Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: Morgana

Thomas Malthus, around 1760, I think, proposed that food supply would never keep up with population growth for mathematical reasons. He has been proven wrong everywhere except where progressive governments took over the food supply. In that special instance he is correct. But it has nothing to do with food supply and everything to do with bad governance. The author here is saying the same thing. He is wrong too.

To Leftists economics is a zero sum game. If somebody has something they took it from somebody else. (As opposed to taxes, which are okay.) But everywhere else, if there’s a demand there will be a supply. Leftism doesn’t take into account technology or innovation. Indeed, when they are in charge there is no technology growth or innovation, other than in their weapons of war.


5 posted on 05/23/2014 10:35:09 AM PDT by Gen.Blather
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]


To: Gen.Blather
Thomas Malthus, around 1760, I think, proposed that food supply would never keep up with population growth for mathematical reasons. He has been proven wrong everywhere except where progressive governments took over the food supply.

Not exactly. Malthus was more or less correct for the pre-industrial world. There were repeated cycles of rapid population growth followed by contraction due to war, famine and pestilence.

The history of China being a prime example. For several thousand years, each period of a change of the heavenly mandate resulted in a decline in population by anything from 25% to 75%.

Malthus, writing at the very beginning of the Industrial Revolution, can be (or should be) forgiven for not realizing how drastically the increase in human productivity would impact the factors he analyzed.

He also did not foresee the effects of contraception becoming effective and widespread, and their increased use as people, particularly women, became more educated and wealthy. Why should he have foreseen this? In his world, the wealthy and educated still had more children than the lower classes, or at least more who survived.

24 posted on 05/23/2014 11:24:11 AM PDT by Sherman Logan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson