@niko-schach said in #56:
> We only started agriculture about 10,000 years ago - that answers your question.
>
> Since I not only think about this topic, but have studied it thoroughly for many years, I'm of course aware of the impact of agriculture on population growth. However, I'm far from satisfied with this explanation, because since it's not about population g r o w t h but about population e x p l o s i o n, I believe that other factors must also play a role.
> Effective agriculture is only conceivable hand in hand with settledness. Settledness + plenty of food leads to ever greater human settlements and thus to ever greater demand for living space. However, there are neighboring tribes or peoples for whom the same is true.
> At this point, an interesting comparison to chess comes to mind. In the initial position there are two identical cell clusters that want to expand. A single 'organism' on the board could take up the entire space - but alas, there's that neighbor and sooner or later conflict is inevitable.
> But back to the persistent triumph of agriculture. We are talking about times when there were no powerful weapons, so the number of warriors was all that counted.
> (If it weren't so insane, you could call it funny that Putin is calling on Russian mothers to give birth to significantly more children - not out of love for children, but for the army.)
> That would be the first huge reason not only to accept a large population growth or to leave it to chance, but also to specifically desire and promote it. And the second and even more powerful reason? Growing human populations bring not only increased production of food, but increased production of everything. And as can be clearly seen from the terms mass production and mass consumption, masses of people are needed - and ideally ever-growing masses.
> And which people are inherently the biggest enemies of this model? Apparently those who do n o t produce population.
> And by the way, isn't it strange: communists produce communists - fascists produce fascists - all kinds of hated groups of people produce their own kind. Only homosexuals don't produce homosexuals; the opposing camp takes care of it, which usually hates gays, insults them, beats them up or, in extreme cases, stones them to death. And isn't it somehow hilarious: here are the producers of masses - and nature also puts masses of cuckoo's eggs in their nests! And thus, the people they despise are their own products.
It's a simplification yes, but it is the root of the cause of settledness as you say, which creates further resource strain and need for expansion.