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A true Malthusian is a dangerous thing, in my opinion, insofar as they fully claim that the only way that we can all be rich is by limiting population. It's po

A true Malthusian is a dangerous thing, in my opinion, insofar as they fully claim that the only way that we can all be rich is by limiting population. It's possible, at any rate, to accept most of the correlations in this article and to reach a very different conclusion: that the earth is capable of more and more population while still redistributing its proceeds. This argument was made by Henry George more than 130 years ago, and still is worth reading[0]. [0] http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/George/grgPP10.html http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/George/grgPP10.html

plantsoftware 10y ago
You are right. If you havent read anything by Diedre McCloskey you should check her out.
Bullingdon 10y ago
And the argument may have appealed, 130 years ago. Since then we've quintupled our population and gained a much better understanding of carrying capacity. That capacity may be larger or smaller than our current population, but in either case, indefinite growth is not a sustainable plan — unless we know where our next planet is.
- bufordsharkley 10y ago
  It's simultaneously true that infinite growth isn't feasible, and yet true that most predictions on resource depletion haven't been borne out. We can make soil more productive, find new ways of creating potable water, create energy out of seemingly nothing... Most of the suffering from limited resources have been a case of artificial scarcity owing to monopolistic control. I don't think it's unduly optimistic to agree with the mindset of "Spaceship Earth":[0] > It is a well-provisioned ship, this on which we sail through space. If the bread and beef above decks seem to grow scarce, we but open a hatch and there is a new supply, of which before we never dreamed. And very great command over the services of others comes to those who as the hatches are opened are permitted to say, "This is mine!" [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceship_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceship_Earth
  - drzaiusapelord 10y ago
    >been a case of artificial scarcity owing to monopolistic control. Well, that sounds like an excuse. 1.6bn people are living in poverty via the Human Poverty Index (HPI) measurement, which is defined as less than earing $1.50 a day. Worse, if we raise the value to $2.50 a day, then we're talking almost half the population of Earth! Half of every living and breathing human right now is poor on a level that I can't comprehend. Oh we can add more and more excuses like bad government, 'lazy' people, people who should 'move to better jobs', etc but it doesn't make a difference. If the political and economic engines of the world can't keep almost 1/3rd of us out of poverty then its time to consider that maybe we know more about the Earth's carrying capacity today than we did 130 years ago and that you can't just wish post-scarcity into existance nor wish away the effects of human economic activity that ultimately hurts us like climate change as a "Chinese hoax." We probably can continue to add people but we'll just be making larger numbers in each category, mostly poverty and the poor. Hey, I'm doing well because poor countries tend to work for my interests but that's an accident of birth. Unfortunately, not everyone gets to be born into the life of an urban westerner.
    - bufordsharkley 10y ago
      > Unfortunately, not everyone gets to be born into the life of an urban westerner. As a Rawlsian, I'm fixated on this very problem, but I'm drawn to solutions that work to tear down the mechanism (in short, open borders) rather than a Malthusian answer (limiting population) that I'm skeptical will do much to end poverty. Open borders, of course, don't help very much if life is unaffordable once you cross that border. And again I advise looking towards Henry George for solutions to this problem.
    - stale2002 10y ago
      And 30 years ago, how was life for these 1.6 billion that were in poverty? Answer: it was much much worse. Yes, things are bad right now. But in the past things were worse. And now they are getting better, very quickly. I see no evidence that this trend won't continue.
      - 10y ago
- stale2002 10y ago
  Sure. And in 1 thousand years, maybe we will be at the limits of growth. We'll worry about it then.
- tomjen3 10y ago
  In that case don't worry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E Also consider that the carrying capacity of the world isn't fixed, but depends on how good our technology is (with a potential theoretical upper limit). Well tech is improved by people working on and inventing better technology, right? So you get better technology with more people - and with that you can have more people working on better technology. The biggest mistake, and the one all Malthusians made, is to forget that humans are, on average, net produces not net consumers.
kwhitefoot 10y ago
It rather depends on what you mean by rich.
pdeuchler 10y ago
While I might generally agree with your first sentence it's just as important to note that post-scarcity thinking and economics can be just as dangerous, and I say this as a very big fan of Henry George. We must always be aware and cautious of scarcity of resources (there will always be limiting factors) and the competition that will inevitably arise from that while not making that competition an end to itself.
danbruc 10y ago
We have to limit population growth because of thermodynamics, otherwise we will all die. If we increase our energy consumption by 1 % per year, we will all be dead in less than 1000 years because at that point the surface temperature of Earth will have reached the boiling point of water because it can not radiate the energy into space. [1] You may object that we can reduce the energy consumption per capita and therefore have population growth without an increased energy consumption but that does not work. Starting with the population of 7.4 billion people in 2016 and a population growth rate of 1 % per year, it will take less than 1400 years until body heat alone will raise the surface temperature of Earth above the boiling point of water. [2] You may now object that we will of course move into space and leave Earth instead of sticking around here until we all get boiled alive. Unfortunately this does not help much either. With a population growth rate of 1 % per year we have 2685 more years until we run out of places to live in the Milky Way assuming 400 billion stars and one Earth-like colonizable planet per star. Unfortunately 2685 years is not nearly enough time to reach all the stars in the Milky Way. Even if we would be traveling at the speed of light, we could cross just about 2 % in that time. Even more fundamentally, space has three dimensions and therefore the number of stars and planets we can reach only increases with the third power assuming a homogeneous distribution [3] and will in consequence quickly be overwhelmed by exponential population growth within the reachable volume. We can push all those numbers to tens of millennia with a growth rate of 0.1 % per year, but that is still the blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things. So there are very real limits to the possible growth of the human population and the time frames are not that large even with moderate growth rates. [4] [1] The total emission of an ideal black body with surface area of 510.1 million km² at 373.15 K is 560,791 TW. The world total primary energy supply in 2012 is estimated to have been 155,505 TWh which is 17.75 TW on average. This is a factor of 31,591 from what Earth could radiate into space at 100 °C or 1,041 years of 1 % growth per year. [2] Assuming an average basal metabolic rate of 80 W, a population growth rate of 1 % and an initial population of 7.4 billion people, it takes 1,383 years to reach an body heat output of 560,791 TW. [3] Within a galaxy like the Milky Way it actually becomes more like the second power after some time due to the flat shape. [4] All this assuming a form of living not to different from today. Moving human brains into computers and getting rid of the bodies would certainly impact the numbers, but even then computers will still consume energy. Similarly the numbers could be impacted by major revolutions in physics. I mean really, really major changes.
gumby 10y ago
> A true Malthusian is a dangerous thing, in my opinion, insofar as they fully claim that the only way that we can all be rich is by limiting population. I'm with Julian Simon (in terms of the desirability of manually controlling the birth rate -- I'm against it). People naturally limit their offspring as they become richer -- and why not? As machines do more and more work and thus people get richer I assume the birth rate will continue to fall. I do think the birth rate is way too high.

