Who the hell is an immigrant?

[Eddie Teach]

Slargos' anti-American trolling is beginning to get tiresome.

[Slargos]

Slargos' anti-American trolling is beginning to get tiresome.

Deposed any Saudi Arabian dictators lately? 

[Pat]

I think Slargos said it well: "...as long as you have population growth, you're eventually going to run into the wall. Unless of course the wall can be moved."

Except that this isn't what Malthus said at all.  This is so trite that no one, I suspect, wants to claim it as their own.

OK but that's what I mean when I use the word "malthusian". We've had this discussion before. Do you have a better word for the same thing?

edit: It must be one word.

[Ed Anger]

Slargos' anti-American trolling is beginning to get tiresome.

Deposed any Saudi Arabian dictators lately? 

Why should we? They are our Romania. Delivering the sweet oil to their master.

[Pat]

Wasn't Romanians that burned the Reichstag so not sure if I follow the analogy.

[grumbler]

OK but that's what I mean when I use the word "malthusian". We've had this discussion before. Do you have a better word for the same thing?

edit: It must be one word.

Bantradian.  It is better because it can't be confused for another word with a different meaning, like your "malthusian" can be confused with the writings of Thomas Malthus. 

[Pat]

What is the etymology?

[grumbler]

What is the etymology?

et·y·mol·o·gy  (t-ml-j)
n. pl. et·y·mol·o·gies
1. The origin and historical development of a linguistic form as shown by determining its basic elements, earliest known use, and changes in form and meaning, tracing its transmission from one language to another, identifying its cognates in other languages, and reconstructing its ancestral form where possible.
2. The branch of linguistics that deals with etymologies.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/etymology

[Pat]

Not quite content with your answers, I must say.

[Valmy]

Wasn't Romanians that burned the Reichstag so not sure if I follow the analogy.

Same as Saudi citizens were involved with September 11th!  OMG!  It is a perfect analogy!

Oh and Bush = Hitler.

[grumbler]

Not quite content with your answers, I must say.

You are the guy making up meanings for existing words.  How about we don't do that?  If you want to have a word for "as long as you have population growth, you're eventually going to run into the wall, unless of course the wall can be moved" use "Bantradian."  It avoids confusion with actual economic theories by people like Thomas Malthus, unlike your choice for that word, "malthusian" (which exists in English already as "Malthusian" with a meaning that is related to Thomas Malthus).

[Habbaku]

I knew that using the Yicratic Method would get Pat to screw up. 

[The Minsky Moment]

I will try to put this in a way that even a Swede could understand, although that is probably beyond my powers.

If the crude* Malthusian thesis is correct, than it must be the case that all preindustrial socities must converge to subsistence levels of existence.

But at the very time Malthus was writing, per capita GDP in the UK was somewhere in the area of $1500 in constant dollars as opposed to $450 which would be roughly the subsistence level.  Moreover, this was not a temporary phenomenon: surplus per capita levels of affluence were reached in the late middle ages and continued to grow constantly and steadily (if slowly) after that.  The same holds true for most of Western Europe. 

This occurred because the application of improved agricultural techniques allowed the means of subsistence to expand faster than the population supported by those means.  Another contributor was the Western European marriage pattern, which delayed child bearing and hence slowed population growth.

*Note that the actual, real life Malthus recognized that his principles of population were tendancies, not iron laws, and that societies could in fact take steps to control population growth so as to sustain affluence.

[Malthus]

The problem with my namesake's theory is that there are very few human societies in which it could apply, because there are few in which access to food simpliciter was the primary restriction on population.

In preindustrial societies, such things as disease and war most certainly were the primary causes of population crashes, as opposed to simply running out of food; in fact, starvation was usually a result of war and social collapse, not the cause.

In the 20th century, mass famines have almost inevitably been caused by either deliberate government action (Ukraine, Ethiopia) or the breakdown of society accompanied by war; I can't really think of any cases in which simply having too many people in and of itself caused starvation.

That isn't to say that an increased population doesn't increase problems, cause environmental degredation, etc., only that an actual Malthusian crisis seems more of a theoretical threat.

[DGuller]

The problem with my namesake's theory is that there are very few human societies in which it could apply, because there are few in which access to food simpliciter was the primary restriction on population.

In preindustrial societies, such things as disease and war most certainly were the primary causes of population crashes, as opposed to simply running out of food; in fact, starvation was usually a result of war and social collapse, not the cause.

In the 20th century, mass famines have almost inevitably been caused by either deliberate government action (Ukraine, Ethiopia) or the breakdown of society accompanied by war; I can't really think of any cases in which simply having too many people in and of itself caused starvation.

That isn't to say that an increased population doesn't increase problems, cause environmental degredation, etc., only that an actual Malthusian crisis seems more of a theoretical threat.

I think you can make an argument that things can go haywire before actual starvation from lack of food occurs.  If you're starting to run up against the limit of food supplies, food prices go way up, and the masses start getting restless.  With the restless masses, some kind of devastating conflict is going to emerge sooner or later, and then you have the famines from devastation.

Likewise, insufficient rations can fail to kill outright, but make one more predisposed to deaths from diseases or plagues.