> --- Elisabeth Carvalho wrote: > > > I am sure as, Dr Khushwant Singh and Chidambaram, > > revel in the headway that India is making, their > > foremost wish is Malthus be gone. Unfortunately, > > the spectre of Maltus will follow both India and > > China well into the next century. > --- George Pinto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > For those further interested in Malthus (Elisabeth's > reference above), see link and excerpt below > http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/malthus.htm > Mario observes: > It isn't often that I have the opportunity to respond to two worthy left-wing intelletuals at the same time on Goanet, both of whom seem to find the ideas of Malthus to be as compelling as I find them to be pessimistic and misguided. > My advice to Khuswant Singh and Dr. Chidambaram is to press on with their plans without worrying too much about Malthus. After all, he has been wrong for 300 years, so what are the probabilities that he will be vindicated in future? > As one example from George's post above, "Malthus's hypothesis implied that actual population always has a tendency to push above the food supply." > Based on this India and China should have been facing mass starvation by now. However, because people don't sit still in the face of problems but develop solutions, both countries are self-sufficient in their food supplies, and are even exporting food. > Here is an URL from a major university that rebutts the pessimistic theories of Malthus: > http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/prin/txt/gro/gro6.html > Some excerpts: > "It appears, in retrospect, that Malthus was wrong. Over the past 200 years, the population has grown in most countries and worldwide, but (again in most countries) people by and large have not gotten worse off, but better off, in material terms. Food is more plentiful, and many other kinds of goods and services are available that were not available 200 years ago. The reason is that technical progress in the production of food and in other fields has not been rare and accidental, but rather more or less continuous and cumulative. And this improvement in technology has outrun population growth, leaving more and more people better off."
"Looked at in detail, technical progress over this period has not been so continuous or regular. Before Malthus, about 1700, Britain had experienced an "agricultural revolution," a major surge of technical progress in agriculture. In the nineteenth century, however, agricultural productivity seems to have remained relatively stagnant, while manufacturing and transportation surged ahead. But cheap manufactures made it possible to outfit more farmers more cheaply, and the improvements of transportation made is possible to bring food from further away, as new agricultural land was settled. Once again, in the twentieth century, agricultural productivity surged into the lead with large, continuing increases in agricultural productivity, together with some growth in manufacturing productivity." "From the Malthusian viewpoint, this looks like a series of lucky accidents, and a Malthusian might say that there is no scientific reason to believe that the luck can continue -- that such a belief is no more than an act of faith. But from the anti-Malthusian viewpoint, things look quite different. An anti-Malthusian might ask how long a trend has to continue before it stops being a lucky accident and starts to be a general rule. If three hundred years is not long enough, how long? And how many times must the Malthusians be wrong before they realize that their ideas are flawed?" (end of excerpt) > _____________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. Goanet mailing list (Goanet@goanet.org)
