@jeffjarvis I just finished reading Asimov's "Caves of Steel" which was written in 1954 but takes place an in-determinant number of centuries or millennia in the future. In it all food on Earth had to be grown in "yeast factories" that made synthetic food because the world population of 8 billion couldn't be sustained with growing food in soil. There is even a quip about if they followed the "back to the soil" people or there was even a slight disruption in the carefully balanced yeast-food production then billions of the 8 billion would starve to death. I think he was going off a mid-20th century estimate for food production capacity of the planet that was overly conservative. Meanwhile Earth's population crossed 8 billion a couple years ago. That doesn't mean Earth can support an infinite growth human population size, and obviously we are dealing with very serious environmental problems already at 8 billion. So leveling off or even a decrease to a new equilibrium a few billion less due to a reduced birth rate for a time could be good. Capitalism with needing infinite year over year growth doesn't know how to deal with a no-growth equilibrium. I can't imagine over the 100-300 years we wouldn't come up with something better that can though.
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