Thomas Robert Malthus, the English economist, is coming back into fashion. It is his Essay on Population, 1798, which first states the Malthusian argument: “The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second.”
April 18th, 2008 | Dan Denning | 6 comments | Continued