Malthus; Was He Right?
May/07 Thomas Malthus, was he right in 1798? He predicted that whenever human population growth exceeds food & other necessities, famine, disease, & war will act to reduce population growth to the supply of food. He didn’t know that the industrial revolution would invent a plethora of farm machinery, fertilizers, seeds, & pesticides that would make food production far outpace population growth. He was a pioneering economist for that time but he became just a curiosity.
Now, 200 years later, does Malthus’ prediction deserve another look; our human race appears to resemble rats in a cage; when psychologists put a few rats in a cage with plenty of space, activities & food, the rats are relatively peaceful; but when many are crowded into the same space they start fighting & killing; is that what is happening in our world today; population is expanding exponentially, 6.5 billion today & rising to 9.4 billion by 2050; lebens raum is remaining the same; people are fighting for the land & inadequate resources; water & food, animals, homes, clothes, work, oil, healthcare, etc. Civil wars are happening all around the globe, medium & small, tribe-opathic & extremely cruel. Millions of men & families are immigrating illegally to Europe,
Food demographers state confidently that there is enough food to feed the world’s population [water?] but would the capitalist profit system permit the purchase & shipping of surplus food to starving Africans & Asians,