I’m not saying that we shouldn’t help other countries and places that have real need–just that it has to be managed very carefully.

Lets say you have a farmer in an area of Africa that has very little food. He works hard and is able to get a crop of potatoes to grow. They aren’t very good and he doesn’t have great yields, but he has something edible that he can sell. However, when he takes it to market he is competing with a charity organization from the United States that is giving away free food. Rather than buying his locally produced food, everyone takes the free food.

How likely do you think it is that the farmer will put much effort into another crop? Everything might seem fine until the charity runs out of money or has to pull out because of a war. Then you leave a bunch of people who don’t have the skills necessary to care for themselves, no established food markets and no expectation that food should cost anything.

The long term solution to food shortages isn’t free food–it is teaching people how to produce food for themselves. We understand this about animals. Rangers and other people who manage wildlife put a lot of effort into preventing people from feeding the animals because they know that they can’t survive long term if they become dependent on people. I don’t understand why we haven’t figured this out when it comes to other people.

My point is that the problem is much more complicated than most people realize. I don’t know that it takes a genius to come up with workable long-term solutions, but a lot of what is being done now isn’t very effective.

Thanks for the post! Keep ‘em coming! :)

Given the decreasing growth rates of developed countries, it is likely that technology achievements can keep us going for a long time–even if they occur at a much slower rate. The undeveloped world may indeed be subject to Malthus’ predictions.

That said, many of the advances we’ve seen in the past, were sparked by a genius but implemented by a bunch of unknown people who moved society forward on the foundation of the genius’ creativity.

Malthus did make a good point though. At the rate things were going he thought they would run out of the ability to produce food. Sometimes identifying a problem ahead of time can be the turning point in getting people to look at avoiding it.

Thank you for your kind words and your comments.

The jury is still out as to whether or not “genius” and technological development will be able to perpetually outstrip population growth. And fertilizers are not the panacea some would believe them to be either. Ask any grower about the environmental problems fertilizers cause.

Genius may be able to provide a temporary fix for a given problem. But genius alone can’t override the laws of physics, or even simple mathematics for that matter.

When it comes to survival, I’ll be happy to work towards technological breakthroughs. But I’d sure as hell rather not plan on them as a matter of course. The human race can’t afford that much hubris.

Like the old saying goes: Pray for miracles – don’t rely on them.

But I think we owe much more to the process in which society can develop, not by individual flashes of genius, but by the work of countless people putting in their time and making miniscule, additive advances. Microsoft might have started with some wiz-kids, but it exists today as a gigantic entity because of thousands of programmings working man-years.

Oh, and we are far from knowing whether Malthus was correct. He vastly underestmated the size of this Earth and it’s ability to produce. Overpopulation is a joke – we could fit the entire population of the world in Texas, and leave the rest as farm and nature preserve, if we had to. We are far, very far, from the true limit of our resources, and Malthus might be right … eventually.

More likely, he is wrong because he ignored the fact that governments would try to control the situation, whether by euthanasia or birth control (think China). He missed a key component.

I humbly suggest we keep producing people who embody your advice.

Thank you for your posts, despite my nitpicking here, I find your comments and writing very inspiring.

I mean, technically, it probably is possible for food demand to outpace supply, and thus considerations would have to be made for the space needed to grow things versus how many people it can feed, or whatever.

A theory is only wrong if it is disproven by evidence that directly conflicts the hypothesis. This particular theory predicts something about the future, which could make it notoriously difficult to disprove. I might consider it disproven if we get to the point where we have offworld greenhouses, because then the amount of space available is well beyond the boundaries of Malthus’ statement. But what if we don’t get there? What if we starve first, or are reduced to eating rations instead of meals while we get an offworld growing program in place? Then Malthus will be correct, after all.

So, perhaps that theory should be reserved as a final option in your list, instead of it being the first one, jarring people into thinking that it’s okay to jump to that conclusion first instead of considering other ideas first.