1 billion Americans Challenge
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ation_density_(based_on_food_growing_capacity)
This is probably a useful link.
If we look at the countries at the top of the list, many of these are net importers of food and the like, and many of them are island nations that derive a great deal of sustenance from fishing (which is not counted on the list). It is interesting to note that three of the Asian Tigers (Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea) all cluster together around the 3000 people/km^2 mark.
The USA has the largest amount of arable land in the world. If we take China as a theoretical near-maximum (they had to institute the one-child policy to keep feeding their people, remember), that works out to the US being able to support at most 1.5 billion people. The real population density for 1 billion would be around 600/km^2. This corresponds to central american countries such as Panama and Honduras.
It's definitely possible for the US to have so many people, but where would all the extra people come from? The 1800 census put the US as having 5.3 million people. That's a 2% growth per annum over 210 years, which is a phenomenal rate of growth for that length of time. However, we need something more in the neighborhood of 2.5%. Mexico, Indonesia, and India all managed rates in the 2% neighborhood over the last century, but not 2.5. For this, we might need to narrow our focus to the last half-century.
Here is a list of all countries that are expected to have sustained a growth rate of 2.5% or more from 1950-2015, sorted by 2015 population because small countries can sustain much higher levels of growth from immigration and so on. If this can be extrapolated back to 1800 *snicker*, we can use these cases to find out how exactly we can get the USA to a billion people.
You've probably noticed that all these countries are either small or were very poor in 1950, or quite possibly both.
In order for population growth to be high enough, there needs to be an impetus to have many children, and the best way to have that would be to sink the American economy. Here's my super-unlikely scenario:
Thanks to some minor PoDs between 1800 and 1812 (perhaps a famine or a major political scandal, or both), the war of 1812 turns into a disaster for the US forces, leading Britain to claim the United States as a protectorate and puppet state. Aiming to cripple their ability to revolt ever again, the British enforce the laws against the slave trade in the South. As a result, southern plantation owners decide that forcibly breeding their slaves for quantity and quality would be the best way to maintain their stock in the long-term. The black population flourishes.
Meanwhile, in the North, tariffs and restrictions aimed at making sure the British Isles reap the lion's share of the profits in the USA causes a very deliberate gap between the rich and poor; a pro-british de facto aristocracy is established and the poor northern workers live in squalor. British entrepreneurs are attracted to the United States due to relaxed child labor laws. As a result of this, an economic dynamic is built up that encourages the births of many children.
In the Missouri Territory, disenfranchised whites (in the north) and escaped blacks (in the south) establish their own settlements; thanks to the southern breeding practices, the latter populations explode. White settlers looking to escape British rule settle into Texas, whose English-speaking population grows more than in OTL.
When Texas wants to be incorporated into the US, the British help the Mexicans to crush the rebellion, fearing that allowing the US more land would increase its chances of revolting. As a result, Texas is established properly as non-slavery territory, and many more blacks run there to escape oppression (there are many more successful escapes in this TL thanks to the higher black population and anti-slavery sentiment in Mexico; a second "underground railroad" to Texas is quite possible.)
When gold is discovered in California in the 1850s, Britain turns around and declares war on Mexico, eventually winning and establishing the Dominion of California. Britain encourages immigration to the new dominion. Texas takes this opportunity to declare independence from Mexico, although Britain continues to block its annexation into the US.
By the 1870s, enough Americans had been educated in Britain and become successful businessmen in the Empire that they were able to foster enough nationalist sentiment to wage a successful revolution, overthrowing the British puppet government. They annex Texas, which by this time managed nearly 5 million people, with slightly more blacks than whites; by this time nearly 80 million people are Americans, 30% of which are of African descent. On the other hand, the American economy had been exploited to the point where it was still a distant second to Britain.
