Old Forecast of Famine May Yet Come True

[MindMover]

Might Thomas Malthus be vindicated in the end?

Two centuries ago — only 10 years after a hungry, angry populace had ushered in the French Revolution — the dour Englishman predicted that exponential population growth would condemn humanity to the edge of subsistence.

“The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race,” he wrote with alarm.

This was, we now know, wrong. The gloomy forecast was soon buried under an avalanche of progress that spread from England around the world. Between 1820 and the year 2000 the world’s population grew sixfold. Economic output multiplied by more than 50.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/02/business/energy-environment/a-200-year-old-forecast-for-food-scarcity-may-yet-come-true.html?src=twr&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0

[Warpy]

1. Nothing spurs revolution more than hunger

except hunger linked to debt peonage. I'm afraid the statistics are grisly for the one percenters.

We know how to monkeywrench Mathus, we've known it for decades, if not centuries. If you want the birth rate to drop like a rock, stop treating women like baby machines with no other value.

Wherever women have been educated or have had the wherewithal to start businesses, they stop producing infants every year. Wherever they have been given wider roles than the property of their husbands, they have jumped at the chance for contraception.

Men are simply going to have to let go of absolute patriarchy if we are to survive as a species. Otherwise the 4 Horsemen get us every time.

[MindMover]

2. and AMEN ... nt