The entire human population could drive the most gas-guzzling machinery that it’s possible to manufacture, and it would be harmless, if the entire human population was, just to pick a number for the sake of discussion, 1,000 people.

Likewise, the entire human population could descend on Glacier National Park all at the same time, and it would be harmless, if the entire human population was 1,000 people.

For that matter, the entire human population could throw out all the regulations on fishing and hunting, and it would be harmless if the entire human population was, well, you get the idea.

We’re not anywhere remotely near to so few of us, and don’t seem likely to get there, at least not any time soon. But even with our current population near 9,000 million, there is already alarm about a falling birth rate leading to a world with fewer people.

Elon Musk has said that this could bring on the end of civilization, and there are some obvious advantages in big populations as well as smaller ones.

Corporations moving operations overseas chose nations with the large populations, partly just because a big population offers an abundance of labor. When the labor supply is abundant, labor gets cheaper. This makes corporate shareholders happy, and cheap labor can make it possible for companies to pass the low price back to bargain-hunting consumers here at home.

I’m pretty well persuaded that what we have here is a situation where there’ll be both advantages and disadvantages tagging along with smaller and bigger populations alike. In effect, we get to pick our poison with our pleasures.

My bias got some confirmation in a recent issue of The Economist. The concluding message of the report was that population trends are something worth watching, but nothing to panic about. The gist was that we end up with a combination of advantages and disadvantages no matter how big or small a population we start with and no matter which we end up with.

If that’s true, it’s as true for a nation as well as a world, as true for a state as well as a nation, and as true for a town as it is for a state. Wild animal populations around the world will be advantaged or disadvantaged by the poison we pick for ourselves.

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