The political situation in the new nation is less stable than when the US was founded. Big businesses are given an inordinate amount of power, and the gap between rich and poor increases; the middle class that came to dominate American economy IOTL doesn't grow to the same extent. This would eventually cause an economic crash in the early 20th century; combined with lower standards of living than IOTL, the population starts reproducing more once again. This era might include a working-class revolution, as Marx predicted, which may be successful or unsuccessful.
The world wars are going to be unpredictably different in this TL; perhaps the US could end up on opposite sides of Canada and Mexico and take some territory and population from both countries. In the postwar era the global population would grow more rapidly than usual; immigration to the US would be more common. It is in this era that the greatest amount of population growth would be seen; the USA passes the 1 billion mark in 2004. While great strides will have been made in this time, and its economy would probably be the largest in the world, its standards of living and quality of life would lag significantly behind the developed world.
This is probably a useful link.
If we look at the countries at the top of the list, many of these are net importers of food and the like, and many of them are island nations that derive a great deal of sustenance from fishing (which is not counted on the list). It is interesting to note that three of the Asian Tigers (Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea) all cluster together around the 3000 people/km^2 mark.
The USA has the largest amount of arable land in the world. If we take China as a theoretical near-maximum (they had to institute the one-child policy to keep feeding their people, remember), that works out to the US being able to support at most 1.5 billion people. The real population density for 1 billion would be around 600/km^2. This corresponds to central american countries such as Panama and Honduras.
It's definitely possible for the US to have so many people, but where would all the extra people come from? The 1800 census put the US as having 5.3 million people. That's a 2% growth per annum over 210 years, which is a phenomenal rate of growth for that length of time. However, we need something more in the neighborhood of 2.5%. Mexico, Indonesia, and India all managed rates in the 2% neighborhood over the last century, but not 2.5. For this, we might need to narrow our focus to the last half-century.
Here is a list of all countries that are expected to have sustained a growth rate of 2.5% or more from 1950-2015, sorted by 2015 population because small countries can sustain much higher levels of growth from immigration and so on. If this can be extrapolated back to 1800 *snicker*, we can use these cases to find out how exactly we can get the USA to a billion people.
You've probably noticed that all these countries are either small or were very poor in 1950, or quite possibly both.
In order for population growth to be high enough, there needs to be an impetus to have many children, and the best way to have that would be to sink the American economy. Here's my super-unlikely scenario:
Thanks to some minor PoDs between 1800 and 1812 (perhaps a famine or a major political scandal, or both), the war of 1812 turns into a disaster for the US forces, leading Britain to claim the United States as a protectorate and puppet state. Aiming to cripple their ability to revolt ever again, the British enforce the laws against the slave trade in the South. As a result, southern plantation owners decide that forcibly breeding their slaves for quantity and quality would be the best way to maintain their stock in the long-term. The black population flourishes.
Meanwhile, in the North, tariffs and restrictions aimed at making sure the British Isles reap the lion's share of the profits in the USA causes a very deliberate gap between the rich and poor; a pro-british de facto aristocracy is established and the poor northern workers live in squalor. British entrepreneurs are attracted to the United States due to relaxed child labor laws. As a result of this, an economic dynamic is built up that encourages the births of many children.
In the Missouri Territory, disenfranchised whites (in the north) and escaped blacks (in the south) establish their own settlements; thanks to the southern breeding practices, the latter populations explode. White settlers looking to escape British rule settle into Texas, whose English-speaking population grows more than in OTL.
When Texas wants to be incorporated into the US, the British help the Mexicans to crush the rebellion, fearing that allowing the US more land would increase its chances of revolting. As a result, Texas is established properly as non-slavery territory, and many more blacks run there to escape oppression (there are many more successful escapes in this TL thanks to the higher black population and anti-slavery sentiment in Mexico; a second "underground railroad" to Texas is quite possible.)
When gold is discovered in California in the 1850s, Britain turns around and declares war on Mexico, eventually winning and establishing the Dominion of California. Britain encourages immigration to the new dominion. Texas takes this opportunity to declare independence from Mexico, although Britain continues to block its annexation into the US.
