Textbook p.507-516

Thomas Malthus: The Principle of Population

  • Condorcet: humans are inherently good, social institutions = problematic
    • The population would never exceed the means of subsistence
    • If so, solution = reason + technological innovation
  • Godwin: institutions = obstacles to human development
    • The population would never outgrow humans’ ability to provide sufficient food + resources
  • Malthus → dismissed these utopian views

  *Demographic transition theory

  

  1. Population = limited by means of subsistence
  2. Population increases where the means of subsistence increase
  3. The checks that would prevent the 2nd assumption are all resolvable into moral restraint, vice, and misery
  4. Population growth will surpass the means available to sustain humanity
  5. Population increases geometrically
  6. Food and other necessary resources
  7. Consequences = misery + vice
    • Miseries: positive checks (increase death rate)
    • Vices: preventive checks (lower birth rate)
  8. Solution = moral restraint (no sex before marriage or avoidance/delay of marriage)

^^Modern Criticism of Malthus^^

  • Failed to take account human resilience
  • Boserup’s view
  • Optimum population size: depends on the resources available + culture’s standards about the appropriate level of subsistence for individuals. *sustainability
  • Poor countries not necessarily have the means to afford costly techno-fixes on pollutant inventions
  • Malthus = moralist
  • Since Industrial Revolution → production of goods has greatly expanded

^^The Importance of Malthus to Population Studies^^

  • Responsability of the individual
  • Poverty → cause of population growth = vicious cycle

Karl Marx

  • Collaborator: Frederick Engels
  • Logistic equation: calculating the growth rate of a population by taking into account its current size
  • Carrying capacity: the sustainability of the earth’s ecosystem given the food, habitat, water and other ecosystem necessities required to support the human population
  • Capitalism → wealth is concentrated among fewer and fewer people
    • Proletariat: sell their labour power
    • Awareness of their suffering → class action