2011 edition. Pretty amusing. Malthusians never learn.
4 thoughts on “The Simon-Ehrlich Wager”
Malthus was 100% correct, but for the inevitability of his predictions. Instead his predictions are always true when the rate of population growth exceeds the rate of labor productivity growth.
One of the reasons that Leftism hasn’t put Europe into Malthusian territory is that it has killed off the population growth rate even faster than it has hollowed out the economy. But that doesn’t mean the Malthusian trap isn’t there. It is. Waiting.
Unless governments interfere with free markets we will always have food for the population. Have you ever run into the horizon? Of course not. When we get there we can see the next solution. There are no limits to growth.
I don’t think there is a Malthusian trap worth worrying about, although it is true that historically, there have been some human societies limited in a Malthusian way because of the lack of knowledge available to them. For example, the Polynesians, American Indians, etc, etc.
Since the dawn of industrial society, the rate of population growth has *lagged* the amazingly rapid rate of labor productivity growth. Currently, our carrying capacity is vastly greater than the current human population (despite the doom and gloom) and is headed up much, much faster than population. Knowledge seems headed up infinitely, driving a seemingly endless discovery loop of new usable resources. Physical limits are literally astronomical and thus not a factor.
Only a massive, severe and sustained blow that removed humanity’s knowledge store could push us back into a Malthusian realm. In my mind only Socialism (a la North Korea), or a very large impactor are even vaguely plausible calamities. Rapidly changing global climate, (the boogie man of the left), if it occurred, would be trivial for the existing economy to accommodate.
This nugget in the article caught my eye:
that prices are not a measure of welfare or even of scarcity (quantities would have been a better metric but these are much more difficult to observe).
I never thought of it that way, but it seems like a fairly profound observation. I’d say it’s part of the reason free markets work and government hierarchies don’t. Another way of phrasing the calculation problem I guess.
Malthus was 100% correct, but for the inevitability of his predictions. Instead his predictions are always true when the rate of population growth exceeds the rate of labor productivity growth.
One of the reasons that Leftism hasn’t put Europe into Malthusian territory is that it has killed off the population growth rate even faster than it has hollowed out the economy. But that doesn’t mean the Malthusian trap isn’t there. It is. Waiting.
Unless governments interfere with free markets we will always have food for the population. Have you ever run into the horizon? Of course not. When we get there we can see the next solution. There are no limits to growth.
I don’t think there is a Malthusian trap worth worrying about, although it is true that historically, there have been some human societies limited in a Malthusian way because of the lack of knowledge available to them. For example, the Polynesians, American Indians, etc, etc.
Since the dawn of industrial society, the rate of population growth has *lagged* the amazingly rapid rate of labor productivity growth. Currently, our carrying capacity is vastly greater than the current human population (despite the doom and gloom) and is headed up much, much faster than population. Knowledge seems headed up infinitely, driving a seemingly endless discovery loop of new usable resources. Physical limits are literally astronomical and thus not a factor.
Only a massive, severe and sustained blow that removed humanity’s knowledge store could push us back into a Malthusian realm. In my mind only Socialism (a la North Korea), or a very large impactor are even vaguely plausible calamities. Rapidly changing global climate, (the boogie man of the left), if it occurred, would be trivial for the existing economy to accommodate.
This nugget in the article caught my eye:
that prices are not a measure of welfare or even of scarcity (quantities would have been a better metric but these are much more difficult to observe).
I never thought of it that way, but it seems like a fairly profound observation. I’d say it’s part of the reason free markets work and government hierarchies don’t. Another way of phrasing the calculation problem I guess.