Malthus didn't lose this argument - malthusian assessment of scarcity ultimately lives at the heart of capitalism and free markets. If it didn't, we'd all have

Malthus didn't lose this argument - malthusian assessment of scarcity ultimately lives at the heart of capitalism and free markets. If it didn't, we'd all have access to whatever we wanted. Instead, we use markets as the best tool to distribute scarce resources. And in many countries we include the basic necessities of life (food, housing, clothing, etc) as those scarce resources. Energy is limited and production of energy has costs and side effects. Sure, over time we can increase our production of energy, but again - with costs and side effects depending on how we choose to do it. And at any point in time our access to energy is limited and we need to make choices about how that access is distributed. Right now we use markets to do that. But we've clearly seen that markets, with out intentional, ethical and moral guidance will often make insane choices. And note, I say this as someone who believes post-scarcity (with in wise limits) for many of the basics is more or less with in our technological reach. IE. We can reach a point of post-scarcity for food, housing, clothing, energy where everyone has what they need and a good chunk of what they want as long as we don't let anyone hoard and insane amount of these resources or burn them away in frivilous uses.