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To: FJB who wrote (438473)	8/2/2011 2:00:03 AM
From: TimF	2 Recommendations Respond to of 793976

Thank you for your compliment. I'm not a big fan of those pushing Malthusian scenarios. I don't think they are particuarly likely. I think they described the normal way of life to an extent, up to about Malthus' time, but the innovation that was going in in the 1700s the 1800s and since has made world wide Malthusian scenarios much less likely. And having more people to innovate, increases the pace of innovation, that the human mind is a resource. This is a partial and simplistic form of the arguments that Julian Simon laid out in "The Ultimate Resource" secure.wikimedia.org Which isn't to say that rapid population increase can't be negative. The adjustment to it can be difficult, esp. in poorer and less open societies, and to a lesser extent where population density is already high. And at some point, in some way, resources are not truly infinite, the universe only has so much energy in it. So I think Simon might overstate his case. But the eventual limits are enormous, almost inconceivably large. And on a shorter timescale - the US is not poor or dense, the world is not densely populated, and if world population growth really was so much of a problem, well its slowing down. Some countries have already reached or will soon reach the situation where the problem is population decline. A side note. My brother is a Malthusian, he thinks that it would be better if we controlled population growth, and better yet if the population shrunk down to a billion or so, maybe less. I guess its fortunate for him that my parents had different ideas, as he's the youngest of eleven. <g>

To: FJB who wrote (438473)	8/4/2011 10:11:20 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 793976

Malthus and the Assault on Population Mises Daily: Tuesday, August 02, 2011 by Murray N. Rothbard Economic Thought Before Adam Smith (1995). An MP3 audio file of this article, read by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download.] mises.org If your interested in the history of Malthus and Mathusian thought, you might find this interesting. If not you'll be bored by it, its not very light reading. Apparently it was part of a longer work by Rothbard in 1995, and was excerpted for Misses daily just a couple of days ago. It may have been one of the last things Rothbard wrote since he died January of 1995.