Malthus Reloaded

[shadron]

Last night my attention was called to a lecture delivered by a professor at the University of Colorado concerning growth and the exponential curve. Now, I'm well aware of the charged atmosphere around the conclusions the professor is drawing, and I was aware of he meaning of exponenial growth before I listened to this last night. I also know the reputation nationally of Boulder and CU as a hotbed of liberal attitudes.

The lecture is on "Arithmetic, Population and Energy" by Dr. Albert A Bartlett, Professor Emeritus, Department of Physics, at CU in Boulder. It has 8 approximately 9 minute segments - shy of an hour and a half, all old. It was apparently recorded in 2001, so it is a bit dated in its statistics (and one thing I'd like to hear are stats extending this into the current time).

So, I don't need to hear about the polemics (I'm looking at you, WildCat!) - been there, done that. I want to tickle the E in JREF, for my own learning sake. What I want to see here is thoughtful deliberation on the arguments and comments on why he is incorrect (or correct) - not a dunderhead or hippie, or the Messiah. In order to get there I request that before anyone responds into this thread that they dedicate the time to hear the man out, which means listening to the whole lecture. If you don't then you won't catch his entire argument and/or his evidence. If all you intend is to tl;dr out, or you can't seem to return to those days of blissful open-eyed sleep that was such a skill in college then I'd ask that you give this thread a pass, and I'm prepared to think that those wanting to join in may be in the lower single digits. I'll be really disappointed in the JREF forum if that number is myself alone, however.

I'll full admit that if it was a libertarian talking that I might be monumentally bored by it, and tempted to just pass on this. I don't need to hear that this has been argued 1000 times before. However, if you want to make a mark as an anti-Malthusian here, this is your chance. Show us where Prof. Bartlett is wrong, or right, or both.

The lecture series playlist starts here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=related

For some reason, I can't seem to get a URL directly to the start of the playlist. So when you use this link, ignore the faintly amusing video that starts and click on the old prof over on the right, and continue down that playlist.

 

[The True Scotsman]

I'm convinced. Professor Emeritus put his proposition forward very succinctly and provide suitable evidence. I'm think, at this juncture, we need to make use of policies that enact monetary costs (such as taxes) on those who produce these social costs and, perhaps, enact population restrictions, though that would be more secondary.

As a studying economist myself, I'm sad to see influential economists ignoring important studies or reasoning them away with sophistry.

 

[Horza]

This guy does a pretty good job with Malthus

people uleth ca/~kent.peacock/Why%20Malthus%20Was%20Wrong%202004 pdf

 

[Horza]

Oh and on the lectures. He's beginning to tank it in no. 2 when he says education "hasn't done much". It's one of the biggest weapons against pop growth there is.

The other one is higher living standards but that one's sadly not such a happy story, ecology wise.

EDIT: Ah but he's a resource scarcity guy. Which isn't a Malthusian argument (food is a renewable resource), and yep, we're banjaxed.

 

[PixyMisa]

I got to lecture 2. It's idiotic. He notes that the growth rate is already declining, and then completely ignores that fact from that point on.

We are already heading towards global zero population growth and should get there around the middle of the century, without war, famine, plague or anything else.

It would appear that the biggest problem facing college professors is the failure to understand higher-order deriviatives.

 

[soylent]

Population growth hasn't been exponential for the last 50 years, it's been approximately linear as both mortality and birth rates race downwards with some time-lag inbetween them.

 

[PixyMisa]

Yep. In fact, a little less than linear, and still decreasing.

Health issues in Africa are part of that, but the largest part is people choosing to have smaller families. Prof. Bartlett actually had that listed on his slide, under "Bad Things" alongside war, famine, violence, disease and so on, but it's not a "Bad Thing" at all, it's an adaptation. Large numbers of children are a response to economic uncertainty; you want some of them to survive to take over the farm and support you in your old age.

As economic conditions improve (a) more of your children survive, (b) overall health improves so you are likely to remain self-sufficient longer, (c) wealth increases so that even when you can't work you can live off your savings or public or private pension, and importantly (d) children become more expensive to raise, so they're a less attractive investment. The problem is that cultures take a century or two to adapt to the changed conditions, so while the population explosion that came from modern sanitation and healthcare has ended in Europe, it's only tailing off now in much of the developing world.

So Prof. Bartlett is right on the trivial fact that exponential growth is unsustainable (which is 6th-grade maths) but wrong in almost everything he derives from that. People adapt. So does the market. Not perfectly, but well enough. And you can get sustained economic growth even when resources are getting scarcer and more expensive.