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> Malthus considered population growth as inevitable whenever conditions improved Interesting how the most developed nations have the lowest birthrates. I don'

• Paul-Craft 3y ago
  Malthus could not have foreseen the development of the Haber-Bosch process or the green revolution.
  • schiffern 3y ago
    He literally did. Read him. Malthus foresaw and mentioned the possibility of improved farming techniques. After all, it's not like improvements in farming hadn't happened before! In reply to this predictable objection, Malthus..... well, I suppose you'll just have to read it to find out. :) https://archive.org/details/essayonprincipl00malt https://archive.org/details/essayonprincipl00malt
    • toolz 3y ago
      thank you for linking to source material, but I don't think it's very useful to reply with teasers expecting us to read a book to understand one tightly constrained topic of conversation/debate.
  • Kbelicius 3y ago
    Someone already answered that he in fact did foresee developments in food production but that is totally irrelevant to hist point which is: "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man"
• schiffern 3y ago
  > Interesting how the most developed nations have the lowest birthrates. Hard to say this isn't merely an unstable temporary intermediate state. Low birthrate populations (by definition) are replaced by high birthrate populations, per evolution. Various and growing migrant crises worldwide seem to bear this out. The usual "solution" offered is that eventually 100% of nations will become "developed." This is probably fantasy anyway, but it's not even clear if this is a biophysical possibility. Thus far, the only way "developed" countries have been able to support their existence is by systemic organized theft of resources from the "developing" countries (this is another thing people really really don't like when you point it out :-D).
  • pdonis 3y ago
    > the only way "developed" countries have been able to support their existence is by systemic organized theft of resources from the "developing" countries No, this is not correct. The way developed countries support a high standard of living is by creating enormous amounts of wealth. That wealth wasn't taken from anywhere; it did not exist before the developed countries created it.
    • pixl97 3y ago
      Again, this may or may not be a transient condition... Currently we create a lot of wealth, but that wealth is highly pinned on farming lots of actual labor of to places with high population/cheap labor and keeping the expensive labor here. If we are unable to convert those jobs to automated tasks before the standards of living increase in those high population/poor countries then we are going to have a big problem, because there will not be anyone to farm that work off to cheaply (as we see with China starting to purchase cheaper labor from African countries). There will be a massive bout of stagflation at some point.
      • pdonis 3y ago
        It's quite true that wealth creation is not guaranteed, and that there are many ways of messing it up. That does not change the fact that wealth is created; there is not a fixed pool of wealth on the planet that will never change. There is nothing impossible about creating enough wealth to give everyone on the planet a first world standard of living. That doesn't mean it is guaranteed to happen; but it does mean it can happen.
        • pixl97 3y ago
          I mean, I can click a button on a computer, and boom, you're a billionaire. But if I do it for everyone, without the corresponding increase in production of things that are wanted then inflation explodes. Some things like software don't have to follow these inflationary paradigms, but things like land definitely do. This is what I'm warning about that we're running on borrowed time with cheap labor unless we replace it with automation. All your 'wealth' will quickly disappear in inflation.