| >Am I the only one absolutely terrified by that number? No, unfortunately there are plenty of other irrational sensationalists. >Malthus wasn't wrong in principle, just in timescale. He has been horribly wrong in principle, as has every other pessimist who cried wolf for the past 3000 years. Saying 'the timescale was just wrong' is not an adequate defense by any means. Timescale is what matters and is the essence of all predictions. Ask a trader: a prediction that oil will go up in the long run is completely useless if you don't define when that event will occur, and subsequently loose everything on a big short term dip that you were blind to. Additionally, if your prediction is allowed to take "infinity" duration to come true, then it can never be disproven. And what can't be disproven is usually categorically not worth the thought. To discuss particulars, the current evidence is technology allows us to produce TOO much food TOO cheaply, which is compounded further by domestic farm subsidies. Efficiency gains are so successful in keeping up with demand, that in Mexico City they buy corn from Iowa, even though they have cheaper farmland and local labor that could be utilized. Additionally, many economists are currently considering the possibility of efficiency gains being so strong a factor that they lead to structural unemployment. This picture of runaway efficiency gains is the exact opposite of what Malthus had envisioned (constant\linear resource utilization massively outstripped by population growth rate) >It's sounds science fiction-ey, but I don't understand how you can see data like this and then defund NASA. All the nations economically developed enough to have a space program are rapidly decreasing in population. China, Russia, Japan are all on the decline, the US is only increasing due to immigration. It's economics 101: wealthy people have more economic freedom to invest in birth control and their time in things other than family. Additional children switch from being an asset into a liability when you have to pay substantial amounts for them to be educated and the opportunity cost of taking time to raise a child becomes higher. The S shaped curve has been in full swing in developed countries like the US and Russia where the vast majority of the land is deserted, without anything resembling a Malthusian scenario. |