Malthus Today

Common wisdom says that Malthus's pessimism is dead. Malthus predicted that agricultural productivity would not keep pace with demographic growth in 19th and 20th century. He did not foresee the great productivity improvements made in farming since his time, innovations that made food readily available to vast proportions of a greatly larger populations.

So, for a while we rested comfortably thinking that we can improve productivity indefinitely to handle population growth.

I think it's time to revisit that assumption.

Malthus believed that people's instincts to have children will ultimately ensure that we have the greatest possible numbers of humans on earth, necesarily living an existence that is the barest possible. In short, humanity will tend towards massive numbers of the impoverished.

I can't help but think that he may yet be proven right. It very well may be that all of the benefits of scientific and industrial advances will be thrown away. All our material progress may be completely wiped out by population growth. Let's take a look at some of the problems today:

-Global warming: doesn't seem like it would be a problem with half as many of us driving.
-Gas and commodity prices: India and China will never reach current levels of material wealth. There isn't enough stuff. Prices have to rise.
-Food prices: eat meat now while you can. Beef converts land and solar energy too inefficiently to feed the coming multitudes.
-Pristine nature- we're everywhere. Middle class lakeside colonies? Thing of the past. too many people competing.

Let's face it- we have a fixed supply of some goods. I really don't have much doubt that we will be materially much poorer 50 years from now than we are today.