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Jayson_Virissimo comments on Open Thread: July 2010 - Less Wrong
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Why shouldn't having a higher population lead to greater specialization of labor, economies of scale, greater gains from trade, and thus greater average utility?
Resource limitations.
There is only a limited amount of any given resource available. Decreasing the number of people therefore increases the amount of resource available per person.
There is a point at which decreasing the population will begin decreasing average utility, but to me it seems nigh certain that that point is significantly below the current population.
I could be wrong, and if I am wrong I would like to know.
Do you feel that the current population is optimum, below optimum, or above optimum?
Because of the law of diminishing returns (marginal utility). If you have a billion humans one more (less) results in a bigger increase (decrease) in utility than if you have a trillion.
Whose utility? The extra human's utility will be the same in both cases.