[bronxville]

Silent Spring. Cold Spring Harbor. What’s with the name “Spring” and the Eugenists.

[Lazlo in PA]

The left is just a pack of panic freaks.

[Jonty30]

Thomas Malthus, the original socialist.

Socialism has never been about equality, but controlling the masses. The elite in society want to ensure their elite lifestyle. If it means killing off the masses to do it, so be it.

[Spaulding]

One of the most famous, because its author made milions of dollars in awards from left wing foundations, was The Population Bonb, by the mentor and partner of Obama’s Science Adviser John Holdren, Paul Ehrlich. Ehrlich was ridiculously wrong in almost all of his predictions, and only got more praise for his doomsday diatribes. He and his wife, who was also an ACLU activist, were very active in Zero Population Growth.

Holdren and Ehrlich famously lost on all 5 public bets they made with a population economist, Julian Simon, on the growing scarcity of 5 minerals, minerals chosen by Ehrlich, Holdren, Harte, and one other Marxist whose name I don't recall. It was a book which showed the folly of the claim that we live in a world of diminishing natural resources. It sounds plausible, but isn't true. Human intelligence solves those problems, and always has. Ehrlich wouldn't talk about the loss until after Simon had died. Then he wrote a book about it, still claiming he was right. He, Holdren, and the others did pay up!

While Holdren is a confirmed Marxists, I don't know about Ehrlich's doctrinal views. What most characterizes these people is their lack of respect for the capabilities of others. They work to be in control because they really believe most are not bright enough to make good decisions. Besides which, there are far too many of the dumb ones!

[Brad from Tennessee]

“Overpopulation” keeps greedy leftist billionaires awake at night:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6350303.ece

[Talisker]

It has been said that food remained in British warehouses while the Irish suffered the Great Hunger!

It did.

The Food Removal

[Steve Van Doorn]

Zeus was going to resolve the burdens of the earth in 8th century BC by riding the world of overpopulation :
Odyssey

[truthfreedom]

I was just catching up on my Malthus on Wikipedia.

Unless the Wiki was wrong, I was struck by Malthus’s belief that this was just a natural condition that is currently being remedied. It was just the natural order of things. It wasn’t a “crisis” the way people talk about it today. The population, then as now, was being held in check. Not by central planning, but by a wide assortment of things.

He was saying - “hey, utopian society builder who is worried about the underclass in 1790s England, here’s the deally, no matter what you do, no matter what perfect society with no poor people that you think you’re going to build, it’s not going to work.” There is a natural tendency for population growth to the point where death occurs from starvation, unless “checks” are in place. One thing to note is that starvation is not mass starvation necessarily. It’s just a barrier to utopian societies where there are no poor people.
Right now, and there has always been, someone starving somewhere. It’s not a crisis. It’s a natural condition.
But the Leftists are saying it’s a crisis. Social Conservatives might note that Malthus recognized “vice”
as one of the things that served as a “check”. Poverty was seen as a beneficial check.

Some, such as William Farr[31] and Karl Marx,[32] argued that Malthus did not fully recognize the human capacity to increase food supply.

So, Marx was arguing with Malthus, huh?

I know it’s Wikipedia, but it’s unlikely to be completely off the mark, right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus

It’s just interesting that he sounds like a Conservative, not a sky is falling Liberal which is what many think he is, because the Leftists have twisted his meanings. The one line takeaway from Malthus is

There will be too much Overpopulation and Everyone will Starve to death.

Which isn’t what he said. If you make everyone equal, everyone starves at once I think is what he was saying.
No matter what you do, someones gonna starve, or die in a war, or a dui crash (vices), if you want to remove these checks, you’re gonna face real problems. But if you don’t worry too much about war, or poverty, everything will be fine. The virtuous will thrive and those with vices will fail, and that’s ok.

Seriously, check this out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus

[sphinx]

Human populations do not typically sit and starve. They migrate first, and the migration is likely triggered by poverty long before absolute starvation sets in. Sometimes this is peaceful, but historically it is one of the common causes of wars. This is so constant that it can be overlooked: taken for granted as a chronic background factor. The wild tribes roll down from the hills or sweep in from the deserts or steppes; the Vikings come prowling up the rivers; the clans live by cattle raiding and die by feuds; half of Mexico moves to the U.S., and Araby moves to Europe. The Malthusian dynamic isn't the whole story, but it plays an important role. Carrying capacity does matter.

For the last couple of hundred years, western science and technology have done a spectacular job of boosting productivity and expanding our carrying capacity at a pace far exceeding population growth. How long this can continue, no one knows. At some point, there is presumably an absolute limit. The doom and gloomers see this limit just around the next corner. They've been crying wolf for so long that they've made themselves look foolish, but that doesn't mean the wolf isn't out there somewhere.

The interesting thing now is that every developed society is experiencing plummeting birth rates and the prospect of population decline, apart from immigration. The reasons are familiar enough: years of additional schooling; delays in family formation; the emancipation of women and their incorporation into the labor force; declines in infant mortality; and the much higher costs of raising children in middle and upper-middle class splendor in modern technological society. It may turn out that we have permanently outrun Malthus, and that prosperity is the reason. That would be good news if it happens.