Higher Global Population?

The delta is... have you ever been anywhere around the region?
Well no but that´s what I read, maybe I´m not using the correct word. Correct me if I´m wrong.

Arguably the Mississippi basin is even better than China for agriculture, as even excluding the Tibetan Plateau and deserts, much of China is rugged. This means the USA would have a population larger than China's. There's no reason why Kansas can't have the densities of Henan - with the same climate and same type of soil. This would give Kansas alone 120 million people. As for food, China is (mostly) self-sufficient already. The US is already the export powerhouse of corn and wheat, so I see no reason why it can't be self-sufficient ITTL.
But how much of its food supply does the export? You are arguing for quite the extremes there.
Many of those places with the right PODs could be at that already. An industrial South that moved away from slavery earlier could have given you the Nashville metropolitan area at 4 million by the 21st century. But all of those places, I think, we'd have to resort to an agricultural POD. Come to think of it, agricultural PODs are necessarily the best way to increase global population, although to me they almost feel like cheating. Like say the Mississippians develop better agriculture so that they don't decline as in OTL, and the entire region is basically like Mesoamerica in terms of cultural sophistication and most importantly, population density. We'll probably also want that for the West Coast. And why not throw in Lands of Red and Gold-style stuff for Australia/New Zealand?
It wouldn´t really change much given they would die of smallpox+other diseases. Given the immigration the US experienced it kinda pale in comparison.

Different water use policies would help California out immensely. Earlier desalination, too. But the current drought is no worse than historic major droughts in California, going by the climatology record in the region. And if California is at its limit, it seems to me plainly obvious that the rest of the West Coast up to Alaska is underpopulated.
Yeah maybe but it would end up the same if you export more people north from California, no?
I say Bangladesh because the population is still expected to expand by large numbers. Yes, Bangladesh does export large parts of its population elsewhere (mainly to India), but that's beside the point. The land is so rich it can support many more people, and keep in mind by Bengal, I'm also including (Indian) West Bengal. India as a whole too, since many regions were severely affected by numerous famines under British rule. Ireland's an interesting case, since it wasn't just the famine that made Ireland so underpopulated, it was that constant outmigration.
There´s seem to be no limit govem to any projections made so far, so I don´t undersand why limit the scope, every European country would have the same density as India, Ukraine as Bangladesh.

Emigration was linked to the famine and carrying capacity of the land.

It seems that if a country that has 10 million people and gets it population reduced by something to 1 million and then grows back to 1bliilion you would argue that the population could be 10billion. That just doesn´t work.
I'm mainly speaking in a historic context--at the turn of the 20th century, things were far different than now in terms of underpopulated regions, and it's thanks to the agricultural revolutions of the 20th century that returned many regions to what historically "should" have been the expected result. Like take the Maghreb, which could've reach it's current population densities decades ago. I think a more densely populated Maghreb, for that matter, would've been a population exporter as Italy and Spain were (probably to Latin America, going by where the Spanish emigrants largely went, as did the Lebanese).
Maghreb is a population exporter on its own in a way, having 14 million people in Europe that were either Pied Noirs or just local Maghrebi. I guess it could increase.

Maghreb population is already quite high as it is, given the growth the experienced outweights the stagnation period they had, if you argue that they could support more than basically the rest of the world can support much more at the same time.
Those brutal Bangladesh tornadoes are because of terrible disaster preparation, especially in the era they happened in. It's like comparing Haiti to Japan in terms of earthquake preparation. Case in point, 2011 had two major tornadoes strike mid-sized metropolitan areas (Tuscaloosa and Joplin) and that entire year, the US recorded only 553 fatalities and not much more over 5,000 injuries. It isn't like it hurt China's potential that much of it's very vulnerable to earthquakes and is densely populated.
[/QUOTE]
But it´s more to tornados than casualties, as far as I know most of the plains can get hit by those, and I was wrong in just citing tornados. I should have talked more about the general climate.
 
