Malthus was Right!

[alfred russel]

Paul Krugman weighs in to support Malthus, basically with the point of view his ideas were dead on for most of human history, and the past two centuries are the exception. Posting the illustrative chart in the post is beyond my internet skillz so you will have to follow the link. And since I know someone will bring it up, I can't vouch for the accuracy of bronze age economic data.

Posted mainly for the benefit of our similarly named poster.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/a-bit-more-on-malthus/

A bit more on Malthus
Conor Clarke offers another figure from A Farewell, showing estimates of real income per capita back to the Bronze Age:


The two figures actually illustrate slightly different points. What the figure above shows is that over a roughly 3000 year period, during which there was obviously quite a lot of technological progress — iron plows, horse collars, mastering the cultivation of rice, the importation of potatoes into Europe, etc. — living standards basically went nowhere. Why? Because population growth always ate up the gains, pushing living standards back to roughly subsistence.

The figure I used in the previous post helps suggest why: technological change was slow — so slow that by 1600 or so, when England had finally reclaimed its population losses from the Black Death, it found real wages back to more or less 1300 levels again.

And here's the sense in which Malthus was right: he had a fundamentally valid model of the pre-Industrial Revolution economy, which was one in which technological progress translated into more people, not higher living standards. This homeostasis only broke down when very rapid technological change finally outstripped population pressure for an extended period.

Of course, Malthus's predictive failure wasn't accidental. Technological takeoff was the product of a newly inquisitive, empirically-minded, scientific culture — the kind of culture that could produce people like Malthus.

[Valmy]

That strollers really are worth $2,000.00?

[DGuller]

Topics like that make me think about the sustainability of the rapid technological progress during the last two centuries.  Is technological progress in a state of "punctuated equilibrium", where you have long-term stability interrupted by periods of rapid change, which means that progress will top out at some point and stall?  Or is it a self-reinforcing mechanism that once allowed to spool up will almost never slow down?

[grumbler]

I would argue that this "conclusion" is trivially obvious.  Thomas Malthus wasn't making his observations in a vacuum. He knew his stuff about history.  What he didn't (and couldn't) predict was that transportation would improve to the point that food became a valuable commodity and thus farming would be transformed into a profitable business.  Food preservation merely added to this trend, and was also not seen in any significant measure by Malthus.

What Malthus did was show that accurate prediction is easy.  It is merely accurately predicting the future that is hard.   

[alfred russel]

Topics like that make me think about the sustainability of the rapid technological progress during the last two centuries.  Is technological progress in a state of "punctuated equilibrium", where you have long-term stability interrupted by periods of rapid change, which means that progress will top out at some point and stall?  Or is it a self-reinforcing mechanism that once allowed to spool up will almost never slow down?

If this is following your punctuated equilibrium model, then this is the first punctuated equilibrium event in history. 

[Malthus]

Finally, a thread title I can appreciate. 

[Grey Fox]

[PDH]

Good show, Malthus!

[Norgy]

More, Malthus, More!

[dps]

Topics like that make me think about the sustainability of the rapid technological progress during the last two centuries.  Is technological progress in a state of "punctuated equilibrium", where you have long-term stability interrupted by periods of rapid change, which means that progress will top out at some point and stall?  Or is it a self-reinforcing mechanism that once allowed to spool up will almost never slow down?

I don't think it matter from the point of view of population studies.  I was just thinking about this the other day, and it wasn't simply technological progress leading to higher food production (and better distribution systems) that has kept us from a population disaster as predicted by Malthus.  It's that we have an economy in which children aren't simply more workers for their parents' farm;  instead of being producers of goods (and thus an economic asset), they're consumers of goods (and thus an economic liability).  So where before there was a huge economic incentive for people to have lots of children, in a modern developed economy, there is a huge economic incentive to not have lots of children.

[Norgy]

Krugman says Malthus did a good job analysing the past, like grumbler says.

He's not saying he's right about the future. Which hardly matters, as we have no flying cars.
And we should. Really.

[PDH]

I want a flying motorbike, not a toaster with a microchip in it.

[Neil]

Krugman says Malthus did a good job analysing the past, like grumbler says.

He's not saying he's right about the future. Which hardly matters, as we have no flying cars.
And we should. Really.

That's your fault.  Leftists have long prevented the development of alternative energy sources, wasting money on humanitarian projects.

[Razgovory]

You do have to give him credit though.  I understood history much better then say Marx.  Though neither of their predictions about their future turned out to be accurate turned out to be accurate, Malthus could at least predict thrends that could be found in the past.

[Alatriste]

Paul Krugman weighs in to support Malthus, basically with the point of view his ideas were dead on for most of human history, and the past two centuries are the exception. Posting the illustrative chart in the post is beyond my internet skillz so you will have to follow the link. And since I know someone will bring it up, I can't vouch for the accuracy of bronze age economic data.

Posted mainly for the benefit of our similarly named poster.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/a-bit-more-on-malthus/

Your Net Fu is weak...

Just right click on the image and select 'Copy Image Address'. Paste on Languish and add the tags -after the address-.

Like this "[imh]http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/malthusian.png[/imh]"

I wrote h instead of g in 'img' to let you see the text...