Social sciences, unfortunately, aren't generally amenable to experimentation at the scale we're talking about here. Which doesn't change the fact that "proven

Social sciences, unfortunately, aren't generally amenable to experimentation at the scale we're talking about here. Which doesn't change the fact that "proven through history to be correct" is a meaningless claim in this context. You don't have to be a malthusian to acknowledge that the physical resources of our planet are finite and that our track-record of dealing with similar problems on much smaller scales isn't exactly flawless. There's a long string of data points supporting this assumption. (And I'm sure that survivorship bias isn't playing any role whatsoever ;) ) At least you're adding the winking smiley yourself. ;)