Well no but that´s what I read, maybe I´m not using the correct word. Correct me if I´m wrong.

There's about as much variety around the Mississippi basin as can possibly be expected. It is, after all, one of the largest river systems in the world.

But, ultimately, I think focusing on small details, like crop subsidies and political arrangements, is pointless. What we're really looking at is the carrying capacity of various regions, and how quickly those regions can reach that capacity. Thats why I stand simply by bridging the divide between the New and Old Worlds earlier than in our history. Once you get over the population collapse, and everyone's swapped crops, there's no reason why the population density of the New World can't be comparable to that of the Old World, which would add billions to the planet.

Not to mention the modern breakthroughs possible even in our future in improvements in energy production, desalinization, life extension, and crop modification. Those technologies alone would enable us, on a purely mathematical point, to support a population vastly larger than our current population.
 
Well no but that´s what I read, maybe I´m not using the correct word. Correct me if I´m wrong.


But how much of its food supply does the export? You are arguing for quite the extremes there.

It wouldn´t really change much given they would die of smallpox+other diseases. Given the immigration the US experienced it kinda pale in comparison.


Yeah maybe but it would end up the same if you export more people north from California, no?

There´s seem to be no limit govem to any projections made so far, so I don´t undersand why limit the scope, every European country would have the same density as India, Ukraine as Bangladesh.

Emigration was linked to the famine and carrying capacity of the land.

It seems that if a country that has 10 million people and gets it population reduced by something to 1 million and then grows back to 1bliilion you would argue that the population could be 10billion. That just doesn´t work.

Maghreb is a population exporter on its own in a way, having 14 million people in Europe that were either Pied Noirs or just local Maghrebi. I guess it could increase.

Maghreb population is already quite high as it is, given the growth the experienced outweights the stagnation period they had, if you argue that they could support more than basically the rest of the world can support much more at the same time.
But it´s more to tornados than casualties, as far as I know most of the plains can get hit by those, and I was wrong in just citing tornados. I should have talked more about the general climate.[/QUOTE]

The US could feed 800 million people just by the grain used to feed livestock alone. In fact, the US could feed billions. Although U.S. corn is a highly productive crop, with typical yields between 140 and 160 bushels per acre, the resulting delivery of food by the corn system is far lower. Today’s corn crop is mainly used for biofuels (roughly 40 percent of U.S. corn is used for ethanol) and as animal feed (roughly 36 percent of U.S. corn, plus distillers grains left over from ethanol production, is fed to cattle, pigs and chickens). Much of the rest is exported. Only a tiny fraction of the national corn crop is directly used for food for Americans, much of that for high-fructose corn syrup.
--Scientific American

Just get rid of ethanol production and stop subsiding farmers to not plant food. The US could produce food for billions.
 
It wouldn´t really change much given they would die of smallpox+other diseases. Given the immigration the US experienced it kinda pale in comparison.

It would be a much higher starting population for the region, as evidenced in Mexico and the Andes despite the low amounts of Spanish settlement they got. If this country still got large amounts of immigration, well...

Yeah maybe but it would end up the same if you export more people north from California, no?

That is true, and one way to do things. But how? I think a communist United States would be able to do that much more effectively, especially for Alaska, where they could tear up Alaska's environment for energy and mining prospects, and probably also support more farmers there. Yakutsk in Russia's a good example. Or for something more exotic, a Japanese Alaska, be it Meiji era Japan manages to acquire it from Russia or some alternate Japan colonises it, would be highly useful, as Japan in its need for resources would gladly do the same thing as well as settle tens of thousands of Japanese there as farmers.

There´s seem to be no limit govem to any projections made so far, so I don´t undersand why limit the scope, every European country would have the same density as India, Ukraine as Bangladesh.

Emigration was linked to the famine and carrying capacity of the land.

It seems that if a country that has 10 million people and gets it population reduced by something to 1 million and then grows back to 1bliilion you would argue that the population could be 10billion. That just doesn´t work.

