[truthguy]

There is so much wrong with your post I don't know where to start. Big populations and especially big population density ususally mean low quality of life and loss of personal freedom. When people are sardined into tiny areas they get into each others personal space. This is particularily true when you have people of a different culture. If you have enough space to give people room to move about it won't be nearly as much of a problem. It's the old out of sight, out of mind thing. I've visited a number of very crowded places and the quality of life is VERY LOW unless you are part of the very highest income class. Otherwise things suck. Now there are a few primitive countries where the population density is low and the quality of life low as well. Saudi Arabia is one such place. But most of their land is waste land except that with oil under it. So this is not to say that low population density always leads to a high quality of life but I believe that high population nearly always leads to a low quality of life.

[BenKenobi]

It’s really simple. Adam Smith. Population concentrations diversify and increase productivity. The wealthiest areas and nations generally have a high population concentration.

Remember Smith and his pin makers? You aren’t going to locate pin makers in Alaska. Also, Alaska is a net consumer of taxpayer dollars from the lower 48, and is a bad example. They could not sustain their current standard of living without assistance from elsewhere.

Another example is the Dutch. They have very high population density, but have embraced economic classic liberalism and liberal democracy. If population density created poverty and despotism, we would expect the opposite.

You are right that population density creates more poverty, in the sense that there is more inequality. The rich get far richer than the poor. The question then becomes relative poverty. The numbers show clearly the opposite effect. They show that while the ‘poor’ as a percentage of the population grows, the amount of money necessary to be considered poor goes up. A rising tide lifts all boats.

Look, I know this is counterintuitive, but this is the honest truth. Economics requires population density in order to prosper. Economics induces severe market forces on rural areas to encourage people to move to the cities.

We have been surrounded by the greatest urbanisation that the world has seen, and you are arguing that this is contrary to market forces?

I understand your argument, but it is simply, flat out wrong. If the quality of life were truly higher in rural areas, than more people would move out there. Why don’t they? I am a country boy myself, but unfortunately I need to work in order to eat and to live and to raise a family, and I cannot do so where I am from. I have suffered un and underemployment for the last two years in order to attempt to make it work.