Brad Warbiany:
I don’t think I’ve heard of that term before this. I should definitely check it out especially since, if it means what it sounds like it means, it may basically be an exact match for conclusions at which I’ve arrived independently.

Are you familiar with the theory of Peak Liberty?

Wealth created population growth, which in turn created more wealth, since there were now more people to convert resources into goods.

Taken as a model:

Assume a population of eighteen people, at a growth rate of one every year. Assume that a population of fifteen people is the maximum sustainable number with current rates of foo consumption, and that civilization cannot withstand a foo shortage — we have crossed the threshold of peak foo production and just haven’t noticed yet. Assume that foo is used at a rate of one unit per year per person, there is a worldwide supply of foo raw materials that would allow production of only eighty more units, and that it takes a year for enough raw materials to produce fifteen units of foo to replenish themselves (thus the sustainability number). Assume as well that the three world powers, individual leaders who each hold sway over five constituents — one a monarch, one a President For Life, and one a theocrat — are not particularly freedom-oriented. Assume, finally, that though nobody realizes it yet a replacement for bar could be developed, but it would require leveraging the power provided by mass foo production and consumption at an alarming rate, quickly depleting the world’s supply. This means that, at the current rate of population growth and foo consumption per capita, the world is running out of time.

Now throw a revolution into the mix. Two out of three of the monarch’s people rise up against him, throw off the yoke of tyranny, discard the strict controls he imposes on their economy, and start breeding like rabbits. In three years, they’ve developed free market capitalism, invented bar — a more efficient, more sustainable way to achieve the effects of foo — and increased the population of their new nation by five people for a total of seven. One is elected President for four years, and they start exporting bar.

It’s awfully fortuitous that the bar-producing nation’s revolutionary birth developed a government founded in principles of freedom, including economic freedom, when it did.

That’s obviously an absurdly contrived example, but I think it might indicate where my previous statement and your understanding of it diverge.

Is this really a coincidence, or did free markets precede and allow population growth? That’s what happened here in the US post-WW2. I think the pattern is similar in Europe, too. I believe they had a baby boom too, but as freedom descended into socialism, so did the birthrates also decline.

There’s just one small issue with that conclusion: the passage of time sees reduced freedom of the market. As a species, we seem to have lucked out in that the growth of free market capitalism in the world roughly coincided with population growth approaching critical numbers for then-current resource demands. This allowed us to route around problems that would otherwise have likely proved somewhat significant. The real danger, then, is not so much a “peak oil crisis”, because the ill effects of that would simply be a symptom of a much greater problem: a “peak economic freedom crisis”. If we don’t manage to turn around trends in market regulation, the innovation enhancing effects of unfettered market forces may well be stifled to the point that bugbears like the “peak oil crisis” become all too real and immediate.

Maybe that’s just me, though.