{"id":36364,"date":"2018-08-04T09:41:40","date_gmt":"2018-08-04T14:41:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36364"},"modified":"2018-08-04T09:41:40","modified_gmt":"2018-08-04T14:41:40","slug":"the-curse-of-thomas-malthus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36364","title":{"rendered":"The curse of Thomas\u00a0Malthus"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The curse of Thomas\u00a0Malthus<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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Running through some notes from last year, I came across an article<\/a> by Dietrich Vollrath published in 2017 that I\u2019d printed out to give it proper consideration. It\u2019s called, \u201cWho are you calling Malthusian?\u201d, and it addresses that interesting futures question of why calling someone \u201cMalthusian\u201d is such an effective form of ad hominem<\/em> attack that it closes down any possible argument.<\/p>\n

Poor old Malthus. He has had a bad reputation ever since he predicted, towards the end of the 18th century, that over-population would lead to famine and then to social collapse. It didn\u2019t turn out like that, largely because we stumbled across a one-off supply of cheap energy, and because of the Industrial Revolution. And, because he turned out to be wrong, that means that if you mention Malthus these days you are instantly labelled as a crank.<\/p>\n

So Vollrath does us a service in his long post in two ways. First, he tries to create Malthus\u2019 argument in its original context, and second he goes back to the relationships that sit behind Malthus\u2019 model of the world.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Malthusian relationships<\/strong><\/p>\n

The relationships are simple.<\/p>\n

One<\/strong>: living standards are negatively<\/em> related to the size<\/em> of population. This is because at time of writing the major factor of production was land, whose supply is largely fixed. Vollrath shares a diagram, originally from Greg Clark<\/a>\u2019s work, which demonstrates this. Peter Turchin\u2019s model in Secular Cycles<\/em> effectively has this relationship at its core.<\/p>\n

\"Clark<\/p>\n

Two:<\/strong> population growth is positively<\/em> correlated with living standards. As Vollrath notes<\/p>\n

\u201cThis may be because kids are a normal good, and so fertility rises when people have higher incomes. Or it may be because health is a normal good, so people take better care of themselves (and their kids) when they have higher income.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The curse of Thomas\u00a0Malthus Running through some notes from last year, I came across an article by Dietrich Vollrath published in 2017 that I\u2019d printed out to give it proper consideration. It\u2019s called, \u201cWho are you calling Malthusian?\u201d, and it addresses that interesting futures question of why calling someone \u201cMalthusian\u201d is such an effective form […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[21070,21065,21068,1498,5190,21069,606,5042,1160,3788,21066,21067],"class_list":["post-36364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-ad-hominem","tag-andrew-curry","tag-dietrich-vollrath","tag-industrial-revolution","tag-living-standards","tag-malthusian-relationships","tag-overpopulation","tag-peter-turchin","tag-population-growth","tag-secular-cycles","tag-the-next-wave-futures","tag-thomas-malthus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36364"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36365,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36364\/revisions\/36365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}