Population, economic growth and ecological damage - a peek under the hood

[GliderGuider]

9. The sorts of saturation effects I'm thinking about

The sorts of saturation effects I'm thinking about would include things like high energy consumption per capita (no need for lots of kids to act as labour) and high population density. These obviously don't act on their own (culture plays a big role), but two effects in play are no need for children to ensure one's comfort and survival, and less physical room for more children.

The reason I "leave it behind" is that economic decline is a much larger factor in population decline than saturation effects. Saturation gives a logistic curve that's asymptotic to a limit, whereas socioeconomic collapse can actually inflect the population curve down

I expect socioeconomic collapses of one sort or another to play a much larger role in our collective future than the global saturation of demand for energy and material goods. As a result I think that any demographic model that depends on increasing levels of affluence is unlikely to be predictive for long.