By the 1870s, enough Americans had been educated in Britain and become successful businessmen in the Empire that they were able to foster enough nationalist sentiment to wage a successful revolution, overthrowing the British puppet government. They annex Texas, which by this time managed nearly 5 million people, with slightly more blacks than whites; by this time nearly 80 million people are Americans, 30% of which are of African descent. On the other hand, the American economy had been exploited to the point where it was still a distant second to Britain.
The political situation in the new nation is less stable than when the US was founded. Big businesses are given an inordinate amount of power, and the gap between rich and poor increases; the middle class that came to dominate American economy IOTL doesn't grow to the same extent. This would eventually cause an economic crash in the early 20th century; combined with lower standards of living than IOTL, the population starts reproducing more once again. This era might include a working-class revolution, as Marx predicted, which may be successful or unsuccessful.
The world wars are going to be unpredictably different in this TL; perhaps the US could end up on opposite sides of Canada and Mexico and take some territory and population from both countries. In the postwar era the global population would grow more rapidly than usual; immigration to the US would be more common. It is in this era that the greatest amount of population growth would be seen; the USA passes the 1 billion mark in 2004. While great strides will have been made in this time, and its economy would probably be the largest in the world, its standards of living and quality of life would lag significantly behind the developed world.
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Okay, I'm not ready to put a timeline yet, but here's a list of things that could pump up the population:
Slave trade lasts longer
Annexing Canada and Mexico
No halt on immigration from China and Japan
No effective halt to all immigration in the early 1900's
Ban on abortion and anti-contraceptive policies (maybe as a result of a larger Catholic population because of Mexico)
More wars and general crappiness elsewhere drives people to the US.
I think a big help would be some kind of movement for open borders relatively early in American history, advocating accepting all peaceful immigrants, perhaps as a part of some manifest destiny plan to make more Americans, either by conquering outsiders, or just letting them come here.
Slave trade lasts longer
Annexing Canada and Mexico
No halt on immigration from China and Japan
No effective halt to all immigration in the early 1900's
Ban on abortion and anti-contraceptive policies (maybe as a result of a larger Catholic population because of Mexico)
More wars and general crappiness elsewhere drives people to the US.
I think a big help would be some kind of movement for open borders relatively early in American history, advocating accepting all peaceful immigrants, perhaps as a part of some manifest destiny plan to make more Americans, either by conquering outsiders, or just letting them come here.
Bring in Canada and Mexico earlier on and you could easily have a USA that had a population around 500-600 million. Loosen immigration restrictions, keep birth control and abortion use WAY below OTL levels, and then count in the previously discused population density/tech improvents and a billion is easily achievable
Question: How long did it take China to reach a billion, and with what amount of effort?
Or India, if we can find totals for the region that is now one state far back enough (1800 or earlier).
Picking the two places on Earth that have hit that mark, because its all too easy to say that some changes would make it "easy" without looking at what we have illustrating what a billion people in one country looks like.
Or India, if we can find totals for the region that is now one state far back enough (1800 or earlier).
Picking the two places on Earth that have hit that mark, because its all too easy to say that some changes would make it "easy" without looking at what we have illustrating what a billion people in one country looks like.
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It all depends on the starting point. China had something like 120 million people in 1800, and India had something like 250 million (though that included Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma; the total for modern-day India would probably be a bit less than 200 million), whereas the US had just 5.3 million.
I was going to just type out this next point, but I opened Excel and next thing I knew, it was two hours later and I had this pretty chart and graph. Note that growth figures are for the *prior* ten years, not the following.
As you can see, immigration to the new world fueled a rapid expansion; 3% annual growth over a sustained period is nothing to scoff at; it's the equivalent of having a fertility rate of 5-6 children per woman. Further, there was a serious speed bump at the time of the civil war; the growth rate sprung back up immediately afterwards, but continued a slow decline and reached its nadir during the Great Depression. Of course, then you have the baby boomer era immediately after World War 2.