plantsoftware 10y ago

You are right. If you havent read anything by Diedre McCloskey you should check her out.

Bullingdon 10y ago

And the argument may have appealed, 130 years ago. Since then we've quintupled our population and gained a much better understanding of carrying capacity. That capacity may be larger or smaller than our current population, but in either case, indefinite growth is not a sustainable plan — unless we know where our next planet is.

bufordsharkley 10y ago
It's simultaneously true that infinite growth isn't feasible, and yet true that most predictions on resource depletion haven't been borne out. We can make soil more productive, find new ways of creating potable water, create energy out of seemingly nothing... Most of the suffering from limited resources have been a case of artificial scarcity owing to monopolistic control. I don't think it's unduly optimistic to agree with the mindset of "Spaceship Earth":[0] > It is a well-provisioned ship, this on which we sail through space. If the bread and beef above decks seem to grow scarce, we but open a hatch and there is a new supply, of which before we never dreamed. And very great command over the services of others comes to those who as the hatches are opened are permitted to say, "This is mine!" [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceship_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceship_Earth
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  >been a case of artificial scarcity owing to monopolistic control. Well, that sounds like an excuse. 1.6bn people are living in poverty via the Human Poverty Index (HPI) measurement, which is defined as less than earing $1.50 a day. Worse, if we raise the value to $2.50 a day, then we're talking almost half the population of Earth! Half of every living and breathing human right now is poor on a level that I can't comprehend. Oh we can add more and more excuses like bad government, 'lazy' people, people who should 'move to better jobs', etc but it doesn't make a difference. If the political and economic engines of the world can't keep almost 1/3rd of us out of poverty then its time to consider that maybe we know more about the Earth's carrying capacity today than we did 130 years ago and that you can't just wish post-scarcity into existance nor wish away the effects of human economic activity that ultimately hurts us like climate change as a "Chinese hoax." We probably can continue to add people but we'll just be making larger numbers in each category, mostly poverty and the poor. Hey, I'm doing well because poor countries tend to work for my interests but that's an accident of birth. Unfortunately, not everyone gets to be born into the life of an urban westerner.
  - bufordsharkley 10y ago
    > Unfortunately, not everyone gets to be born into the life of an urban westerner. As a Rawlsian, I'm fixated on this very problem, but I'm drawn to solutions that work to tear down the mechanism (in short, open borders) rather than a Malthusian answer (limiting population) that I'm skeptical will do much to end poverty. Open borders, of course, don't help very much if life is unaffordable once you cross that border. And again I advise looking towards Henry George for solutions to this problem.
  - stale2002 10y ago
    And 30 years ago, how was life for these 1.6 billion that were in poverty? Answer: it was much much worse. Yes, things are bad right now. But in the past things were worse. And now they are getting better, very quickly. I see no evidence that this trend won't continue.
    - 10y ago
stale2002 10y ago
Sure. And in 1 thousand years, maybe we will be at the limits of growth. We'll worry about it then.
tomjen3 10y ago
In that case don't worry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E Also consider that the carrying capacity of the world isn't fixed, but depends on how good our technology is (with a potential theoretical upper limit). Well tech is improved by people working on and inventing better technology, right? So you get better technology with more people - and with that you can have more people working on better technology. The biggest mistake, and the one all Malthusians made, is to forget that humans are, on average, net produces not net consumers.

