[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Antibiotics, electronics, and so on were made possible by a small fraction of the current population of the Earth.

It took everyone and all of history up until now to come up with it, even if just a handful of people provided the incremental technological improvements. I could just as easily argue that 1 person could have invented everything in the world, but the reality is that it takes millions of minds to produce the best ideas.

Besides all that, it takes the labor of the many to provide for the needs of the few that innovate.

Plentiful food and leisure? Well, hunter-gatherers had that, and overall a more varied diet than most people in the West consume today.

Clearly false. Hunter-gatherers eat what they are lucky enough to stumble into in the environment, and then are subject to seasonal fluctuations in availability.

I'm able to gather ingredients from around the world for every meal. Bananas in the winter is no problem. I'd never eat one if I had to gather it from the PNW.

As for lack of threats of enemy invasion, read the news from Europe lately?

No, I'm not a consumer of the news. That said, violence is orders of magnitude less than in any period of time where populations were smaller. The trend toward decreasing violence persists despite enormous population growth. I don't even know anyone that has been killed violently. Back when the earth was vast compared to human populations, over half of adults would meet their end violently.

the improvements are almost always created by a small fraction of the population.

Again I'll point out that just because a few people can come up with great ideas doesn't mean we can select just those few geniuses to be born. It took everything that has happened in the past to arrive where we are today. Sure, it's not efficient, but it's effective.

On the contrary, nuclear and/or biological war seem to be the only things that can possibly divert humanity (along with most vertebrate life) from its current headlong rush to involuntary extinction.

And we're back to my assertion that having an abundance of children is not the natural thing we do when technology provides a means for our desires. Birth control and machines that accomplish labor intensive tasks make children unnecessary. We'll have quite the opposite problem in the future, even if we suffer some problems of overpopulation along the way.

https://youtu.be/c__XWMsz4aU