First off, you would need to butterfly away most major wars; the French and Indian wars, the Civil War, and maybe even the Revolutionary War and World War 1 (though oddly enough not the Mexican-American War; the figure might have been inflated a little by the accession of Texas, but I don't think it would have had so much impact. It is a mystery.)
After you've achieved peace and stability, the birth rate is probably going to drop anyways due to said peace and stability and the corresponding rise in living standards. It's something of a catch-22. In my scenario, I put an oppressive imperial system in the style of a banana republic keeping the majority of people poor while avoiding major conflicts. I also didn't specifically say so, but I imagined that with the US as a protectorate or puppet state, people from other places in the British Empire would be brought in to do menial labor, like India or Egypt, to bolster immigration; I imagine that if Britain had a hand in American policy, they might encourage higher immigration quotas for the sake of their own profits. Perhaps in addition to this a sentiment could have evolved among Americans to "out-breed the foreigners" or something.
In any case, it's quite a stretch to get a billion people in the US with an 1800 PoD.
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Not convinced that land capabilities are holding back the current US population. That may have been true of Europe several centuries ago, but the huge incomes of post-industrial socities could easily afford the extra necessities. I mean, look at a poor country like India, which has a billion people - are you really telling me that India has greater productive capacity than the USA?
The US is connected to global markets in food and energy (i.e. oil) after all. Water would be the biggest issue and desalinisation, while expensive, could still be afforded while keeping incomes above marginal product of labour levels. It would just mean lower living standards relative to OTL, and even then, I can't see them falling below at worse, say, Portuguese levels. And Portugal isn't suffering population declines due to lack of food, water, fuel is it?
Best way to do it would be to keep religion a much bigger issue, as religious people have a lot more kids. This could be true for both the US for internal growth, and for Europe, to have a bigger pool of population there wanting to leave. Then have another couple rounds of Napoleonic war style conflicts over the course of the 19th Century for a lot more people wanting to leave Europe.
There would also be second order effects: higher populations mean poorer living standards, greater poverty means more religious belief, more religious belief means more kids. Look at India.
Add in Mexico's population and you could probably get there.
The US is connected to global markets in food and energy (i.e. oil) after all. Water would be the biggest issue and desalinisation, while expensive, could still be afforded while keeping incomes above marginal product of labour levels. It would just mean lower living standards relative to OTL, and even then, I can't see them falling below at worse, say, Portuguese levels. And Portugal isn't suffering population declines due to lack of food, water, fuel is it?
Best way to do it would be to keep religion a much bigger issue, as religious people have a lot more kids. This could be true for both the US for internal growth, and for Europe, to have a bigger pool of population there wanting to leave. Then have another couple rounds of Napoleonic war style conflicts over the course of the 19th Century for a lot more people wanting to leave Europe.
There would also be second order effects: higher populations mean poorer living standards, greater poverty means more religious belief, more religious belief means more kids. Look at India.
Add in Mexico's population and you could probably get there.
Much appreciated (on this and the figures/calculations).
Socrates: I wouldn't say its meaningfully holding it back from growing a bit at normal-ish rates, I would say that it is holding back the US from tripling its current population. That's an enormous amount of extra mouths to feed, and from where?
On Portugal/Portugese living standards: Portugal isn't trying to maintain a billion people. It not suffering from a lack of food, water, fuel is a lot easier with a lot fewer in absolute terms.
And if the US has really low living standards, kiss the floods of people who want to come here goodbye, and say hello to floods who want to leave.
I don't know how India and China maintain it, but starting with a much higher population makes it easier to reach there.
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I think Amillennialism could be key here. Instead of the doomsday movements of the late 19th century, we could have pro-science amillnnealist movements. The kingdom of God is ours to create.
