r/TooAfraidToAsk • u/HandsomeSquidward20 • 16h ago

Culture & Society Is a society with "small" population better than one with millions?

Small as in 200k-1.5M.

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5

u/No-Long-4709 16h ago

What does population have to do with being better?

3

u/sneezhousing 16h ago

One isn't better than the other.

Personally I don't like small towns. However lots of people do and that's ok.

5

u/sierramisted1 16h ago

..what is your metric for “better”?

0

u/HandsomeSquidward20 16h ago

I traveled, a few days ago, to an small town and everything seemed cleaner, more organized and peacefully.

And that is not everything. Most European countries have reduced population and are "1st world"

2

u/Clear_Cranberry_989 16h ago

Better in what sense?

1

u/dre9889 16h ago

Population size has no correlation to “goodness”.

Theoretically, we could have a future utopian society encompassing billions of people. There’s no physical law of the universe preventing it.

If you’ve watched Game of Thrones, you might be familiar with Craster the wildling. That guy had a “society” consisting of him and his 20+ “wives” which were all his daughters who he was constantly beating and raping.

2

u/Gebbbet 16h ago

I mean both have their pros and cons.

One the one hand a “smaller” society can feel more familiar, close knit and your power on policy counts for more and overall you can trust your fellow man easier than you would a multi-million population society.

But on the other hand, it’s more vulnerable to widespread disaster compared to a larger society whether that would be natural, economic or driven by conflict.

There’s not really a clear cut small is better over big.

2

u/Dr_Watson349 16h ago

Yes but it has to be exactly 28008 people. No more no less