For decades, the dominant narrative surrounding population growth has been one of alarm. Thinkers like Malthus warned that population growth would cause mass starvation and ecological collapse. Ehrlich’s 1968 book The Population Bomb famously predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve in the 1970s due to overpopulation.
Today, concerns are shifting. Many of the same governments that once feared overpopulation are now worried about declining birth rates. Countries like Japan, South Korea, and much of Europe struggle with economic stagnation and aging populations. Even China—after enforcing its coercive One-Child Policy—is now encouraging larger families. This shift raises an important question: where did the fear of overpopulation come from, and was it ever justified?
This fear is rooted in the old zero-sum view—the belief that wealth and resources are fixed, and that a growing population simply means dividing those resources into smaller portions. Aristotle, for example, argued that if a city’s population grew too large for people to know one another, resources would be depleted.
Today, the evidence is plain: if the old theory were correct, modern megacities would be dystopian wastelands. Yet cities like Tokyo, New York, and London are among the wealthiest and most dynamic places in history. So why does this zero-sum logic persist—not only among ordinary people, who intuitively believe it, but also among so-called experts, especially economists who should know better?
The reason lies in their static view of human societies—the static fallacy. Their assumptions are based on static models, borrowed from the natural sciences, where variables and outcomes can be predicted with a high degree of certainty. In physics or biology, an increase in a certain factor (e.g., the number of rats or locusts) leads to predictable consequences (e.g., resource depletion and famine).
This view is flawed because it fundamentally misunderstands human nature. Unlike other species or other physical matter, humans are not just passive consumers of resources. They are active, creative, and innovative, constantly finding solutions and reshaping their environment. As Huerta de Soto puts it, they have an inherent capacity for entrepreneurial discovery. That’s why—unlike rats, bees, or sharks—we do not live the same way we did 10,000 (or even five) years ago.
Human history is full of pivotal, yet unpredictable, discoveries. Take penicillin: before Alexander Fleming’s accidental breakthrough, bacterial infections were among the leading causes of death. No predictive model could have foreseen this discovery, yet it revolutionized medicine and saved countless lives. Or consider 3D printing—once unimaginable, it is now transforming manufacturing, medicine, and even space exploration. We also cannot predict all the outcomes of new and future AI technologies, as well as others.
This explains why Ehrlich’s predictions in The Population Bomb failed and why he also lost his famous 1980 wager against Julian Simon. Ehrlich claimed population growth would deplete resources and drive prices up, while Simon argued that human ingenuity would lead to abundance and lower costs. They bet on five metals over a decade, and—by 1990—all five had dropped in price, proving Simon right.
Huerta de Soto provides a key insight into why population growth drives progress rather than collapse. He argues that, contrary to Adam Smith’s division of labor, the true driver of economic progress is the “division of knowledge.” By this, he specifically means entrepreneurial knowledge, which is, by definition, dispersed—unlike scientific knowledge, which can be centralized and stored.
Entrepreneurial knowledge is subjective, exclusive, and private. It can’t be centralized because each bit of it exists in the mind of a different individual, often in a tacit and inarticulate way. Not only that, but it is also constantly evolving, as this is the knowledge we create through trial and error—by acting in the face of uncertainty, noticing opportunities, and discovering what works and what doesn’t.
This means that every individual possesses unique, irreplaceable knowledge shaped by their genes, upbringing, experiences, and circumstances. As a result, each person is an irreplaceable creator of new entrepreneurial knowledge, which can lead to discovering solutions. When populations grow, the total pool of entrepreneurial knowledge expands, leading to more innovation and better solutions to human problems.
These solutions are not always grand inventions; most of the time, they are smaller discoveries that improve everyday life. The founders of Airbnb just noticed the scarcity of affordable lodging during a major conference in San Francisco. They began renting out air mattresses in their apartment to attendees, realizing many people were willing to pay for a more personal and affordable alternative to hotels. Countless similar discoveries happen every day, often unnoticed, but they form the bedrock of our prosperity.
The zero-sum mindset that ignores the power of entrepreneurial discovery is embodied in Thanos—the villain in the Avengers movies. Believing resources are finite, he wipes out half of all life to “save” the universe. Yet, instead of prosperity, his plan leads to collapse because every person who vanished was not just a consumer, but also a problem-solver with unique knowledge.
To illustrate how much dispersed knowledge is embedded in even the simplest products, consider a cup of coffee. We assume making coffee is straightforward, yet no single individual knows how to produce it entirely on their own. Coffee beans must be grown (often in Brazil or Ethiopia), harvested, processed, shipped globally, roasted, and brewed using machines designed by engineers and manufactured across different countries. This process involves thousands of individuals, each contributing their exclusive knowledge to bring a simple cup of coffee to your table.
Now, imagine reducing the world’s population by half. The result would be a dystopia like the one depicted in Children of Men, where even meeting our most basic needs would become a challenge. Worse still, we would never know how many undiscovered innovations—medical breakthroughs, cleaner energy sources, more efficient production methods—would be lost forever.
The fear of overpopulation is just one example of a broader mistake—treating human societies as static systems where trends continue unchecked, and resources are exhausted without new solutions. This same error underlies many failed doomsday predictions, from peak oil to climate catastrophe models that overlook technological and entrepreneurial innovation.
Again and again, history shows that human ingenuity—whether modest or groundbreaking—always outpaces static predictions. Just as Julian Simon debunked Paul Ehrlich’s overpopulation fears, countless innovations in energy, efficiency, and technology have defied collapse forecasts.
The real threat is not population growth or industrial progress—it is the failure to recognize the power of human creativity. Rather than fearing the future and resorting to central planning, we should embrace the entrepreneurial discovery that drives human flourishing.
