Subject: AH Challenge: US Pop. @ 770M People by 2001 Date: Sun, 09 Sep 2001 20:29:55 -0400 From: "T. Gehring" Organization: Virginia Commonwealth University Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if The title says it all, folks. If you can find a way to make the US have a population of 770 million people by 2001, you get the carrot (errr, prize.) I'm asking, because I just cannot see a US with a population that size being a nice place to live. Anyone else think it's plausible? === Tommy Gehring Richmond, Virginia Subject: Re: AH Challenge: US Pop. @ 770M People by 2001 Date: 10 Sep 2001 02:45:36 +0200 From: Thomas Martin Widmann Organization: Aarhus University Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 "T. Gehring" writes: > The title says it all, folks. If you can find a way to make the US > have a population of 770 million people by 2001, you get the carrot > (errr, prize.) I'm asking, because I just cannot see a US with a > population that size being a nice place to live. Anyone else think > it's plausible? According to , the US has a population of 273m on an area of 9.809 m km2. The EU has a population of 376m on an area of 3.236 m km2. This means that if the US had the same population density as the EU, it would have a population of 1140m people. (With US population densities, the EU would only be the home of 90m people.) Personally, I think the EU is a very nice place to live, so I really don't see what the problem would be having a population of 770m in the US. But I cannot see it happening -- perhaps a 3rd-world USA would have population growth rates like India etc., resulting in a much larger and much poorer population? /Thomas -- Thomas Martin Widmann, Universitetsparken 8, 2., -333, DK-8000 Århus C Tel.: 7028 4406 * (park) 8942 7333 * (mob.) 2167 6127 * (SDS) 8733 4465 MA stud. (ling-dat); stud.prog.; aktiv radikal; formand/DK-TUG; T4ONF/TK Subject: Re: AH Challenge: US Pop. @ 770M People by 2001 Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2001 03:03:31 GMT From: Matt Giwer <"Matt Giwer"@giwersworld.org> Organization: RoadRunner - TampaBay Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 , 2 Thomas Martin Widmann wrote: > > "T. Gehring" writes: > > > The title says it all, folks. If you can find a way to make the US > > have a population of 770 million people by 2001, you get the carrot > > (errr, prize.) I'm asking, because I just cannot see a US with a > > population that size being a nice place to live. Anyone else think > > it's plausible? > > According to , > the US has a population of 273m on an area of 9.809 m km2. The EU has > a population of 376m on an area of 3.236 m km2. This means that if > the US had the same population density as the EU, it would have a > population of 1140m people. (With US population densities, the EU > would only be the home of 90m people.) Next look at the population density of Japan. Then look at Japan's population density in terms of arable land only. One of the tricks is whacko claim of the amount of food needed per pound of meat produced. The tradeoff is so great (I don't have the real numbers at hand but) it is on the order of 10% reduction in meat would support double the population. Don't know about you but I like refried beans and rice and enchiladas. That is a heavy grain diet very like the chinese thinly sliced meats and sauces to flavor rice. And I like that so much I am a modestly accomplished amateur at it. > Personally, I think the EU is a very nice place to live, so I really > don't see what the problem would be having a population of 770m in the > US. > But I cannot see it happening -- perhaps a 3rd-world USA would have > population growth rates like India etc., resulting in a much larger > and much poorer population? The US would have needed a higher immigration rate. Immigration to the US has been almost solely determined by conditions in the country the immigrants were leaving. It still is today. Presuming no limit to how many the US would have taken in when expanding in the west conditions would have had to be worse in Europe. For 99.9% of the people the US offer was only free land or grunt labor. Very few were "yearning for" free speech. Free speechers tend to stay and fight. So we need a saurkraut famine in Germany to equal the potato famine in Ireland. But you can match the Germanic immigrations (the Polka folks were Prussian at the time) with times of war. My ancestors coincide with the Napoleanic Wars. More of his wars and more Franco-Germans. Don't give Garibaldi a clean win and get more Italians. A seperate factor is population increase depends upon decreasing infant and child mortality. Have Ben Franklin invent smallpox vaccination and have Jefferson push it through as law and the British population of the US explodes before industrialization can adapt to it and childbearing customs have not adapted to so many children surviving. Then you can have a population explosion in the US where there is no need for immigration to populate the available land and no open immigration policy. Then you get a population density linked to the vegetarian production of the land. -- Scruples taste best with garlic butter. -- The Iron Webmaster, 609 Subject: Re: AH Challenge: US Pop. @ 770M People by 2001 Date: 10 Sep 2001 06:47:09 -0700 From: cray74@hotmail.com (Mike Miller) Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 "T. Gehring" wrote in message news:<3B9C0983.9F6BE8E@vcu.org>... > The title says it all, folks. If you can find a way to make the US have > a population of 770 million people by 2001, you get the carrot (errr, > prize.) I'm asking, because I just cannot see a US with a population > that size being a nice place to live. Anyone else think it's plausible? Hey, I worked on TL like this over a year ago. My goal was a doubled population by 2001, though with the same standard of living as OTL's US and the same Constitution (at first). Anyway, the trick for making a "crowded" US a decent place to live is to increase the US's "starting" population by the same multiple you want the end population to result in. In this case, the 1790 census would need to be around 10.6 million rather than 3.9 million. Then you'd need to sustain similarly higher immigration rates - half of OTL's US population can be credited to post-1790 immigrants, IIRC. Picking up Mexico and Canada offers 130 million more by 2001. My POD was a disaster in Europe that spurred massive immigration to the New World. Figuring out what disaster caused that was the source of a lot of contention. However, spiking starting population by a few million seems easier than importing tens or hundreds of millions later. Suggestion: Religious prosecution in Europe drives a few million immigrants to the nascent US. Assume it survives turmoil, preferably by stretching out immigration period by a decade or so. Insert wars with neighbors, or maybe friendly annexations as other New World nations try to band together against the European Religious Tyranny. Heck, have the immigrant-flooded US stave off a European invasion - that'll boost the opinion of the US in the eyes of its neighbors. This is massive deviation timeline stuff, though. Suggestion 2: Create a "pole to pole" US. Brazil, Mexico, and Canada can add 300 million to the US's 281 million. Argentina has another 36 million...you might just be able to get 770 million out of annexations. Bonus points if you can make the annexees happy to be in the US. How do you unite the Americas without the Draka? Mike Miller, Materials Engineer