kwhitefoot 10y ago

It rather depends on what you mean by rich.

pdeuchler 10y ago

While I might generally agree with your first sentence it's just as important to note that post-scarcity thinking and economics can be just as dangerous, and I say this as a very big fan of Henry George. We must always be aware and cautious of scarcity of resources (there will always be limiting factors) and the competition that will inevitably arise from that while not making that competition an end to itself.

danbruc 10y ago

We have to limit population growth because of thermodynamics, otherwise we will all die. If we increase our energy consumption by 1 % per year, we will all be dead in less than 1000 years because at that point the surface temperature of Earth will have reached the boiling point of water because it can not radiate the energy into space. [1] You may object that we can reduce the energy consumption per capita and therefore have population growth without an increased energy consumption but that does not work. Starting with the population of 7.4 billion people in 2016 and a population growth rate of 1 % per year, it will take less than 1400 years until body heat alone will raise the surface temperature of Earth above the boiling point of water. [2] You may now object that we will of course move into space and leave Earth instead of sticking around here until we all get boiled alive. Unfortunately this does not help much either. With a population growth rate of 1 % per year we have 2685 more years until we run out of places to live in the Milky Way assuming 400 billion stars and one Earth-like colonizable planet per star. Unfortunately 2685 years is not nearly enough time to reach all the stars in the Milky Way. Even if we would be traveling at the speed of light, we could cross just about 2 % in that time. Even more fundamentally, space has three dimensions and therefore the number of stars and planets we can reach only increases with the third power assuming a homogeneous distribution [3] and will in consequence quickly be overwhelmed by exponential population growth within the reachable volume. We can push all those numbers to tens of millennia with a growth rate of 0.1 % per year, but that is still the blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things. So there are very real limits to the possible growth of the human population and the time frames are not that large even with moderate growth rates. [4] [1] The total emission of an ideal black body with surface area of 510.1 million km² at 373.15 K is 560,791 TW. The world total primary energy supply in 2012 is estimated to have been 155,505 TWh which is 17.75 TW on average. This is a factor of 31,591 from what Earth could radiate into space at 100 °C or 1,041 years of 1 % growth per year. [2] Assuming an average basal metabolic rate of 80 W, a population growth rate of 1 % and an initial population of 7.4 billion people, it takes 1,383 years to reach an body heat output of 560,791 TW. [3] Within a galaxy like the Milky Way it actually becomes more like the second power after some time due to the flat shape. [4] All this assuming a form of living not to different from today. Moving human brains into computers and getting rid of the bodies would certainly impact the numbers, but even then computers will still consume energy. Similarly the numbers could be impacted by major revolutions in physics. I mean really, really major changes.

gumby 10y ago

> A true Malthusian is a dangerous thing, in my opinion, insofar as they fully claim that the only way that we can all be rich is by limiting population. I'm with Julian Simon (in terms of the desirability of manually controlling the birth rate -- I'm against it). People naturally limit their offspring as they become richer -- and why not? As machines do more and more work and thus people get richer I assume the birth rate will continue to fall. I do think the birth rate is way too high.