Thomas Robert Malthus has had a very long run. Issuing his first essay on population in 1798, he has persuaded millions of people that the world is threatened by overpopulation.
“The effect of Malthusianism was immediate and dramatic,” writes historian Gertrude Himmelfarb. “For half a century social attitudes and policies were decisively shaped by the new turn of thought.”[1] And the impact continues.
Until November I had never read Malthus’s essay.[2] To my surprise, it is a delightful essay—-clearly written, easy to read, a relatively short book. (Subsequent editions were more ponderous, I understand.)
Malthus is thoughtful and civil—deferential toward Adam Smith in spite of a disagreement and polite toward the two men whose arguments he demolished, William Godwin and Nicolas de Condorcet. The essay is full of plain-spoken metaphors (using examples such as watches and telescopes)[3] and full of common sense.
The strange thing is this: Not only was his claim about population vs. food production wrong, as we now know from 120 years of experience, his argument for it was just armchair theorizing. Continue reading “The Marketing Genius of T. R. Malthus”
It’s not a comfortable time for our country right now. For some reason, perhaps due to our enforced confinement, my husband and I started remembering family stories—our own family histories, good, bad, indifferent. Stories in which personalities peek through the misty past.
I’d love for you to share such stories, those that you like to tell but may not have an audience for, especially if you have exhausted the patience of children and grandchildren. To me these stories bring the past alive. Here are two of mine:
First story:
My great-grandfather’s parents came from Ireland in 1837 and farmed in Ohio. (I always praise the potato because without it they [and thus I] would probably not have been born, and they were lucky to miss the horrible famine of 1847). Their son John was born in 1847 in Ohio. Like many countrymen, the family moved west around 1860. They reached St. Louis, where they were to wait for a boat to take them up the Mississippi to Wisconsin. The family briefly dispersed, with plans to meet at the port. But John, then aged 14, never arrived. Continue reading “You and I Are What History Is About”
Last week I wrote about the Transportation-Communication Revolution that has fostered economic growth around the world.[1] Yes, it may have sped up the international spread of the coronavirus but, if so, that is a short-run effect. Prosperity has been the long-run result.
In the late nineteenth century another transportation-communication revolution took place, as railroads enabled products to be sold over vast geographical distances.[2] In the United States this led to the emergence of mass marketers like Montgomery Ward and Sears, which sent catalogs, products and even kits for building houses all around the country.
I have criticized economists for oversimplifying issues,[1] but I must say that sometimes they cut through the Gordian knot of difficult historical questions. That has just happened with an article by Joseph Connors, James D. Gwartney, and Hugo M. Montesinos.[2]
For decades, almost since Arnold Toynbee coined the term, there has been a debate over whether the Industrial Revolution increased or reduced the standard of living, especially for workers. Was the nineteenth century a period of “massive and continuous” progress, or were the Marxists right in saying that “capitalism both in its evolution and present form must be evil”?[3]
Connors et al. will have none of that debate because they have come up with a revolution that, by important measurements, has had even more impact than the Industrial Revolution. It is happening now around the world, affecting nearly everybody, not just those in England or Western Europe. Continue reading “Forget the Industrial Revolution”
