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I'm beginning to wonder if you actually read the what I wrote. To ask how food and water and sanitation and other resources would be gotten to all those people jammed into Texas, as if I meant to suggest they we literally try to squeeze all of the people in the entire world into the State of Texas is to ignore my explicit statement to the contrary. The fact that in my HYPOTHETICAL scenario THE ENTIRE REST OF THE PLANET IS COMPLETELY UNINHABITED, should have given you a clue that the example was not intended to be taken in the hyper-literal sense in which you are taking it, and that I was not talking about how to get food and water and sanitation into the State of Texas for all those people.

The point of the example is to simply to illustrate that even with the world's current population, which is apparently is way too many in your opinion, over 40% of the land surface of the earth is still completely uninhabited. Call me crazy, but the problem is not that the earth is too small, or that there are too many people in relation to the size of the earth. How many people is too many, Mr. Society Planner, and what do you plan to do with the excess?

Cordially,

The point of the example is to simply to illustrate that even with the world's current population, which is apparently is way too many in your opinion, over 40% of the land surface of the earth is still completely uninhabited.

There's a very good reason for that- large percentages of the planet are more-or-less uninhabitable. Mountains, deserts, tundra and other areas can only support very small populations of humans. Look at where human civilization arose throughout the ages and you will see it is generally in relatively temperate areas with good soil and access to fresh water. Heck, look at the US- we have large chunks of the country that can't support much of a population.

We live in a world where we're starting to see serious competition, including wars, for resources, including the basics like water. This isn't a justification of China's one-child policy, but we need to be aware of the fact that the increases in population we have seen over the last century will have effects over the long-term.

Diamond,
Get a load of this:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2075030/posts

I’ll comment more as time permits.