I'd argue the population could be easily 1.5-2 billion. Bengal (both West Bengal and Bangladesh) is extremely fertile land, moreso than most of Europe. It's historically always had a large sum of the world population (right now it's about 1/6 of the entire subcontinent). The 19th century was a historical anomaly for Bengal (and India as a whole) for their share of the world population (and also related, the world economy). The evidence for China shows the same (Taiping Rebellion and other anti-Qing rebellions, Chinese Civil War, Second Sino-Japanese War), as does Africa, although that extends back to the 16th century with the intensification of the slave trade. It's a demographic imbalance that need not exist. And there's always been the opportunity throughout history to import food to make up for local shortages, devoting your food crops to livestock production, etc. Especially nowadays with the even more globalised economy.

Maghreb is a population exporter on its own in a way, having 14 million people in Europe that were either Pied Noirs or just local Maghrebi. I guess it could increase.

Maghreb population is already quite high as it is, given the growth the experienced outweights the stagnation period they had, if you argue that they could support more than basically the rest of the world can support much more at the same time.

It certainly is now, but I mean more in the 19th century, which means this would have to start in the 18th century to achieve those levels. A higher Maghreb population would export to Latin America and potentially the US. Millions of Latin Americans (such as Carlos Slim) are descended from Arab immigrants, millions more easily could. And these Latin Americans would in turn be affected by the population explosion in Latin America in the mid-20th century. To me, the New World with it's high food production and much empty land equals "free" population (until we get to their non-food/non-water needs, of course). It wasn't until the 2010s the entire Western hemisphere hit 1 billion people.

Personally, I would have this be a pre-Islamic POD for higher population in the Maghreb, since the events in the Maghreb starting after the Arab conquest and especially the immigration of the Banu Hilal seem to have affected the land in terms of erosion and desertification. But in any case, the region was the breadbasket of the Roman Empire, hence where I make my estimate.

But it´s more to tornados than casualties, as far as I know most of the plains can get hit by those, and I was wrong in just citing tornados. I should have talked more about the general climate.

The Plains are not really that harsh compared to parts of the European steppe or Russia, as in the parts which have millions of people and major cities. They are somewhat drier as a whole, which is the main issue, but they're also watered by plenty of rivers. The main issue for human habitation is blizzards, which as far as I'm aware, I think the government could have stepped in and solved the issue economically for the farmers had it been willing. If many of these farmers hadn't been in debt in the first place (i.e., change the structure of settlement, if that's somehow possible), things might've been better. And a lot of this issue fell upon farmers in the Dakotas and Eastern Montana.

For urban centers, a blizzard is easily survivable although irritating. A major tornado is generally a once in a generation event or so, about equivalent to major earthquakes or hurricane strikes or other major disasters. The government is hopefully there to support rural areas hit by either in any case.
 
The US could feed 800 million people just by the grain used to feed livestock alone. In fact, the US could feed billions. Although U.S. corn is a highly productive crop, with typical yields between 140 and 160 bushels per acre, the resulting delivery of food by the corn system is far lower. Today’s corn crop is mainly used for biofuels (roughly 40 percent of U.S. corn is used for ethanol) and as animal feed (roughly 36 percent of U.S. corn, plus distillers grains left over from ethanol production, is fed to cattle, pigs and chickens). Much of the rest is exported. Only a tiny fraction of the national corn crop is directly used for food for Americans, much of that for high-fructose corn syrup.
--Scientific American

Just get rid of ethanol production and stop subsiding farmers to not plant food. The US could produce food for billions.
Thanks!

I thought farms were subsidized TO make food? Also this creates problems, what would replace the ethanol? And how exactly would you make Americans stop using meat(let´s put aside that that is probably not biologically, politically and socially feasible). The Ethanol argument seems strong, but of course it leaves us with problem of energy production, both from the higher population and less biofuel.

