Overpopulation As A Curse Or A Blessing For Humanity
With the world population expected to reach around 10 billion humans by 2050, the human race has to start thinking whether it should start lowering the number or keeping it growing like that. To do so, we would have to look at the pros and cons of overpopulation and see which outweighs the other. The best way to that would be to look at the most populated country in the world, China, and see how they are doing. Some of the advantages that an overpopulated country, such as China, has are the following: high human resources, a strong military, and cheaper and easy-to-get products.
Firstly, countries with a high number of population usually have an equally high number of people looking for work, thus adding to the labor force. A perfect example of this is china, with a population of 1,416,540,652 people, and 806,700,000 of those taking part in the labor force, China thrives when it comes to laborers and factory workers. This gives it an undeniable advantage over many other countries, and it is a clear-cut positive point for having a high population. Next, more people almost always equals stronger army. China, again, having the highest population on Earth, has the largest military with approximately 2,285,000 personnel. Yet again they are directly benefitting from just having numbers on their side, and they top other countries that lack just that. Lastly, countries that have a large labor force, which is a direct product of overpopulation, usually make less costly and more readily available products.
China and other countries with high populations reenter the conversation. I think that most people have encountered things that were made in China, or another overpopulated country such as India. Producing and exporting all these things really makes those countries a lot of money. That production power due to over population, on its own, is enough to change entire economies to the better. Now with every good thing in life comes an equally, or even more, bad thing. Some of those “bad” things that come with overpopulation are high emissions coming from the country contributing to pollution, worries about child labor, and low minimum wages for the workers. To begin with, overpopulated countries are notorious for polluting the world with their high carbon emissions and such. And of course, the most populated country is, as expected, the highest polluter when it comes to carbon emissions. With China releasing approximately 9,040,740,000 metric TONS of carbon into the atmosphere, it isn’t just a disadvantage for the country, but also for the entire world! Secondly, when countries have that much power in their hands, in terms of population, they usually tend to try to overwork everyone. INCLUDING CHILDREN! Is it not enough that, for example, China’s minimum working age is 16, but they still ask 12 year olds to do factory work? ! According to the China Labor Bulletin, 11,575,000 kids between the ages of 10 and 14 are working as laborers in China. This isn’t just a con for the people of the country or the country itself, but humanity as a whole. And to wrap it up, after all of that, they don’t even pay their laborers well.
In different states there’re different standards for a “minimum wage”, but it is all disgusting. It ranges from 1. 5 USD to about 3 USD per hour, and it is a huge disadvantage for anyone working there, which makes living standards absolutely terrible. In conclusion if I had to decide between a low population or an enormous population it would be too hard to choose between them. If I were to choose between them it would take a lot of weighing between the pros and cons and seeing what outweighs the other.
