21st Century

* To the coming flood of millennial predictions, let me add a trickle. Numbers will dominate the 21st century--numbers of people. The economic value of everything rises with scarcity and falls with abundance, which means a lower value for each of us as world population zooms above 6 billion. One result will be higher unemployment forcing big government to become bigger.

Another result of numbers will be a loss of political freedom in the next century because freedom is also a function of number. The more of anything in a given space, the less freedom each unit can exercise.

Within my lifetime of 79 years, world population has tripled and that growth will continue because 3 billion young people have already entered their reproductive years.

Whatever newsworthy events The Times will report in the 21st century, my prediction is that they will all be traceable to numbers--huge numbers of people in a world no larger than it is today.

WILLARD OLNEY

Hesperia