I should read more on it, got any link?
It would be a much higher starting population for the region, as evidenced in Mexico and the Andes despite the low amounts of Spanish settlement they got. If this country still got large amounts of immigration, well...
Last time we talked about the Americas, I think I made a strong case that fertility rates are going to matter as much as immigration, if not more for country that already have a sizeable population, and that´s logical because you can´t really keep increasing immigration from outside to keep the % of growth the same while you can with fertility rates being constant. I mean Mexico population like increase 10 times(somethign around that) last century. I´m saying this because you need to increase overall population. Immigration is not bad at all but it kinda doesn´t help if the US stays at around 2 fertility and given immigration is a zero sum game more or less.

That is true, and one way to do things. But how? I think a communist United States would be able to do that much more effectively, especially for Alaska, where they could tear up Alaska's environment for energy and mining prospects, and probably also support more farmers there. Yakutsk in Russia's a good example. Or for something more exotic, a Japanese Alaska, be it Meiji era Japan manages to acquire it from Russia or some alternate Japan colonises it, would be highly useful, as Japan in its need for resources would gladly do the same thing as well as settle tens of thousands of Japanese there as farmers.
But thing is you would simply move the people, thus not increasing the population. Seeing what a communist take over did to Russia, preventing Communism is a MUST if you want to increase population.

I'd argue the population could be easily 1.5-2 billion. Bengal (both West Bengal and Bangladesh) is extremely fertile land, moreso than most of Europe. It's historically always had a large sum of the world population (right now it's about 1/6 of the entire subcontinent). The 19th century was a historical anomaly for Bengal (and India as a whole) for their share of the world population (and also related, the world economy). The evidence for China shows the same (Taiping Rebellion and other anti-Qing rebellions, Chinese Civil War, Second Sino-Japanese War), as does Africa, although that extends back to the 16th century with the intensification of the slave trade. It's a demographic imbalance that need not exist. And there's always been the opportunity throughout history to import food to make up for local shortages, devoting your food crops to livestock production, etc. Especially nowadays with the even more globalised economy.
Bangladesh 2 billion? Wtf! Bangladesh is no more fertily than Ukraine or Po Valley from what I read on soil quality maps(same maps that are used to argue for the US being like China apparently). There is really no natural balance of population but I frankly find it weird that people think the rest of the world is depopulated while Europe alone stands on top with its maximal potential, if I had to take those high end projection for other countries to me it follows logically that Europe could have 2-3 billion people all feed from internal agriculture. But I don´t think that is true either, as in feasible possible given geopolitics and history.

There was no historical anomaly, the population % stayed about the same for Asia and know is bigger than ever before. Africa had an anomaly but the % is becoming bigger as well(in 1600 the Americas lost a lot of their population, that´s why their % was particularly higher, other than population growth). You are overestimating combat deaths, their were relatively quickly recovered for country with high fertility. And even then China was still at the top of their potential(kinda like France was for Europe).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Population_growth_by_region

It certainly is now, but I mean more in the 19th century, which means this would have to start in the 18th century to achieve those levels. A higher Maghreb population would export to Latin America and potentially the US. Millions of Latin Americans (such as Carlos Slim) are descended from Arab immigrants, millions more easily could. And these Latin Americans would in turn be affected by the population explosion in Latin America in the mid-20th century. To me, the New World with it's high food production and much empty land equals "free" population (until we get to their non-food/non-water needs, of course). It wasn't until the 2010s the entire Western hemisphere hit 1 billion people.
I think their population can definetely go higher(as much as you want really, given food import is possible in the last century) but I was more arguing China-like levels.
Personally, I would have this be a pre-Islamic POD for higher population in the Maghreb, since the events in the Maghreb starting after the Arab conquest and especially the immigration of the Banu Hilal seem to have affected the land in terms of erosion and desertification. But in any case, the region was the breadbasket of the Roman Empire, hence where I make my estimate.
I think you can have multiple stuff, I guess keeping the Mediterranean together(choose the civilization yourself), thus removing the raids and enslavement from one country on another would improve population and spread of medicine but I still doubt it would change much if one has still the Green Revolution population growth.

