Is it wrong to completely dismiss Malthus?

[z1235]

“Well that’s the state in which most of humanity classically lived and which many people currently live in in underdeveloped countries.”

So during most of humanity’s history and in many underdeveloped countries today, people live(d) in a state of “overpopulation”? If only there were less people, then everyone would have (had) MORE to eat, lived in houses with A/C, and able to afford doctors and college for their kids?

Looks like a definition of “overpopulation” is in order.

[John_James]

@Clayton

JJ, you heartless pig, how could you slap Bella??? You know Edward is going to hunt you down and suck your blood, now…

You’d think so, but lucky for me that already happened like 234 years ago.

[Aristophan3s]

Yes, it is wrong to dismiss Malthus. I even think that many people misunderstand what he gets at in the Essay on Population. He is merely hypothesizing on what the economics of a population surplus would look like with a few given trend assumptions. He even arrives at the conclusion that the food will become more scare in terms of population, but will end when the population reaches the new level of subsistence. It is, to him,a natural system. The lines quoted by the Alex Jones crowd to say that (paraphrasing), “Malthus was an elite eugenics theorist for the British Empire,” just like when they quote Bertrand Russell on similar issues, he, and Russell, is saying (paraphrasing), “What would a government policy look like to regulate these trends? Well, we’ll need to administer population reduction methods…” which he then satirically lists morally reprehensible possibilties. It is funny to read.

That work was also written (1798) before Ricardo (1817) and Say (1803 - I think) were pulished. After Malthus read Ricardo many of his primary assumptions changed as is evident in Malthus’ Principles as well as some of the letters between the two (one of which is fairly famous). (Keep in mind the essay on population was a kind of special topic essay in other economic factors are given less of an importance.) Even Rothbard, a little polemic in his Economic History, points out that Malthus became much less controversial by the late 1810’s when he wrote his Principles.

In fact, the Essay on the Principle of Population is listed in the Great Books of the Western World catalogue. Think of the list what you may, but Malthus is placed in league with Darwin, Plato, and Shakespeare by a highly respected academic clique. You should read it. It is only about 180 pages and Oxford World’s Classics has a good cheap edition of it. He’s even kind of funny in it when he makes fun of people who use faulty logical argument structures.

[John_James]

@Aristophanes

The lines quoted by the Alex Jones crowd to say that (paraphrasing), “Malthus was an elite eugenics theorist for the British Empire,” just like when they quote Bertrand Russell on similar issues, he, and Russell, is saying (paraphrasing), “What would a government policy look like to regulate these trends? Well, we’ll need to administer population reduction methods…” which he then satirically lists morally reprehensible possibilties. It is funny to read.

I’ve never heard them claim Malthus was a eugenicist. As for Russell and Shaw and others, I can’t exactly see how anyone could defend what seem to be pretty anti-human views.

Behaviourism, Psycho-Analysis and Physiological Manipulation in Education

Religion of Eugenics: The State is God

[Aristophan3s]

@Neodoxy

Malthus’ views on population are a very good example of the dangers of applying a priori models to the real world.

a priori models are the only way we interpret the world.

A. Individuals need to consume some amount of a resource to survive

B. This resource is scarce and produced using scarce materials

Are those supposed to be “a priori.”

What this will be is unknown to us a priori.

You can just say logic.

The problem that Malthus ran into was to assume the nature of population growth and the speed at which food could be grown.

Malthus examined that problem he didn’t encounter it.

At the time it would have been hard to definitively declare that Malthus was wrong since the fact was that human population had traditionally grown at approximately the exponential rate that Malthus predicted.

And the enormous increase in population with the advent of oil. He also said in it that the population growth of Europe at that time was modest. Here is a quote,

“…I conceive that it may be laid down as a position not to be controverted that, taking a sufficient extent of territory to include exportation and importation, and allowing some variation for the prevalence of luxury, or of frugal habits, that population constantly bears a regular proportion to the food that the Earth is able to produce.”

Malthus also drastically undermined the speed with which human productivity increased. Once again, the speed with which the ability of humans to produce what was necessary to even sustain themselves had never grown with the speed that would have been necessary in Malthus’ time.

His argument…is not that. He says, using Hume’s argument of monetary inflation, that if you increased everyone’s pay in one night then they would expect themselves to be able to buy the bread or meat that they need in the lowest class, but when people go to market there is still not enough being produced and the vendors will increase their prices to reflect the scarcity and the poor will remain poor despite their new money.

