Do you think Malthus was wrong or right?

Question

I asked this in environment. I'm going to try here and then in politics, then philosophy. Thanks.

Answer 1

He will eventually be right unless we get to space. Capitalism is an expansionist system by its very nature, you make money to make more money and growth is the only way to go. The earth alone cannot sustain that system forever.

However a "mathematical" solution to the expansionist nature of capitalism is a periodic one where cycles of growth and followed by cycles of wealth destruction and viceversa. Happens all the time in nature, dynamic systems either grow forever, vanish or oscillate.

Answer 2

Malthus posited his thesis in his times. It is a pointer. It is neither right nor wrong wholly.

He had apprehensions that the capitalist way would play itself out to a catastrophic end, based on the exponential growth of population as against the linear rate of growth of food. Both of them are crude generalisations. Nevertheless, one needs to pay heed to this race between population and food growths.

Of all the species on the earth, human is the most successful and has been able to edge out many species out of their lairs and to extinction. The natural food chains are altered or disturbed. There are many cases in india where the pressure on land is acute, where elephants, panthers or wolves are straying into human habitat. It is so because their habitat is taken over by humans. Added to this is another phenomenon where huge industrial complexes are planned with the state's help in agricultural lands and farmers or tribal forest dwellers are waging pitched battles with the government every day. Though not a part of Malthusian theory, you may have to read this environmental stuff with his theory. Lot of work is needed by man to relocate his factories, cities while reducing his energy demands and harvest the ocean for food in a planned manner.

From the economic/capitalist view man is both consumer and producer as well. Mr.V.V.Giri was president of India in early 1970s. He spent a lifetime in trade unionism. He said 'Every man is born with a mouth to feed. But we forget that he has two hands too.' This brings in the employment and employability of human resources which is the declared aim of economic activity.

Right demographic pyramid also needs to be fashioned. With 'one child norm' China has run out of youth to work its production activity, whereas India who didn't have that aggressive approach to population control, is lucckily finding itself with adequate young hands to take her through economic development activity. In Europe, young pairs of hands of whichever nationality is very much sought after. In America with the stated policy of welcoming immigration more and more of young Asians and Latinos are swamping the employment market. South African riots against imported labour in the absence of expanding economic activity is a pointer to the mismatch. My surmise is, in days to come, the vast sparse populated but agriculturally good areas of Russia, Canada, Australia, Argentina and even Brazil will see colonisation on a massive scale and the governments there either will have to eneble it or throw up their hands trying to stem the tide. Global warming has a silver lining in that the Arctica (areas beyond the Arctic circle) and Antarctica will become habitable, livable and amenable for agriculture. When Greenland opens up thus, the Danish will regret that they have not been able to breed as much as to fill it with Danish population.

These are the emerging dimensions of human demography which linked with ecological factors that include accomodating other species that was never done till now , will shape the outcome of Malthusian prophecy. Yet, it must be said that food and its availability are the primary factors that will shape up human destiny on this planet.

Answer 3

Certainly and absolutely right or else all this hue and cry about famine in the world today would not be around.His detractors had argued he did not take into account the role of scientific innovation,family planning and etc.But again,why all this looming famine today?

Answer 4

Malthus was both right and wrong. He was right in the general picture that an exponentially increasing process (human population growth) constrained by a linearly increasing process (food production per unit area of arable land) dependent on a finite resource (land area of the earth) must eventually crash. He was wrong in specific details. He could not fully anticipate the Green Revolution (significantly increasing food production per unit area of arable land), for example.

In a sense, science and industry have "changed the rules of the game" such that the Malthusian limit has been reset at a higher level. Some argue that science and industry can do this forever and that there is consequently no Malthusian limit at all. Personally, I tend to side with those who believe that not only does a Malthusian limit exist but also it is rapidly being approached. Consequently, I believe that it is important to work on changes that will enable humanity to convert into a more or less steady-state, equilibrium mode.

Studies of animal populations in the wild suggest that (1) the system dynamics during the population growth phase differ very significantly from the dynamics during the conversion to the steady-state phase and (2) the growth phase can last for a rather long time in relation to the very short conversion phase. Considering this and the relative slowness with which humanity has demonstrated social and political change (particularly on the international scale), I foresee very difficult, possibly traumatic times during the coming century or two.