The Plains are not really that harsh compared to parts of the European steppe or Russia, as in the parts which have millions of people and major cities. They are somewhat drier as a whole, which is the main issue, but they're also watered by plenty of rivers. The main issue for human habitation is blizzards, which as far as I'm aware, I think the government could have stepped in and solved the issue economically for the farmers had it been willing. If many of these farmers hadn't been in debt in the first place (i.e., change the structure of settlement, if that's somehow possible), things might've been better. And a lot of this issue fell upon farmers in the Dakotas and Eastern Montana.

For urban centers, a blizzard is easily survivable although irritating. A major tornado is generally a once in a generation event or so, about equivalent to major earthquakes or hurricane strikes or other major disasters. The government is hopefully there to support rural areas hit by either in any case.
In a way you don´t really need the people there, you just need the food to be used for them, I still think that when talking about post Green Revolution one has to address non-food issues, even food itself is not sustainable if overusing the soil. Of course maybe that´s what OP wants, but I find unelegant and a bit cheap.
 
No mongol conquest. I dont know the numbers for other parts of the world but I read numbers regarding medieval Hungary that range between 30-80% of the population. Even with the lowest its still like an epidemic.
 
Well you gotta look at the relative casualties, in any case Bangladesh is more fertilite, the Mississippi is not at that level.

Yeah but people don´t exactly live on the mouth of the deltas, Cairo, Dhaka, Nanjing etc. they live more inland. So New Orleans would have hard time growing there.

I still don´t get this claim that the Mississippi is basically the same as other big rivers like the Ganges or Yellow river and that the climate can support as many people.

New Orleans is not at the mouth of the Mississippi, the St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes are the mouths of the river. The reason New Orleans is well placed is that it is on Lac Pontchartrain which has a strait called Rigolets (Détroit des Rigolets/Strait of Rigolets) which connects the half sea, half lake, Lac Borgne. This creates a shield against hurricanes and makes it safe to dock without losing your ship. Not to mention having the Mississippi all around it.

It may not support 25 million population due to the sheer wetness, but it sure has untapped potential or better yet potential lost due to incompetent governing.
 
Last edited:
I posited this idea in a thread some time last year, but if you want higher population globally, you need to be able to take advantage of land more efficiently, or remove land from the resource equation. Neither are easy to do. One way is to create an earlier understanding of the water cycle so as to allow it to be manipulated. Even better if this is in coastal desert regions. New arable land on a pre-industrial scale creates more land, but creates slower changes to the climate, allowing other regions to adjust. No sudden green Sahara that wipes out Europe for example, but instead a greener Arabia.

Alternatively, both wider application of sewerage, terraced and vertical farming. Sewers just mean better urbanisation, but terraced farms make mountainous regions provide more arable land for crops rather than animals (meaning more joules per hectare). Vertical farms (at least early ones), are a bit more odd. You're looking using waterwheels to bring water to the top of essentially planters, where the water is then allowed to be distributed to each planter. If the planters have some overlap, you essentially create new arable land out of bricks and wood. The maths for figuring out how to best create these farms isn't that difficult, you just need to get a good balance of sunlight onto the plants vs density.
 

Deleted member 67076

Introduce new crops, germ theory, better sanitation, and basic healthcare improvements so that most children don't die during or shortly after childbirth. Then follow this up by keeping the world poor and rural enough so fertility rates are high.
 
Last time we talked about the Americas, I think I made a strong case that fertility rates are going to matter as much as immigration, if not more for country that already have a sizeable population, and that´s logical because you can´t really keep increasing immigration from outside to keep the % of growth the same while you can with fertility rates being constant. I mean Mexico population like increase 10 times(somethign around that) last century. I´m saying this because you need to increase overall population. Immigration is not bad at all but it kinda doesn´t help if the US stays at around 2 fertility and given immigration is a zero sum game more or less.

