Malthus's arithmetic vs geometric model of population is grossly wrong, while also condemns a large swath of humanity to extreme poverty. What a clown.
Paraphrasing Henry George: "Malthus model that food grows arithmetically and population grows geometrically is as arbitrary as saying a dog grows arithmetically and his tail grows geometrically"
Malthusian model is the basics of modern understanding of historical populations. See, for example, Gregory Clark’s “Farewell to Alms”. The population very much reproduces itself geometrically (or at least used to for most of history), and the growth in food supply was much slower. In effect, the historical populations quickly hit the equilibria, and oscillated around Malthusian limit. Compare, for example, rapid population growth of colonial America, with very lackluster growth of population of England during the same time (and even then, the growth in England was partially fueled by food imports from America).
> What is that "kind of economics"?
Marx’s “Capital” is the bullshit kind of economics. If anything, it is the butt joke of economists today.
You've demonstrated that you've fallen for the popular misconception of Malthusian theory. It's not that food is "depleted at the margin" as in people starve until death rates go up. What actually happens at the margin is, lacking in sufficient resources to comfortably do so, people forego having kids. Perhaps, in olden times, lacking the prosperity to get the fathers permission in marriage.
What stopped the world population from hitting 8 billion in year 1 AD already then? Why did population of British Isles was under 1 million at the time, instead of over 70 million today? You can’t explain this without Malthusian arguments.
In a Malthusian model there would be a larger share of poor and starving as food becomes more abundant, because remember necessarily population outgrows food production.
The Malthusian model predicts forever growing extreme poverty as a share of population.
> Marx’s “Capital” is the bullshit kind of economics. If anything, it is the butt joke of economists today.
Compared to what? Not other mid-19th century economic works... Marx published Capital prior to the so-called "Marginal Revolution" that presaged the emergence of Neoclassical economics - i.e. the first era of economic thought generally compatible with modern theory, so it's basically meaningless to claim that his views are derided by economists today.
Compared to "The Wealth of Nations", for example, which had much better economic analysis, despite being published a greater part of a century earlier. Ideas of Smith, Ricardo, or Bastiat predate Marx, and are very favorably cited today by modern economists. Marx's, not really.
It sounds like you mean to say that Smith, Ricardo, and Bastiat are more popular in casual online discussions of economics or economic history, because they aren't any more relevant to contemporary academic economics than Marx is. In fact, as products of the same classical era, they shared some of the same problematic views, including adhering to the labor theory of value, that would discredit Marx's economics.
Of course, any of those names would necessarily be more agreeable to modern economists by nature of not being inherently anti-capitalist, but that's no credit to their scholarship. If anything, extending the our gaze beyond the realm of the contemporary field of economics would reveal that Marx far outpaces these other names in citation value.
> It sounds like you mean to say that Smith, Ricardo, and Bastiat are more popular in casual online discussions of economics or economic history, because they aren't any more relevant to contemporary academic economics than Marx is.
No, I meant exactly what I said. Ricardian theory of comparative advantage, for example, remains being part of foundation of modern understanding of international trade. Every economics textbook teaches it. Same with Bastiat’s broken window fallacy. If their writings don’t get explicit citations in published papers, it’s for the same reason Pythagoras or Euclid don’t get citations in modern mathematics either: their results are so foundational that everyone knows them.
> If anything, extending the our gaze beyond the realm of the contemporary field of economics would reveal that Marx far outpaces these other names in citation value.
Of course, people keep citing Marx. Not economists though, or if they do, not favorably.
Paraphrasing Henry George: "Malthus model that food grows arithmetically and population grows geometrically is as arbitrary as saying a dog grows arithmetically and his tail grows geometrically"
> Oh, that kind of "economics". Never mind then.
What is that "kind of economics"?