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Malthusian Principle Of Population

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"Essay on the Principle of Population" (1978)- the book written by outstanding man, famous economist, sometimes even called first real evolutionary economist (Tunzelman, 1991) known for his at those times unique and confronting ideas on the Malthusian catastrophe. To generally summarize idea of Malthus- his famous work concentrated on the analysis of society’s future from the economic perspective, one of the main claims that famous demographist has made was that Earth society will to start to die slowly at some specific point- the upper limit - because population will constantly grow in geometric progression (demand) whereas means of substances (supply) grow in just arithmetic progression (MacRae, 2015). According to MacRae (2015) The undersupply …show more content…

As discussed earlier, Malthus claimed planet inhabitants will face scarcity of supply because of constant growth of people and then „the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.” (Malthus, 1798, I.17), therefore appears the so called discrepancy- Malthusian trap. One of the central arguments that scholars gives to reject Malthus theory is his failure to foresee technological innovations that help to increase effectiveness of extraction or creation of new ways to produce energy, food, water and other important resources needed for people to live. Malthus has not projected the appearance of initial three changes after his age that led to survivor of Earth inhabitants, they were: fossil fuel and mechanical improvements of machines, increased plots of cultivable land and finally more efficient use of land. Malthus has not probably thought of advanced technologies that we have now and their impact towards production line (Waterman, 1992). One of the recent examples is genetically modified products establishment- new technology that despite a wave of contention in public is also considered to lead towards the increase in proportion of people fed (K. R. Schneider, R. G., Schneider, Richardson, n.d.) (as food can be …show more content…

Trying to assess this great economist’s ideas in a way of stating they are relavant nowadays, arguments related to environmental issues (global warming, carbon emissions) seem to be promising and having a sense of rationality. Moreover, we can only agree that examples of birth restrictions are too oblivious not to state and relate them as Malthus “preventive checks”, therefore, there is a small amount of his ideas applied nowadays. Nevertheless, as factual examples indicate, main ideas of "Essay on the Principle of Population" (1978 are now happening in a vice-versa manner, therefore their relevance is very highly debatable. We have to agree, Malthus ideas validity and their relevance today is a controversial topic that one’s presume to become reality sooner or later and other’s claiming it to be too theoretical and ignoring society’s advancement factor, however finally this essay I believe clearly expresses most of his to be not applicable in 21st

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