But the US wouldn't. Even now, the US has higher fertility rates than Europe does, unique for a developed nation. But early immigration is a net gain for the population, given these immigrants can generally be expected to have several children who otherwise might've been born in, say, Ireland or Sicily (or not at all!). For the children who survive, they might go to other cities and thus spread out. Hence how the United States has ridiculous amounts of people of partial Irish and German descent. I think we can take fertility rates to remain high enough until the 20th century and gradually decrease from then on until the end of that century, when immigration will have to make up for much of the growth (and even then, look at the US).

But thing is you would simply move the people, thus not increasing the population. Seeing what a communist take over did to Russia, preventing Communism is a MUST if you want to increase population.

That wasn't necessarily communism, but Russian-style (and in particular Stalin-style) communism. In any case, the Soviet population grew quite a bit despite the brutality of the World Wars, the famines, and Stalin's persecution campaigns against rivals and entire ethnic groups. None of which is inevitable or even reasonable to expect in a 20th century communist United States (or equivalent), which will have an interpretation of communism far different than the Russians/Leninists did. Fertility rates would still remain about as high as OTL, although maybe a bit less thanks to advances in women's rights (maybe a Soviet take on women's rights is inevitable for an early communist state).

Now we move a few hundred thousand people to Alaska, as farmers, miners, etc., build infrastructure, put military to protect against Tsarist/British imperialists, maybe invite Chinese to settle, etc. The population moved can be replaced by others, either immigrants or people from elsewhere. Of course, the government isn't forcing migration (no "Trail of Tears to Alaska", say), this would occur over 10-20 years and look quite organic.

Communism's value for this scenario is it's willingness to ignore environmental issues and partake in mass movements of people for causes perceived as strategic, in ways not affected by free market issues. The two can combine for interesting effects which I believe have a net positive effect on the population.

Bangladesh 2 billion? Wtf! Bangladesh is no more fertily than Ukraine or Po Valley from what I read on soil quality maps(same maps that are used to argue for the US being like China apparently). There is really no natural balance of population but I frankly find it weird that people think the rest of the world is depopulated while Europe alone stands on top with its maximal potential, if I had to take those high end projection for other countries to me it follows logically that Europe could have 2-3 billion people all feed from internal agriculture. But I don´t think that is true either, as in feasible possible given geopolitics and history.

There was no historical anomaly, the population % stayed about the same for Asia and know is bigger than ever before. Africa had an anomaly but the % is becoming bigger as well(in 1600 the Americas lost a lot of their population, that´s why their % was particularly higher, other than population growth). You are overestimating combat deaths, their were relatively quickly recovered for country with high fertility. And even then China was still at the top of their potential(kinda like France was for Europe).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Population_growth_by_region

I was saying for your hypothetical example. I don't actually think Bangladesh (not even with West Bengal, which I hope I've made clear everytime I say "Bengal" I mean the historic Bengal region as a whole and not modern Bangladesh) could have 2 billion people. Indian subcontinent as a whole (defined as the British Raj minus Burma) maybe, not Bengal. Europe I think could still have more, given the densely populated parts of Asia and breadbasket regions like Ukraine and Russia. And then also look at concepts like the "wine lake" in France and such, which instead of planting wine that goes to waste, could go to other food and thus feed people (or just go to subsidising ultra-cheap wine for everyone on the planet, but I understand why that's not a solution). Basic point is the Earth can have much higher population, assuming all you need is food and water. More things, which most everyone OTL in 2016 needs aside from a few uncontacted peoples, means an increase in the resources necessary to supply that (i.e., plugged into the global economy). An extra billion people evenly dispersed globally is probably doable by world resources (yes, even with the extra 40-45 million Americans that entails), an extra 4 billion perhaps not.

