8 ms·

A lot of people unfortunately subscribe to the Malthusian ideology that all problems are caused by overpopulation. In fact, I'm pleasantly surprised when I mee

A lot of people unfortunately subscribe to the Malthusian ideology that all problems are caused by overpopulation. In fact, I'm pleasantly surprised when I meet someone who does not believe that overpopulation is the cause of most of the world's ills.

ojbyrne 15y ago
The mention of Malthus always inspires me to recommend the best book I've read in the past few years: http://www.amazon.com/Farewell-Alms-Brief-Economic-History/dp/0691121354 http://www.amazon.com/Farewell-Alms-Brief-Economic-History/d... tl;dr: Malthus was right.
- nowarninglabel 15y ago
  Malthus was right about what? He was wrong about nearly every single main hypothesis he made! What are you saying he got right? http://www.economist.com/node/11374623 http://www.economist.com/node/11374623 http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=1837 http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=1837 Have you actually read Malthus' works?
  - ojbyrne 15y ago
    The book I referenced basically says that western civilization is an aberration caused by a unique set of characteristics, and that the vast majority of people in the world still live in subsistence conditions. Also that the west could easily slip back into those conditions.
    - mseebach 15y ago
      But what does that have to do with Malthus?
      - ojbyrne 15y ago
        The book says that many 3rd world countries are in a "Malthusian trap" - any increase in income levels results in a population increase that overwhelms the higher income. Bangladesh is a good example.
  - pauljonas 15y ago
    Up until 1800, Malthus was spot-on -- any advance in technology that was greeted by population increase would snap back to an equilibrium, with war|disease|hunger inflicting the correction. Gregory Clarke goes into great detail, with statistics on caloric consumption, lifestyle, etc.. that show that the average person at the pre-dawn of the industrial revolution did not experience conditions much more favorable than those of Roman times. http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/malthusian.png http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/malthusian.png
- jakeonthemove 15y ago
  No... no he wasn't...
  - TDL 15y ago
    Would you care to elaborate. Which of hypothesis was Malthus right about and which was he wrong about? "No... no he wasn't..." adds no value to the discussion.
    - rprospero 15y ago
      At the simplest level, Malthus predicted that the population would outpace food production by the mid 19th century. So, on that level, he’s objectively wrong. The main problems are the assumption that food production grows linearly and that population grows geometrically. For food production, scientific advances have kept food production growing far faster than linear. With future advances in technology, I could believe a 10x increase in food production in my lifetime. No one is predicting a population of 70 billion any time soon. Also, the population isn’t growing geometrically. For the trivial answer, the growth has been more exponential. However, there have again been scientific advancements that Malthus simply couldn’t have forseen. Effective birth control keeps the population count lower. The switch from agrarian to urban culture has eliminated most of the advantages of producing large families and heavily rewarded producing smaller ones. In terms of hard facts, the world population growth rate has been declining since 1963. The UN’s medium projection of population growth predicts a population downturn by 2050. At the basest level, he was right that the population can’t grow indefinitely. However, most claims that are more specific than that haven’t panned out.
      - gbog 15y ago
        So he was wrong because he had a too narrow view of the problem. I live in China, overpopulation means something here but even then any plane trip over any part of the world will show you, if washe weather allows, that humanity is not the cancer some describe.there is still plenty of room.
- lotharbot 15y ago
  Malthus thinks that population grows like the dark gray line in [0]. Verhulst, and pretty much everyone else who has studied population dynamics [1], thinks population grows like the light gray line (though perhaps with more complexity.) Notice the actual population data following the light gray line. [0] http://www.growth-dynamics.com/articles/Kurzweil_files/image004.gif http://www.growth-dynamics.com/articles/Kurzweil_files/image... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function#In_ecology:_modeling_population_growth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function#In_ecology:_m...
  - Fuzzwah 15y ago
    This thread triggered a memory of a couple of amazing TED talks Hans Rosling presented: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_y... http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth.html http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_g... Oh joy, he has a new TED talk posted in March that I haven't seen yet. Thanks!
nowarninglabel 15y ago
Well met then, sir or madam. Malthusians have been predicting gloom and doom for years, and yet, continuously been proven wrong. Anyone who believes otherwise has usually just not actually read what Malthus wrote in his books. His main hypothesis has at least been rejected for the time periods concerned, as the food supply has vastly outgrown population growth. Now, that doesn't mean everyone has food, but it does mean that the human population as a whole has an overabundance, quite contrary to what he predicted would happen. http://www.economist.com/node/11374623 http://www.economist.com/node/11374623
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago
  So population can continue to grow unchecked without stressing resources? Where are you hiding your storehouse of infinite supply?? You're going to be very rich when the fossil fuels run out, oil for plastics becomes a luxury, when heavy metals relied on for batteries and magnets get more scarce, when water tables fall even lower, as helium runs low, ... But no of course more and more people demanding all these things and ever increasing power usage can't possible reduce per capita availability?!?
  - ars 15y ago
    The resources are created by the population. Metals are infinitely recyclable. So is water (distribution is the problem, not existence, and distribution can be solved if you have people who need it and are willing to do the work). You don't need oil to make plastic - you can literally make it out of air (although it's harder, all the atoms necessary are in air). All types of energy are more or less interchangeable, If one runs out, switch to a different one. Animals use resources they find. Humans create those resources.
    - meric 15y ago
      Yes but at some point there will be a physical limit. Earth's energy income will always be limited by the Sun's energy output. So no, not infinitely. (I imagine making plastic out of air would take a lot of energy.) Before you tell me how much energy the Earth gets compared to how much we use, I'm going to pre-emptively reply "Exponential growth".
pygy_ 15y ago
It's not just about food or population. Currently, the (exponential) economic growth is tied to an ever growing consumption of resources, some of which are not renewable. Malthus will ultimately be proven right unless we abandon growth or manage to dissociate it from resource consumption. The first solution won't happen (prisoner's dilemma), and the second one is far on the horizon. -- Edit: I knew that this post would not be popular, but I would like to hear a rebuttal to my argument, rather than getting downvotes (two at the time of writing).
- mseebach 15y ago
  The first one won't happen because it is good for literally no one. That's not prisoners dilemma. That's not even a dilemma. The second one is happening full speed and has happened throughout the history of humanity. If you'd looked at wood usage 200 years ago, we looked doomed. If you'd looked at whale oil around the turn of the last century, it was all over. We're shaking off oil now. It's taking a while, but every time the price of oil goes up, the profit for replacing it gets higher. 100 years from now, our 20 billion descendants will have more than enough of this curious mineral oil stuff for whatever archaic activities such might be used for then.
  - pygy_ 15y ago
    Past performance is no guarantee for future results. Other civilizations have failed in the past for mismanaging resources. Your argument optimistically assumes that we'll be able to cope with the environmental changes that our activity is causing. Supply is only one part of the equation. For example, our CO_2 emissions, whether or not they cause global warming (that's mostly controversial in the US AFAIK), are causing ocean acidification, which could have a massive impact on marine life. In dynamic systems as complex as the earth, tipping points are impossible to predict. That being said, we've never been pushing as hard for one. Regarding growth, I have a hard time understanding how an exponential growth of our activity can be sustainable, especially in terms of energy requirements, which should be proportional (AFAIK). I believe that the current system is tautological. We need growth to sustain growth, but it hardly benefits people anymore. Wealth and happiness are related up to a point we reached in western countries in the 1960's IIRC. And after the last downturn, the economy restarted, but it didn't bring the jobs back. I hope that there are alternative economic models. That's why I was talking about the prisoner's dilemma. I think that we're stuck on a bandwagon in a headlong rush. I know that I'm very pessimistic about this, but I'm genuinely concerned. I can only hope I'm wrong.
deleted 15y ago
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ojbyrne 15y ago

