The dawn of civilization

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

'An Essay On The Principles Of Population', by Thomas Malthus.

Boru

Malthus seems to be suggesting something quite different.  The population will reach a point at which time it will be subject to various forms of distress.  So it would actually be the opposite of what you're suggesting.  This is from his essay:

The way in which these effects are produced seems to be this. We will suppose the means of subsistence in any country just equal to the easy support of its inhabitants. The constant effort towards population... increases the number of people before the means of subsistence are increased. The food therefore which before supported seven millions must now be divided among seven millions and a half or eight millions. The poor consequently must live much worse, and many of them be reduced to severe distress. The number of labourers also being above the proportion of the work in the market, the price of labour must tend toward a decrease, while the price of provisions would at the same time tend to rise. The labourer therefore must work harder to earn the same as he did before. During this season of distress, the discouragements to marriage, and the difficulty of rearing a family are so great that population is at a stand. In the mean time the cheapness of labour, the plenty of labourers, and the necessity of an increased industry amongst them, encourage cultivators to employ more labour upon their land, to turn up fresh soil, and to manure and improve more completely what is already in tillage, till ultimately the means of subsistence become in the same proportion to the population as at the period from which we set out. The situation of the labourer being then again tolerably comfortable, the restraints to population are in some degree loosened, and the same retrograde and progressive movements with respect to happiness are repeated.

— Malthus T.R. 1798. An Essay on the Principle of Population. Chapter II, p 19 in Oxford World's Classics reprint.

Right, but that wasn't the case in the time under discussion. Malthus was talking about the modern era, not Stone Age hunter-gatherers.


Boru