The total surface area of the world is 510.1 million square kilometers and the total population figure is about seven billion. In theory then there is 3,174 square feet of area for each and every one of us. It's better news for the average family of four who could/should therefore look forward to 12,696 sq. feet of property, all things being equal. It doesn't look too bad on paper does it?

But all things are not equal as I touched on here. And the figure for the total surface given above includes all water too. The actual figure for the 'land' surface is really 148.87 million square kilometers. But the individual portion for each of us then, if fairly apportioned, would still be 926.4 sq. feet. For me with my family of four, I'd get 3,705.6 sq. feet, which is a helluva a lot more than I have. Then there's the other little problem though. I would not be at all pleased were my 3,700 sq. feet allocation to be on top of a fucking mountain. I'm a confirmed city boy ya-see. 

The architect who penned my home had sardine tins on his mind that morning. Mind you, it is a happy home filled with precious memories and as herself tells me, it's easy to keep clean. The floor area is about 1,000 sq. feet, doubled with the inclusion of upstairs. This upstairs reference got me thinking of the old World Trade centre where each floor measured a single acre, (43,550 sq. feet). According to my calculations above, each floor could accommodate 47 people comfortly meaning that with 110 floors, 5,170 people could have lived in each building taking up no more space than two square acres of the Earth's surface. On an aside, what do you think you'd have to pay for a 926 sq. foot apartment in Manhattan? 

Anyway, in reality, American prisons stuff two inmates into 30 sq. feet of a cell and Asian cities have millions of people shoulder to shoulder in a few small square miles. On the other hand we have farmers sitting alone on hundreds of acres all to themselves. There are mountains, jungles and glaciers where few of us want our personal square footage to be. In fact, of the total land surface of 148.87 sq. miles, only ten per cent or 14.88 million sq. miles is arable. Seven billion of us then are depending on 14.88 million sq. miles of earth suitable for growing our food or 92 sq. foot for each and every one of us. That's a little more than a nine by ten foot patch of ground. Doesn't seem like a lot to produce your meats, fruits and veg and also the essential booze and tobacco we all need, does it?

But the above is pure whimsey. "Almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day. At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day. One in eight people go to bed hungry every single night." And yet the other side of the world has never been richer. But that real wealth is in the hands of a few. "Eight men hold as much wealth as half the planet combined." and you can read about that here. Perhaps the problem is not overpopulation but instead it is down to inequality of distribution. There is more sense in that than you might think. Historically the poor have far more children than the better off and there are strong social and cultural reasons for this. In the EU right now we have a demographic time bomb building. Apparently we are not producing enough kids to guarantee the pensions of the future and dark voices are suggesting that the official welcome to immigrants hopes this will allay the problem. In China before their boom they banned more than one child but now that people there are better off, the population is actually falling. As a result this year, the Chinese Government is offering grants to couples to have a second child.

So it would appear that when people have a reasonable standard of living such as enough to eat, a basic education and a safe roof over their heads, they make less babies. This would have the knock-on effect overall of the world population actually falling. If that is the case, and it is, then the pension problem is only going to get bigger. Worse then that though, with the advances in medicine and care, old people are living longer meaning pension terms are longer and overall costs have gone dangerously up in this quarter. The retirement age in Ireland is 66 and life expectancy has gone up to 81. That's fifteen years of pensions per person when they get there. To pay each pension it is estimated to require four taxpayers for each one. The same estimate however suggests that if trends continue then there will only be one taxpayer per pensioner in fifty years time and this ratio continues downwards after that. 

Soon enough then the real problem could become underpopulation. But a documentary I watched the other night predicts optimistically that technology will overcome the problem by doing all of the work. Happy days you might say. But if the machines are doing all the producing, how and why does the taxpayer get paid? Will some 'One World Government' pay the machines, (and tax them as well), and fuck the people? That scenario wouldn't end well. But I have seen and read more than once over the last two years that there is a cabal of elites, probably including those eight men who hold as much wealth as half the planet, who firmly believe that depopulation is what is needed, (by them of course). They have a view of the world they wish to rule and only see the need for four or five hundred thousand human slaves because the machines will do the rest. The slaves will build and maintain the machines leaving the elites without a care.

So it seems to me that we are overpopulated with a small amount of real fuckers, maybe as little as a couple of hundred thousand of them, and the sooner the rest of us begin a de-population program there, the better.