There's a net new 80 million people added to the world every year.
It's already crowded af in large cities with ridiculous traffic, housing prices, crime, and air pollution (think LA, NYC, Hong Kong).
How much worse will it get before we start seeing a lack of food, energy, and resources (ie. metals) to sustain the population?
This is the problem that I see.
Yes, the population can grow.
But it will mean more totalitarian control and dystopian way of life. It will not be a life worth living. I've already felt this way for 5+ years now, and it's only getting worse every year as more totalitarian controls are enacted.
A world with 9 billion people is not a world where you can fly by plane, travel by personal car, or not work dead-end slave jobs.
It is a world where you're a sardine squished on public transit and require anti-depressants so you don't jump under the train on your morning commute.
It implodes. The greater the population, the greater its problems caused. Becoming a tipping point.
It can gain greater numbers, often by advancing technology. However by changing any methods provokes the existing population not caught up. By continuously adding them into the current method causes it to tip.
The only means of adding them is by greater control, and it causes it to tip.
There is no solution. The Dystopia, has become abhorrent, like the current method adding them in to control them more. It tips. Those numbers will have to fall before they can ever hope to expand.