The mention of Malthus always inspires me to recommend the best book I've read in the past few years: http://www.amazon.com/Farewell-Alms-Brief-Economic-History/dp/0691121354 http://www.amazon.com/Farewell-Alms-Brief-Economic-History/d... tl;dr: Malthus was right.

nowarninglabel 15y ago
Malthus was right about what? He was wrong about nearly every single main hypothesis he made! What are you saying he got right? http://www.economist.com/node/11374623 http://www.economist.com/node/11374623 http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=1837 http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=1837 Have you actually read Malthus' works?
- ojbyrne 15y ago
  The book I referenced basically says that western civilization is an aberration caused by a unique set of characteristics, and that the vast majority of people in the world still live in subsistence conditions. Also that the west could easily slip back into those conditions.
  - mseebach 15y ago
    But what does that have to do with Malthus?
    - ojbyrne 15y ago
      The book says that many 3rd world countries are in a "Malthusian trap" - any increase in income levels results in a population increase that overwhelms the higher income. Bangladesh is a good example.
- pauljonas 15y ago
  Up until 1800, Malthus was spot-on -- any advance in technology that was greeted by population increase would snap back to an equilibrium, with war|disease|hunger inflicting the correction. Gregory Clarke goes into great detail, with statistics on caloric consumption, lifestyle, etc.. that show that the average person at the pre-dawn of the industrial revolution did not experience conditions much more favorable than those of Roman times. http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/malthusian.png http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/malthusian.png
jakeonthemove 15y ago
No... no he wasn't...
- TDL 15y ago
  Would you care to elaborate. Which of hypothesis was Malthus right about and which was he wrong about? "No... no he wasn't..." adds no value to the discussion.
  - rprospero 15y ago
    At the simplest level, Malthus predicted that the population would outpace food production by the mid 19th century. So, on that level, he’s objectively wrong. The main problems are the assumption that food production grows linearly and that population grows geometrically. For food production, scientific advances have kept food production growing far faster than linear. With future advances in technology, I could believe a 10x increase in food production in my lifetime. No one is predicting a population of 70 billion any time soon. Also, the population isn’t growing geometrically. For the trivial answer, the growth has been more exponential. However, there have again been scientific advancements that Malthus simply couldn’t have forseen. Effective birth control keeps the population count lower. The switch from agrarian to urban culture has eliminated most of the advantages of producing large families and heavily rewarded producing smaller ones. In terms of hard facts, the world population growth rate has been declining since 1963. The UN’s medium projection of population growth predicts a population downturn by 2050. At the basest level, he was right that the population can’t grow indefinitely. However, most claims that are more specific than that haven’t panned out.
    - gbog 15y ago
      So he was wrong because he had a too narrow view of the problem. I live in China, overpopulation means something here but even then any plane trip over any part of the world will show you, if washe weather allows, that humanity is not the cancer some describe.there is still plenty of room.
lotharbot 15y ago
Malthus thinks that population grows like the dark gray line in [0]. Verhulst, and pretty much everyone else who has studied population dynamics [1], thinks population grows like the light gray line (though perhaps with more complexity.) Notice the actual population data following the light gray line. [0] http://www.growth-dynamics.com/articles/Kurzweil_files/image004.gif http://www.growth-dynamics.com/articles/Kurzweil_files/image... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function#In_ecology:_modeling_population_growth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function#In_ecology:_m...
- Fuzzwah 15y ago
  This thread triggered a memory of a couple of amazing TED talks Hans Rosling presented: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_y... http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth.html http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_g... Oh joy, he has a new TED talk posted in March that I haven't seen yet. Thanks!