In terms of the capacity to feed people, the EU does pretty fine with a population density four times that of the USA, and it's not even beginning to have issues with food. In fact, it needs to subsidise agriculture to keep farmers in business, because there is an excess of land dedicated to farming output.
India is about ten times denser - and their population is still surging. Yes, their average incomes are miserable, but this is due to lower technology levels, not food shortages. This later point is demonstrated by the fact that now they have exposure to world markets their growth is surging to catch up with the West, as it is way below equilibrium.
And that's before we even consider the ability to import. Even with much reduced living standards, Americans are many times richer than Asian counterparts. Even if you got to the point of a lack of global capacity to feed the world (which you wouldn't), it would simply mean Chinese peasants would starve, not Americans. Similar things would work out for fuel (which can also be grown, or produced from atoms in the case of nuclear).
Your biggest issue is water - but we have desalinisation for that. Imagine if you tripled your water bill, what real effect would it have on your income?
This is a valid point, but you are exagerrating it's effects. American incomes could drop a lot over the last two hundred years but they'd still be well above European levels - particularly Eastern Europe. Until pretty recently, much of the continent survived on just a few thousand dollars a year - and that's still the case in places like Moldova.
I do agree that the rate coming across would fall, all other things being equal. But they're not all equal in my scenario - a higher birth rate and more wars in Europe would become problems there, making up for any lost effect.
You're underestimating the effect of compounding growth rates. Over a hundred year period, if you start with the same beginning population, and increase the average growth rate from 5% to 7%, you increase the final population more than sixfold. The starting place is a very, very small part of it - that's why there's so many people in the world descended from England, Scotland and Ireland - three very small medieval populations.
And how much food does it import from the US?
And food shortages are not exactly a nonissue, if memory serves.
Assuming Americans reach anywhere near the living standards we enjoy in a situation where the population is outpacing Russia (see below figures).
Since I'm a live-at-home student, you'd have to ask my mom, but I think the amount it would cost to more than triple the water supply would more than triple the water bill.
American incomes in a situation where the US is becoming increasingly large would compare increasingly unfavorably to Europe - particularly as the best reason for high wages here has been a shortage of labor.
A higher birth rate and more wars in Europe vs. the Land Where Those Who Got There First Took All the Opportunies.
Incidentally, for the sake of comparison (from the Rise and Fall of the Great Powers), the following for 1914:
Nation/National income in billions/population in millions/per capita income.
US: 37/98/$377
Britain: 11/45/$244
Germany: 12/65/$184
France 6/39/$153
Italy: 4/37/$108
Austria-Hungary: 3/52/$57
Russia: 7/171/$41
Japan: 2/55/$36
So that puts the US above (Japan not counting): Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Russia, if we simply triple the population. Obviously its not that simple, but the point of this is to illustrate how the US compares.
Compounding growth rates only go so far, though. The US is starting at a 1/40th of India in 1800.
The starting place is enough of it to mean that such a wide gap is going to take a long time to close.
Sorry to necro this a bit (but only by a year and a few months!), but I had to weigh in on the population density matter.
Simply put: There's no economic reason why the US could not support a population density similar to the European Union, roughly 300 people/square mile. In fact, of the 3 major countries in the EU, France's population density is 300, Germany's is 600, and Britain's is 700. If Europe can handle it, so can America.
Here's a website I've always found useful in such matters.
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
Simply put: There's no economic reason why the US could not support a population density similar to the European Union, roughly 300 people/square mile. In fact, of the 3 major countries in the EU, France's population density is 300, Germany's is 600, and Britain's is 700. If Europe can handle it, so can America.
Here's a website I've always found useful in such matters.
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
Kaptin Kurk
Banned
In 1800, it's discovered that drinking water from the Mississippi on a regular basis slows the aging process. Thus, the American death-rate plumets, while immigration and birth-rates remain the same.
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