There was 1.5B when my great-grandparents were born (1898), 3.7B for me (1971). Now there are 8.1B souls, better off economically and consuming to match.
Don't tell me we have enough food, "if it wasn't for evil peoples!". Don't care, we don't have enough water. We're draining aquifers that took 1,000s of years to fill, major cities are basically out of water all over the globe. And that was before AI!
Immigrant hate? Overpopulation. As a kid, most folks looked like you. By middle age, the world is clearly shittier, but the economy was on an upward trajectory for great-grandad, grandad and dad, but not for you. You look around today. Suddenly there are shitloads of poor people who don't look like you! See how that works? (I don't think the haters understand this.)
Global warming? Did I mention people are far better off and wanting their share? Global poverty rates dropped through the floor. The newly "rich" want to enjoy the life the rest of us had. Can't blame 'em. Look at China, still building coal plants to get "caught up". Remember the crazy smog in their major cities? LA was like that when I was a kid.
Hell, even the billionaires wouldn't be so rich and have so much influence if there were half the people to get rich off and influence. Orgs like FB and AWS could not exist as they do now with half the customers, scale wouldn't be there. If I could get one penny off every human, once a year, I'd be making $81,000.
Best part? Depopulation and deflation are economic disasters. Don't know of a time in history where we successfully navigated depopulation in the short to midterm.
EDIT: Forgot to add! We've lost 74% of the animals on Earth since I was born. That's on human activity, and lately, global warming. Our ecosystems are crashing, and unrecoverable in some cases. As one example: There are too many humans who don't want bugs around. If you're 40-50+, you knew a very different world. Hell, if you're 30, I can show you ways the local ecosystem has crashed out, ways you'll remember. "Oh shit! I forgot it was like that!"
Guess I'm wrong. We just need to allocate food, water and wealth fairly (which has rarely if ever happened). Stop pollution in the form of CO2, plastics, herbicides, pesticides etc. All while elevating the way of life for 8B, soon to be 9B, humans. Oh, and every tribe, counter to our entire history and evolution, should suddenly love one another. And somehow, we magically stomp out the wealthy. Super simple stuff! Easier than saying, "Maybe there's too many of us?"
I factually did not say that. I said "we could support everyone equally if we tried" I did not say that it would equal a life of wealth or even equate to the standard of living we are used to today. I don't know what it would be like exactly, but it definitely can be done. There are people consuming quintuple the amount of resources they would need during their entire lives.
Fact: We have quintupled the human population.
Fact: Poverty rates have cratered.
Messy writing: Didn't mean we could quintuple the standard of living. But 2 billion people were living in mud huts when I was a child. I'm arguing we can't support 8B+ souls in a Western middle-class fashion. And more are rising out of poverty every day!
Forgot a major point I'll add to the OP: We've lost 74% of the animals on Earth since I was born. That's on human activity. Well, and now global warming.
If we go on like we are you are right, we will crash and burn. But if we gave it an honest try, said fuck billionaires, we could do it. Its not hard to house everyone the people with power just dont want to. Its not hard to feed everyone, just once again the people with power dont want to solve that problem. The problem is inefficiencies in beauracracy that govern our material conditions. Our governments were never formed to care for anyone, not even their citizens. Our governments were formed to excerpt someone's will over a population and control it. This might have been useful in the distant past, but as societies become more educated and mature it turns negative as less people actually need to be governed. But in reality we did not give human permanence an honest try so yeah maybe you are right. It might be too late now, its probably tine to ready for the mass extinction event currently unfolding