nowarninglabel 15y ago

Well met then, sir or madam. Malthusians have been predicting gloom and doom for years, and yet, continuously been proven wrong. Anyone who believes otherwise has usually just not actually read what Malthus wrote in his books. His main hypothesis has at least been rejected for the time periods concerned, as the food supply has vastly outgrown population growth. Now, that doesn't mean everyone has food, but it does mean that the human population as a whole has an overabundance, quite contrary to what he predicted would happen. http://www.economist.com/node/11374623 http://www.economist.com/node/11374623

pbhjpbhj 15y ago
So population can continue to grow unchecked without stressing resources? Where are you hiding your storehouse of infinite supply?? You're going to be very rich when the fossil fuels run out, oil for plastics becomes a luxury, when heavy metals relied on for batteries and magnets get more scarce, when water tables fall even lower, as helium runs low, ... But no of course more and more people demanding all these things and ever increasing power usage can't possible reduce per capita availability?!?
- ars 15y ago
  The resources are created by the population. Metals are infinitely recyclable. So is water (distribution is the problem, not existence, and distribution can be solved if you have people who need it and are willing to do the work). You don't need oil to make plastic - you can literally make it out of air (although it's harder, all the atoms necessary are in air). All types of energy are more or less interchangeable, If one runs out, switch to a different one. Animals use resources they find. Humans create those resources.
  - meric 15y ago
    Yes but at some point there will be a physical limit. Earth's energy income will always be limited by the Sun's energy output. So no, not infinitely. (I imagine making plastic out of air would take a lot of energy.) Before you tell me how much energy the Earth gets compared to how much we use, I'm going to pre-emptively reply "Exponential growth".

pygy_ 15y ago

It's not just about food or population. Currently, the (exponential) economic growth is tied to an ever growing consumption of resources, some of which are not renewable. Malthus will ultimately be proven right unless we abandon growth or manage to dissociate it from resource consumption. The first solution won't happen (prisoner's dilemma), and the second one is far on the horizon. -- Edit: I knew that this post would not be popular, but I would like to hear a rebuttal to my argument, rather than getting downvotes (two at the time of writing).

mseebach 15y ago
The first one won't happen because it is good for literally no one. That's not prisoners dilemma. That's not even a dilemma. The second one is happening full speed and has happened throughout the history of humanity. If you'd looked at wood usage 200 years ago, we looked doomed. If you'd looked at whale oil around the turn of the last century, it was all over. We're shaking off oil now. It's taking a while, but every time the price of oil goes up, the profit for replacing it gets higher. 100 years from now, our 20 billion descendants will have more than enough of this curious mineral oil stuff for whatever archaic activities such might be used for then.
- pygy_ 15y ago
  Past performance is no guarantee for future results. Other civilizations have failed in the past for mismanaging resources. Your argument optimistically assumes that we'll be able to cope with the environmental changes that our activity is causing. Supply is only one part of the equation. For example, our CO_2 emissions, whether or not they cause global warming (that's mostly controversial in the US AFAIK), are causing ocean acidification, which could have a massive impact on marine life. In dynamic systems as complex as the earth, tipping points are impossible to predict. That being said, we've never been pushing as hard for one. Regarding growth, I have a hard time understanding how an exponential growth of our activity can be sustainable, especially in terms of energy requirements, which should be proportional (AFAIK). I believe that the current system is tautological. We need growth to sustain growth, but it hardly benefits people anymore. Wealth and happiness are related up to a point we reached in western countries in the 1960's IIRC. And after the last downturn, the economy restarted, but it didn't bring the jobs back. I hope that there are alternative economic models. That's why I was talking about the prisoner's dilemma. I think that we're stuck on a bandwagon in a headlong rush. I know that I'm very pessimistic about this, but I'm genuinely concerned. I can only hope I'm wrong.

deleted 15y ago

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