Author Topic: What's the total population of Human Space?  (Read 5268 times)

skiltao

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Re: What's the total population of Human Space?
« Reply #30 on: 23 October 2019, 15:16:54 »
The Invading Clans [Edit: Warriors of Kerensky /Edit] sourcebook gives the Inner Sphere's overall growth rate as 0.7%. With rounding, that's what's needed to reach 1 trillion in 2787, so it seems fair to take as a baseline for long-term interstellar growth.

Most worlds require outside assistance in making their unused territory habitable, so populations in the Deep Periphery may be limited by how many other worlds are near enough to help.
« Last Edit: 24 October 2019, 15:54:34 by skiltao »
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Wendelsnatch

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Re: What's the total population of Human Space?
« Reply #31 on: 23 October 2019, 16:23:11 »
I would not consider this selection of countries "half of the countries in the world". Not by number and certainly not by their combined population.

Sorry, I miss spoke.  It is not half the countries in the world that have sub-replacement fertility.  It is half the worlds population that has sub-replacement fertility.  This information comes from the U.N. Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs.  Predictions are that our population will plateau at 11 billion around 2100 and then decline.  Other forecast have the population peaking earlier just below 9 billion before declining.  How much of a decline, the rate, and if/when it will stabilized are up to debate by people way smarter than me.

For planets that already start out at better tech than 21st century Terra, and limited immigration after the SL, once a colony reaches a certain size there is little reason for further growth.  It is entirely plausible that several hundred million is a leveling off point on average in battletech, and maybe even this number is only reachable with government incentives to have more kids.

Maingunnery

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Re: What's the total population of Human Space?
« Reply #32 on: 23 October 2019, 16:32:28 »
Sorry, I miss spoke.  It is not half the countries in the world that have sub-replacement fertility.  It is half the worlds population that has sub-replacement fertility.  This information comes from the U.N. Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs.  Predictions are that our population will plateau at 11 billion around 2100 and then decline.  Other forecast have the population peaking earlier just below 9 billion before declining.  How much of a decline, the rate, and if/when it will stabilized are up to debate by people way smarter than me.

For planets that already start out at better tech than 21st century Terra, and limited immigration after the SL, once a colony reaches a certain size there is little reason for further growth.  It is entirely plausible that several hundred million is a leveling off point on average in battletech, and maybe even this number is only reachable with government incentives to have more kids.
I think that is unlikely, when there is a lot of room for growth then it will be advantageous to have kids.
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skiltao

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Re: What's the total population of Human Space?
« Reply #33 on: 23 October 2019, 16:59:01 »
Fun fact! If the long term population growth rate takes humanity from 5 billion in 1987 to 1 trillion in 2750, and if known space (Inner Sphere and nearby Periphery) start with 545 billion people in 3025, then the population in 3132 should be the same the Star League would've had at the end of 2769.

I think that is unlikely, when there is a lot of room for growth then it will be advantageous to have kids.

Anarctica, the Sahara, Luna and Mars all have plenty of room in 2019. :)
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Maingunnery

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Re: What's the total population of Human Space?
« Reply #34 on: 23 October 2019, 17:10:23 »
Anarctica, the Sahara, Luna and Mars all have plenty of room in 2019. :)
Well if you have the technology to make it effectively arable then go for it.  ;)
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skiltao

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Re: What's the total population of Human Space?
« Reply #35 on: 24 October 2019, 12:27:51 »
Perhaps I should've instead named countries (like the United States) which have sub-replacement fertility despite having lots of arable land.

There is no such thing as a slow, long-term decline of population, unless a species is under constant and growing threat by predators. There is only steep, possibly cataclysmic decline or some form of growth, no matter how weak.

The question would be, do humans work the same as other species, and can we treat this as a species-wide question or does it make more sense to study isolated populations?

