Amadeus Schmidt wrote:

> Maybe you didn't take the amount of into account the percentage of land
> that's unsuitable for agriculture (deserts, swamps, mountains). I think
> then the Europe/USA relation wouldn't be 10:1.
> Would you consider Brazil as light populated? I think Barzil people would
> consider their country as very densely populated, despite the vast
> rainforest areas.

Yeah, like Australians, most of the population there lives
in a few big cities.

One thing I have noticed about people is that they form
their impressions at a young age. People who grow up in
cities tend to see the world as small, confined, severely
limited. Their idea of open land is the city park, so they
tend to feel that the whole world is as small and confined,
populated, controllable as a city park. There is heavy
political pressure in the US to constantly be increasing the
amount of land bought up by the government for national
parks, this in spite of the fact that the government already
owns directly over 60% of the land area. This in spite of
the horrible record of destruction and mismanagement, fraud
and corruption on public lands.

Few people bother to actually drive through the US, the days
and days of travel it takes to get from place to place. How
few people actually live there in the spaces between the
cities, how big it is.  I suppose Brazil is much the same.
People of course know intellectually that the country is
mostly unpopulated, but they do not feel it in their guts.

So for city born people, yes the world seems terribly
crowded, small, limited. That is what they choose to see.