I can't say the reasons for everything, but a large part of that Asia vs Europe discrepancy must be the Taiping and other late Qing rebellions (most deaths due to famine) as well as general famines in India caused/exacerbated by the British administration. There is absolutely no reason why fewer Indians could've died, and perhaps the British sent more survivors to the rest of their empire as workers, etc. East Africa especially could have had more. Or perhaps no British at all so we avoid the issue entirely? So even if modern India isn't united, that's still maybe 1.6 billion people (easily), and a correspondingly larger portion of the world's GDP. I'm going to ignore the Americas, since that to me seems a special situation for demography. I think Africa up until the mid-19th century is also worth ignoring, since if you have the American die off in the first place, you'll have the corresponding African one (i.e. the slave trade) to fuel demand. Africa itself has things like Leopold II's rule in the Congo (different history of rubber exploitation, less brutal handling of the situation, could have reduced the death toll) and thus the Congo would have a higher population. There's also the World War I-associated famine in Africa caused by colonial powers taking too much of the food as well as brutalising locals into assisting their armies, which killed a decent amount of civilians in parts of the continent.

I think you can have multiple stuff, I guess keeping the Mediterranean together(choose the civilization yourself), thus removing the raids and enslavement from one country on another would improve population and spread of medicine but I still doubt it would change much if one has still the Green Revolution population growth.

Here I think we're dealing with the OP's vagueness for the topic. My final answer is by all means, get early vaccination, early germ theory, and spread it widely. But I think that changes too much OTL. It feels a bit cheap to me, as does my other solution of alternate agriculture.

In a way you don´t really need the people there, you just need the food to be used for them, I still think that when talking about post Green Revolution one has to address non-food issues, even food itself is not sustainable if overusing the soil. Of course maybe that´s what OP wants, but I find unelegant and a bit cheap.

True. And clearly we don't really need all these farmers in the Great Plains hence why many counties there have extremely old populations which are rapidly declining. There's always room for megacities, or in the case of the Great Plains, more people in Wichita, Omaha, etc. Argentina is a great example of this idea, given the absolute dominance of the greater Buenos Aires area in terms of population distribution.
 
@metalinvader665 A weakness however to Communism in at least the traditional sense is the prevalence of abortion which does limit population as a whole.

Even adjusted for birth control, abortion, etc., which would become more legal in a communist system without the hurdles it had to jump through, I think a communist system can compensate for it to almost the same degree, and make up for it in other ways. Better childcare and such to allow for working mothers, say. A moderate tax on childlessness and other reasonable incentives. As long as the system is stable, population can continue to increase, at sizable levels slowing down to moderate levels. Of course, Eastern Europe's population collapsed after communism ended, which wasn't entirely because of emigration to the West.

Although there's always the Romanian model to go by in terms of abortion and communism, but I don't think it's reasonable for an American communist system to undertake what Romania did. Ceausescu's system seems like a product of it's situation rather then something a typical communist state might do. There's always the opposite, China, which for many years essentially encouraged abortions of ethnic Chinese (making exceptions mainly for minority groups) to preserve the one-child policy.
 
Even adjusted for birth control, abortion, etc., which would become more legal in a communist system without the hurdles it had to jump through, I think a communist system can compensate for it to almost the same degree, and make up for it in other ways. Better childcare and such to allow for working mothers, say. A moderate tax on childlessness and other reasonable incentives. As long as the system is stable, population can continue to increase, at sizable levels slowing down to moderate levels. Of course, Eastern Europe's population collapsed after communism ended, which wasn't entirely because of emigration to the West.

Although there's always the Romanian model to go by in terms of abortion and communism, but I don't think it's reasonable for an American communist system to undertake what Romania did. Ceausescu's system seems like a product of it's situation rather then something a typical communist state might do. There's always the opposite, China, which for many years essentially encouraged abortions of ethnic Chinese (making exceptions mainly for minority groups) to preserve the one-child policy.

In the former Soviet bloc however, in many places other than Poland you see levels of 50-87% abortion rates. No amount of development or trade can compensate for such high levels. This abortion rate also doesn't account for child deaths through any sort of function. Even if a people cures every disease imaginable, (impossible), an abortion rate of 60%+ is not going to ever assist in massive population growth.
 