Strictly speaking, I don't think the downward pressure has to be predation per se; if we take interstellar colonies as being analogous to isolated island populations, the challenge may be more akin to having the coast slowly erode and the usable land area tending to shrink.
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Maingunnery

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Re: What's the total population of Human Space?
« Reply #36 on: 24 October 2019, 12:38:18 »
Perhaps I should've instead named countries (like the United States) which have sub-replacement fertility despite having lots of arable land.
Most of the first world have special pressures of both artificial (higher costs of raising children, social promotion of having few/no children, etc) and natural origins (biological feedback from overcrowding cities, etc). These pressures are unlikely to occur in colonies, where I would expect the families to have 6+ children.
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Taharqa

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Re: What's the total population of Human Space?
« Reply #37 on: 24 October 2019, 13:32:20 »
To make the point again: There is no such thing as a slow, long-term decline of population, unless a species is under constant and growing threat by predators. There is only steep, possibly cataclysmic decline or some form of growth, no matter how weak.

Thats a very Malthusian argument (or maybe Thanosian?). There are not many professional demographers (of which I am one) who believe Malthus anymore. His predictions were predicated on the idea that people would not be able to control their fertility - which subsequent history has absolutely demonstrated they are capable of.

Empirically, the earlier comment about half the world being at or below replacement fertility (about 2.1 total fertility rate) is roughly correct and its not just the industrialized West unless you include in that group, virtually every Asian and Latin American country. The global TFR is somewhere around 2.5. Really the only outliers at this point in terms of very high fertility are sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Middle East.

Not sure what this has to do with the OP to be honest, though. In order to get anything remotely close to the number of planets founded in the battletech universe as well as existing canon populations, you would have to have a resurgence in fertility rates during the early colonization period. When we were working out our simulation of population change in MM (that goes all the way back to Earth by itself), I was curious about this so I calculated what TFR would have to be roughly in order to get the growth rates that get you from Terra circa now to Star League peak. The answer was that TFR would peak out somewhere between 4 and 4.5 kids per woman in the early to middle part of that period. So basically an equivalent to the 1950s baby boom but sustained over a longer period of time.
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Kidd

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Re: What's the total population of Human Space?
« Reply #38 on: 24 October 2019, 14:06:34 »

I think the math was that if the published planets had the only population in the Inner Sphere and every un-published world on an Inner Sphere map had 0 population, the average was still in the hundreds of millions.

However, this was getting to be bothersome because of FASAnomics so during Herb's tenure as Line Developer, the rule was set that most Inner Sphere planets would have populations in the tens of millions unless canonically listed otherwise. New planets created with the Campaign Ops rules tend to emphasize a smaller population, though it's still possible to have player-generated systems with billions.

Anyway, figure about 20 million if a planet hasn't received a planetary write-up in a House SB or Touring the Stars or other publication.

They actually had one of the most plausible economies, populations, and military sizes. The Houses should've been vastly larger.
So... what does that give us, in total numbers?

Would it be a worthwhile endeavour to go through all the extant HBs and TTSs and sum up and see what we get? Could we do that?

Would've been nice to see a couple of these Anytown type 20 mill planets in a TTS. Something to point at and say, "this is an average Feddie world, average Cap world" etc.
« Last Edit: 24 October 2019, 14:10:58 by Kidd »

skiltao

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Re: What's the total population of Human Space?
« Reply #39 on: 24 October 2019, 15:45:22 »
Calling a twenty-mill world "average" is a little misleading because it's the arithmetic mean; the population of a median world would be even lower.

Trying to sum up published worlds can also be misleading if there's booms or mass relocations in between one set of figures and the next. Are the TTSs set in 3067, or later?

Most of the first world have special pressures of both artificial (higher costs of raising children, social promotion of having few/no children, etc) and natural origins (biological feedback from overcrowding cities, etc). These pressures are unlikely to occur in colonies, where I would expect the families to have 6+ children.

I don't think the average colonist has the ability to triple their arable land every twenty years, but perhaps we are thinking of different spectrums of colonies and different phases of the colonization.

Not sure what this has to do with the OP to be honest, though.

It's a question of how plausible it is for world populations to plateau in the thousands or millions instead of proceeding unchecked to near-Earth levels.

Though of course, once we determine that there's still the question of just how many unpublished worlds there are.
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Adrian Gideon

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Re: What's the total population of Human Space?
« Reply #40 on: 25 October 2019, 10:44:14 »
It’s an unknown.
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