Dick Morris wrote in message ...
jjustwwondering wrote:
Usable space, elbow room, is really a commodity like
any other, produced for people by people, in cooperation.
Therefore, *the more people the less crowding* - a seeming
paradox that has held true throughout all human history -
and there is no limit in sight.

Whether the end is in sight depends on the quality of your vision.

It does: myopic vision only perceives a limit where penetrating vision
sees
through it and beyond.

There are no more undiscovered lands to exploit. If people move from one
part of the world to another they reduce crowding at home but they
increase it wherever they go.

That does not matter much, since discovering new lands is only one of
the innumerable ways
in which people can reduce crowding, and do.

A dozen random examples out of a million:
(1) the Dutch have created land from the sea by means of dikes;
(2) doubling crop yields halves the need for arable land;
(3) intensive animal husbandry dispenses with pasture land;
(4) bar-reading devices at stores reduce crowding by making lines go
faster;
(5) advanced mining methods permit using up minimal surface area to
get at deposits deep underground.
(6) a two-story house uses the same surface twice over for living room
(and a thirty-story hotel uses it thirty times over);
(7) putting cables and water pipes underground saves surface area;
(8) cell phones reduce crowding at phone booths;
(9) google search reduces crowding at libraries;
(10) DVDs and VCRs reduce crowding at movie theaters
(11) a vehicle that moves twice as fast doubles the use of the road
area;
(12) but when one travels by air, or by sea, or telecommunicates, then
road area is not used at all.

The US has gotten dramatically more
crowded in the last 50 years, and that's no paradox.

Much *less* crowded, by any reasonable objective measure.

Home ownership is highest ever, there are more
rooms and more room per person; travel time
between two points is less; cars are more spacious,
and there are two or three of them per family; one can
see a movie or hear hi-fi music all alone, with no coughing
crowd around one; there are more TV channels to choose from -
and internet connection is *infinitely*
faster - because there was not any back then...

The direction of change becomes more obvious
if one compares conditions separated by a longer time interval.

See, for example,
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm...&output=gplain