Beyond Malthus On Population

Many people misunderstand Malthus “On Population”. They look at the great increase in population since Mathus’s time and ours and insist that he must have been wrong to be so worried about Population. Well, no. We can all remember that what Mathus was essentially saying was that Population is always hovering near its situational maximum, being checked from going much further by the contingencies of subsistence, violence, and disease.

Malthus went into much detail in discussing checks to population expansion, but is less known for any discussion concerning Civilization’s efficiencies which allow for greater concentrations of population. Malthus must have been aware of the great densities of population then in China and India, as to be distinguished from the sparse figures in aboriginal America and Australia, where the glaring differences involved were that the greater Populations were Civilized, and the scattered populations were Primitive and Barbarian. What it must point out, in his own terms, is that Civilized Institutions are successful at mitigating the checks to population that are posed by subsistence constraints, by conflict and by disease.

The problem then arises whereby so much of Civilized Population must depend upon the continuation of Civilized Institutions. In the surviving annals of any Lost Civilization, it is often remarked that once densely populated zones are reduced to expanses of vacant desert.

Recently I saw a statistic that more than a half of the rice now consumed in the Far East is grown in the swamps of the American Southeast. Much of the produce and meat now consumed in the Great American East Coast Megalopolis is from Latin and South America. I suppose the great concentrations of population in Europe also feed from remote sources. This would all indicate to us that just an interruption in the civilized efficiencies in Transportation would cut off large sectors of population from their supporting sources of subsistence.

But just as detractions and breakdowns within the Civilized Institutions can result in severe losses to population, so it is that further elaborations and refinements within Civilization could allow for even more Population.

For instance, I could imagine that large scale world-wide emphasis on Salt Water to Fresh Water conversion and storage, leading to far broader levels of agricultural irrigation would allow for even denser and more expansive clusters of population.

Eventually, what we would see is a World purposely engineered almost exclusively to support human population. Many other considerations, such as for the maintenance of regions of pristine nature, would have to be sidelined, just as now, for instance, they wish to bulldoze every Natural Park in the World for the sake of Energy Exploration. Going forward, the underlying assumption is that an expanding Population trumps all other considerations and priorities.

However, if Population were limited by globally coordinated efforts toward Planning, focusing on granting incentives for postponing marriage, rewarding those remaining childless, while discouraging childbearing, perhaps by limiting career possibilities for those who chose to marry and raise families; if Populations were thus contracted by deliberate Institution, then the maintenance of these populations would be far less fragile and tenuous.

Although History shows that every Civilization has so far declined and collapsed around the destructive influences of excessive concentration of Public Wealth into Private Hands, still, it should also be remarked that in each of these collapsing Civilizations there were severe shocks to the Society as various supports to the dense levels of Population were eroding – unrelieved famines, spreading epidemics, and unrestrained internal crime and rebellion and unopposed foreign invasion. As the dense populations lost their sense of Civilized safety and security, they would destabilize themselves, falling into revolt and rebellion, often exacerbating the very problems they had so much lamented.

Also, as Populations expand, there is the risk that they become far more instable, particularly as resources are stretched to the breaking point regarding their Education and their assimilation. A Civilization can only safely maintain a Population contained enough so that it can be thoroughly integrated, where everyone can be made to feel ‘fat and happy’, so to speak. Where significant numbers are uneducated, unemployed and discontented, well, it must certainly throw a wobble into the fine balances in the running of the Civilized Machine. And if too much dysfunctionality is allowed to go forward, eventually we must see a breakdown to the entire System.