Malthus
I was never interested in him. Why others think that means my education suffered I don't know. "It's kind of disturbing that he is not, {known to all educated people}". Sorry to see anyone so disturbed.
"It is perfectly clear that Malthus made an incorrect assumption. All predictions of Malthusian disaster were incorrect because all of them made an assumption that technological change would not create sufficient change in the growth of resources required for the desired outcome"
I read that statement carefully. Predictions of a "Malthusian diisaster" means that others have predicted disasters, and then those predictions have been assigned the term, "Malthusian Disaster", or "Malthusian Catastrophe" or similar. I am still not clear how it can be said that Malthus made this 'incorrect assumption' based on the fact that future predictions that were given that name failed to take into account technological change.
Malthus predicted that population growth pressure, if unchecked, would outstrip agricultural growth, and so people would starve. At the time of that prediction, did he err? If so, in what way? Was there some technological change or improvement at that time that he knew about or could have researched had he known of it, but failed to take account of? If so, what? If the statement is that his theory has been proved incorrect because later changes in society, population growth, living standards, increased life expectancy, technological advances in agriculture and elsewhere, had improved the position, then that may be a valid argument. But to say it is perfectly clear that Malthus made an incorrect assumption for the reason given is not tenable.
To use Mathus as an example of a proposition that was false because he failed to take into account technological advances in agriculture is also untenable. To use Malthus as an example of a prediction that was later proved incorrect because of technological advances in agriculture is a perfectly good argument, and can then be discussed.
But I'm not clear that Malthus was incorrect. We cannot simply take the Western world and use that as evidence that Malthus' theories were wrong. "At the time Malthus wrote, and for 150 years thereafter, most societies had populations at or beyond their agricultural limits". That quote suggests otherwise. It goes on; "After World War II, the so-called Green Revolution produced a dramatic increase in productivity of agriculture, and, consequently, growth of the world's food supply. In response, the growth rate of the world's population accelerated rapidly, resulting in predictions by Paul R. Ehrlich, Simon Hopkins, and many others of an imminent Malthusian catastrophe. However, populations of most developed countries grew slowly enough to be outpaced by gains in productivity. By 1990, agricultural production appeared to begin peaking in several world regions";
http://www.answers.com/topic/malthusian-catastrophe#Traditional_Malthusian_theory
What does that mean? In western nations population growth has halted, and in some of those countries even countries reversed. But we cannot look at the world just through western eyes, and in non-developed countries the population growth rose by 1990, although slow enough to be outpaced by gains in productivity. In Nigeria the population has tripled in the last 40 years, and in developing countries in general, the world?s population grows at an average rate of around 80 million persons per year. Today, 2010, the world population is increasing by 75 million a year, http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/pcwe . That's about one United States of America every 4 or 5 years.
Agricultural technology has to advance year on year to keep pace. So, has the Malthus prediction failed? I don't know whether he gave a time scale in his books, but even if he did, does that mean the principle is false? I think that, at best, all we can say is, 'too early to say'.
Add in to that what was said in the first post in this discussion and we also have pressure on the demands for commodities like oil, minerals, and such like. The demand will rise as developing nations further develop. Whether technology advances will ease demand, I don't know. I see no evidence yet of a world-wide replacement for oil as the principal means of transportation, and until something does, demand for oil will increase. Whether oil production will keep pace, again I don't know.
"A prediction only has to fail once to be wrong". I'm not sure where that saying comes from. Surely it should be, "A prediction only has to succeed once to be proved right". We've avoided the so-called Malthusian Catastrophe so far. But there only needs to be one world-wide disaster of the kind he predicted for his theory to be proved right.
Mark
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