In the former Soviet bloc however, in many places other than Poland you see levels of 50-87% abortion rates. No amount of development or trade can compensate for such high levels. This abortion rate also doesn't account for child deaths through any sort of function. Even if a people cures every disease imaginable, (impossible), an abortion rate of 60%+ is not going to ever assist in massive population growth.

I'm putting the idea of communism forth because of the communist propensity for megaprojects, which despite environmental issues tend to create opportunities for human settlement and economic activity and mass settlement of otherwise undesirable regions, as well as disregard for free market force. Norilsk in Russia is a fine example of what I mean. In particular, Alaska, as I was originally referring to.

Of course, there's many ways to get Alaska more "correctly" populated than communism, I just believe that an American Alaska cannot reach those levels without a communist US directing things to be that way.
 
I'm putting the idea of communism forth because of the communist propensity for megaprojects, which despite environmental issues tend to create opportunities for human settlement and economic activity and mass settlement of otherwise undesirable regions, as well as disregard for free market force. Norilsk in Russia is a fine example of what I mean. In particular, Alaska, as I was originally referring to.

Of course, there's many ways to get Alaska more "correctly" populated than communism, I just believe that an American Alaska cannot reach those levels without a communist US directing things to be that way.

Perhaps, but the abortion rate must be lowered. Near every former communist nation in the western world (also Latin America) are beset by high abortion rates and declining population that existed in the USSR.
 
Thanks!

I thought farms were subsidized TO make food? Also this creates problems, what would replace the ethanol? And how exactly would you make Americans stop using meat(let´s put aside that that is probably not biologically, politically and socially feasible). The Ethanol argument seems strong, but of course it leaves us with problem of energy production, both from the higher population and less biofuel.

I should read more on it, got any link?.

I strongly encourage you to study further the agricultural sector in the US, because there are an array of icentives out there for farmers to limit their production. All easy to access information, and its been this way since FDR.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/01/AR2006070100962.html

Slightly old, and not a perfect article, but it gives you the gist.

As for what will replace ethanol... gasoline and diesel. Ethanol is an inferior fuel in every way, and its continued use in the US is largely as a subsidy, again, to agricultural interests. It drives up food prices, its no better for the environment, and it is worse on the internal components of vehicles using it. Due to the US shale boom of recent years, there's no reason whatsoever for the US to produce ethanol on an industrial scale.
 
No mongol conquest. I dont know the numbers for other parts of the world but I read numbers regarding medieval Hungary that range between 30-80% of the population. Even with the lowest its still like an epidemic.

That's very interesting.

This question was posed for a timeline idea I had where the PoD is a different Mongol conquest due to Genghis Khan dying during his childhood, which results in less conquests to the West and more towards the East (i.e. no Mongol Russia or Sacking of Baghdad, yes Mongol Japan and Period of Eastern Exploration).

I think the Black Death not happening is feasible here, but just having the Mongols not sweep Eastern Europe significantly increasing the population? That's useful information too.

Thank-you.
 
I'm curious if anyone else has the same general opinion of pre-industrial disasters (war and plague and famine) as I do: indvitable and easily recovered from. In other words, we seem to have little trouble bouncing back from Mongols and the Black Death, back to whatever the carrying capacity is for a given level of agriculture and medicine.
 
I'm curious if anyone else has the same general opinion of pre-industrial disasters (war and plague and famine) as I do: indvitable and easily recovered from. In other words, we seem to have little trouble bouncing back from Mongols and the Black Death, back to whatever the carrying capacity is for a given level of agriculture and medicine.
This very much, outside probably the Americas and Oceania that´s quite the case, only places that are continuously kept down like Iraq, Persia and some others didn´t bounce back.
 
This very much, outside probably the Americas and Oceania that´s quite the case, only places that are continuously kept down like Iraq, Persia and some others didn´t bounce back.

Of course, Iraq and Persia saw extensive destruction of their infrastructure.
 
Top