He also says that when people are given a bunch of money they will want leisure and will, therefore, produce less. He’s not underestimating things necessarily, he is theorizing about the economics of the issue (and thinks clearer than most contemporary economists). Ultimately, the poor are even worse of than before. What he is getting at is simply the crux of population and food economics (for the 1st time in hostory in an intellectual fashion) and this has become basis for the psychological motivators for the beginnings of the bleeding heart political movements.

So ultimately the matter of whether Malthus was wrong comes down to the speed with which individuals procreate and the speed with which they reproduce (sustainably).

Aren’t those the same thing?

If population grew like Malthus thought it would then you bet that overpopulation would be a problem at our current production capabilities.

Like I said before, he doesn’t really “think” these things he is merely practicing philosophy around a particular issue. Here is another quote,

In examining the principle states of modern Europe, we shall find that though they have increased very considerably in population since they were nations of shepherds, tey that at present, their progress is but slow; instead of doubling their numbers every twenty-five years, they require three or four hundred years, or more, for that purpose. Some, indeed, may be absolutely stationary, and others even retrograde."

So at the time Mathus was writing it would have been hard to argue that he was really wrong since his assumptions weren’t outlandish at the time.

They still aren’t “outlandish.” He just goes over the reasons why population does and doesn’t grow; ‘troublesome nature of child rearing, the poor worry about acquiring food to feed new borns, epidemics, war, famine caused by weather, marriage restrications, etc.’

It was clear even to Malthus that his model wasn’t necessarily true and in the test of time he has been proven absolutely false, but nonetheless he should never be written off as a crank who had no point.

Another quote,

If this sketch of the state of society in England be near the truth, annd I do not conceive that it is exaggerated, it will be allowed that the preventive check to population in this country operates, though with varied force, through all classes of the community. The same observation will hold true with regard to all old states."

There is much which can be learned from Malthusianism as a model, even though it has been (but maybe not forever) false.

I agree, especially when people have read the material!

It turns out that man is more ingenuous and more immoral/respectable in his actions, and god kinder in his choice of scientific law and natural resources than Reverend Malthus anticipated.

“immoral/respectable”? How are you using the forward slash? As a disjunct or a conjunct? Or…“other”?

[Aristophan3s]

@JJ

I’ve never heard them claim Malthus was a eugenicist. As for Russell and Shaw and others, I can’t exactly see how anyone could defend what seem to be pretty anti-human views.

Sigh. I have never read Russell and thought “anti-human.” He wrote on happiness and went to jail for protesting war. In that book, The Scientific Outlook, is not all positive arguments. He lists, as Malthus did, the more repugnant possiblities of the philosophy of science when applied to education and population (time-tested social issues). This was also a time when virtually every Western nation was flirting with straight fascism, progressivism, prohibition, eugenics, the League of Nations, etc.

I’ve come to learn the strive for world government comes from Immanuel Kant. He has a theory of peace that involved all nations becoming democratic then establishing a cosmpolitan world federation to end war. That is why world/transnational government is so popular for intellectuals.

Behaviourism, Psycho-Analysis and Physiological Manipulation in Education

Russell was never a behaviorist. He was a logical positivist. Behaviorists, in philosophy, say that mental states can never be accounted for scientifically and therfore rule out teleology entirely. Logical positivists do not do this, though they were skeptical of the concept. Russell is a believer in logic and I’m not sure how behaviorists can even present a priori concepts as being taken into account at all (I’ve not read a lot of behaviorism since they’ve been destroyed since then).

Religion of Eugenics: The State is God

The Russell quote there is from a secondary sources and when it says,

was a discovery of great importance, which would in time make it possible to produce artificially an disposition desired by Governments.

This doesn’t mean that Russell supported it. In fact, he gives a very fair treatment to the leftist anarchists (Bakunin).

Bertrand Russell and Anarchism

and then here is his actual writing on the subject,

Proposed Roads To Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism and Syndicalism

He says without a textual justification that “…we can dismiss individualist anarchism and focus on the communistic…” But, I think that is because individualist anarchists, basically before Mises/Rothbard, didn’t have a “system” to assert, in a positive argument, that some form of society is possible. The economic theory was necessary for that to happen.

TG4LvM, amirite?

Oh yeah, I don’t know anything about Shaw so I can’t speak to that.