Growing the World Population Will Not Lead to More Innovation

Elon Musk argues that we need higher population to innovate more. Here is why he is mistaken.

Today, billions of people live hand to mouth. They are barely scraping by, living a life with too little food and too few opportunities. This condition has been reality for much of human existence. Raising billions of the world’s population out of poverty is a challenging task. Now imagine somebody coming around stating: “The solution to all these problems is to add another billion poor people who cannot feed themselves. This act will drive innovation through the roof and solve the whole problem.”

We ought to laugh at people suggesting something that nutty, but that is in fact what a lot of seemingly smart people suggest today, including tech billionaires such as Elon Musk. He has elaborated on this particular theme with a variety of tweets. Here is one example:

I know what you are thinking: “You are misrepresenting Elon Musk! He never said he wanted a billion more poor…