, each with a population of 740,000 people, could be dotted around the earth and we would be unobservable by satellite imagery (that is a little joke btw... I don't "believe" in satellites so we are never going to be observed by them anyway).
Now lets play with the thought of living in cities like this. Each dwelling is on a quarter acre (1,000 sq m). The rainfall of every roof is collected and possibly stored commonly for 100 households. Every toilet is connected to a central unit where the nutrient is collected and digested to produce methane and electricity and nutrient recycled in farms and gardens. The land between the houses is used for growing food and fish based hydroponics. People walk to whatever place they need to walk to. At any time they can walk out of the city and into the vast wideness of the planet. The adventurous souls could set off to explore the world on foot, passing through the wilderness or travelling the oceans to the other ten thousand cities.
On this scale, the Earth is vast and munificent, with no person being limited by time or space or opportunity. All people could live well, free of the tyranny of machines, so close to their friends that they wouldn’t need to use facebook or mobile phones.
