Upvoted, but only because I precommited. Your main argument seems to be that:
higher population → faster tech growth.
more advanced technology → better quality of life
therefore higher population → better quality of life (this doesn’t follow, due to the increase in population also having negative effects which you’ve ignored)
1 and 2 are both reasonable, but 3 is a flawed conclusion. You have looked at one positive impact of increased population, but you have not shown that it is larger than the negative impacts. ie. we’re currently needing lots of non-renewable resources to maintain our civilisation. With a lower population we could have transitioned to primarily renewables, while maintaining the same, or better, standard of living.
This would leave more time for people to engage in science and technology, and less time doing subsistence labour, which means that a world with our tech level, and 1/6th our population, would have >1/6 of our rate of technological development.
Upvoted, but only because I precommited. Your main argument seems to be that:
higher population → faster tech growth.
more advanced technology → better quality of life
therefore higher population → better quality of life (this doesn’t follow, due to the increase in population also having negative effects which you’ve ignored)
1 and 2 are both reasonable, but 3 is a flawed conclusion. You have looked at one positive impact of increased population, but you have not shown that it is larger than the negative impacts. ie. we’re currently needing lots of non-renewable resources to maintain our civilisation. With a lower population we could have transitioned to primarily renewables, while maintaining the same, or better, standard of living.
This would leave more time for people to engage in science and technology, and less time doing subsistence labour, which means that a world with our tech level, and 1/6th our population, would have >1/6 of our rate of technological development.