The top of the curve can be unpleasant. It doesn't have to be.
The worst is when population goes past carrying capacity and then crashes. That's when you get mass die-offs.
Population can settle down at carrying capacity simply through reduced birth rates matching up with death rates. That's the situation we see in much of the western world, with better availability of birth control etc.
Every part of the curve faces that sort of instability. The number of crops actually growing isn't particularly higher than the number needed to sustain the population, and we can't just spin up enough food for billions of people even if we do have plenty of land to do it on.
With humanity, "carrying capacity" is unlikely to be food-limited.
The large number of overweight Americans is a huge pool of excess food and takes a lot of extra daily calories to maintain. As is the large number of livestock being produced and all that corn ethanol etc.
The top of the curve removes that as we can't pay for the inefficiency's of livestock or the extra daily calories to be overweight and feed 50+ billion people.
"carrying capacity" is set by a lot more factors than just food.
Human population is expected to level off at 10-13 billion based on factors relating to social organization, not the 50+ billion that could theoretically be fed.
Replace food with water, land, etc and you get the same instabilitys. Social factors at the limits can easily lead to war, revolution, and or the breakdown of society.
sure, but you don't need to be at the limit to have that sort of instability. It becomes a bit more pronounced when there's less leeway, but it's not different in kind, only a little bit in magnitude.
The worst is when population goes past carrying capacity and then crashes. That's when you get mass die-offs.
Population can settle down at carrying capacity simply through reduced birth rates matching up with death rates. That's the situation we see in much of the western world, with better availability of birth control etc.