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by mydeskistoosm 1741 days ago
>been proven wrong time and again

Has it been proven? I'm not a malthusian at all and that argument drives me up the wall. However the best answer I can come up with is "capitalism is a brass-balled bet that we'll figure our problems out, and so far we have."

1 comments

Malthus' assumptions and conclusions have been empirically proven wrong, and resoundingly so.

An abundance of resources leads to slower population growth instead of a continued geometric growth. Paradigm shifts such as the industrial, green, and digital revolutions allow us to ever more efficiently extract resources from a (somewhat) closed system instead of the availability of resources remaining constant.

Apart from the data alone, which pretty much speaks for itself, from Steven Pinker to Ray Kurzweil, from economics to ecological and cognitive sciences there are numerous arguments against the Malthusian model and a Malthusian world:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-malthus-is-st...

http://www.socialstudies.org/sites/default/files/publication...

https://aeon.co/ideas/the-earths-carrying-capacity-for-human...

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/weekinreview/15mcneil.htm...