[vgivanovic]

>Actually faking the existence of billions of people would require a global conspiracy orders of magnitude more complex than anything in human history.

No true. All that is required is for incentives to be roughly aligned for people to tend in a similar direction.

[Apocryphon]

But then that presumes that the incentives are universally beneficial for all to partake in, and that the players won't simply prisoner's dilemma their way out of it. For instance, wouldn't the wealthier nations be incentivized to downplay population figures in order to minimize their foreign aid payments?

[dwd]

Which is the case for pretty much all conspiracies. Collusion or communication is generally unnecessary when each participant is acting in their own best interest.