Thomas Malthus wrote in 1798 that population growth would outstrip resources and plunge the world back into the stone age. Latter day Malthusian Paul Ehrlich predicted in his 1968 book The Population Bomb that overpopulation would cause huge famines by the 1980’s.

…Still waiting for that famine, it might help out with the growing problem with obesity. So, yeah, I’m not too worried about the world ever having too many people and not enough resources.

One reason I’m not worried is that we have more people than ever but the world is more wealthy (in real quality of life terms) than ever (why this is would be a topic for a whole post). I would rather be a poor American today with plenty of internet and penicillin than a king from 200 years ago. Another reason is that people have been predicting overpopulation doom and gloom forever and it hasn’t happened yet. In fact, the more developed a nation is the closer it comes to “replacement” reproduction rates, and in fact many developed nations are below “replacement” now.

See also: The famous wager between Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich on population growth and resource prices.

Here’s a question: Do you ever think the dire predictions of T.Malthus (i.e. overpopulation and loss of resources) will come true?

Best,

Tejvan
http://www.economicshelp.org