Malthusian Trap? Fugeddaboutit

From the "claim that's sufficiently appealing that I haven't read the underlying paper" file, here's Charles Kenny:

Is Anywhere Stuck in a Malthusian Trap? is an unpublished short paper. The key features of the Malthusian model are that (i) income determines population growth, with rising wages increasing survival rates and (ii) there is a vital factor of production (land) which is fixed, implying decreased returns to scale for all other factors. The equilibrium state in such a model is a population living on subsistence incomes. The analysis in this paper suggests that (i) the link between income and population growth is (almost) everywhere broken and (ii) there is little evidence of declining returns to scale because of constraints imposed by land carrying capacity at the macro level anywhere. Population dynamics are being driven by non-income factors in a manner that is reducing population growth rates everywhere. At the same time, output is increasing everywhere, in a manner inconsistent with significantly declining returns to scale based on land being a vital factor of production.

Good news! If true, of course. Here's his blog. This comes via Tyler Cowen.

Comments

Malthus is the most patient of economists.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | August 15, 2007 7:12 PM

Hopefully, we've escaped permanently from Malthusian traps, but you can see them throughout history, with China being the most striking. China traditionally had early and near universal marriage, so it was more susceptible to boom-bust cycles of population change than Europe. During good times, the Chinese population would grow rapidly to what could be supported with the current technology under a stable, competent regime. But when public order would break down, as during a rebellion or a bad Emperor, the population would drop precipitously within a number of years.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 15, 2007 7:20 PM

Well, right. When people talk about the Malthusian trap, aren't they generally talking about societies prior to the demographic transition?

Posted by Julian Elson | August 15, 2007 10:19 PM

"Another way of applying the Malthusian theory is to substitute other resources, such as sources of energy for food, and energy consumption for population. (Since modern food production is energy and resource intensive, this is not a big jump. Most of the criteria for applying the theory are still satisfied.) Since energy consumption is increasing much faster than population and most energy comes from polluting and non-renewable sources, the catastrophe appears more imminent, though perhaps not as certain, than when considering food and population continue to behave in a manner contradicting Malthus's assumptions." Wiki, "Malthusian Catastrophe"

Malthus had a clue about substitution and technology and trade even way back when.

Posted by bob mcmanus | August 15, 2007 10:53 PM

Um...yeah. Everything usually goes just great right before you slam into the brick wall. Witness the dot com bubble or the current slow motion housing bust for recent financial analogues. The exploitation of fossil fuels that allows us to exceed the carrying capacity of land is guaranteed not to last forever, if not due to energy crises then surely due to soil exhaustion/erosion, crop diseases due to monocultural factory farming, or some as yet unforeseen eventuality.

But don't let me kill your buzz if this guy convinces you that we've entered a new era in which the old rules don't apply. Caveat emptor and all that.

Posted by DMonteith | August 15, 2007 11:16 PM

DMonteith, even if it is true that the current fossil fuel-based economy is unsustainable and headed for a catastrophic collapse, modern societies still aren't following Malthusian demographic laws. Japanese, Italians, Spaniards, etc, all have fairly high incomes and enough to eat, but their populations are not growing exponentially. If there's a significicant decline in living standards thanks to the depletion of critical fossil fuels in the not-to-distant future, that would be a vindication of Marion King Hubbert, not of Thomas Malthus.

Posted by Julian Elson | August 16, 2007 1:36 AM

If population is growing faster than food output per acre, then history can get pretty exciting.

Japan was running into a Malthusian trap in the 1930s -- the per capita caloric intake was dropping. Japanese farmers couldn't work any harder to boost output per acre, and the world economic slump and protectionism meant that they couldn't buy more food abroad. So, the Japanese decided to get more acres the old fashioned way, with the sword.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 16, 2007 1:59 AM

As numerous scientists have pointed out, Malthus applies only in a "closed" system. While you can possibly consider the universe a "closed" system in the sense of entropy, this is not going to be an issue for some billions or trillions of years.

Technology destroys the Malthus concept totally. Nanotechnology and a conversion to Transhumanism can completely eliminate the issue of declining resources on this planet.

The presumption that resource consumption grows regardless of intelligence level is likely false. Ubiquitous nanotech would allow an entity to exist with only five requirements: 1) an energy source; 2) a source of matter; 3) nanomass; 4) computing resources; and 5) knowledgebases. Such an entity could construct anything he needs and remove it from existence when it is no longer needed.

Given that such an entity would be non-biological, immortal (save for massively destructive accident), and would not require anything but energy to function, it's hard to see how it would require anywhere near the level of resources that would threaten it with a Malthusian situation - even given trillions of such entities in a given area of space.

All of this technology will likely be available before the end of this century, eliding some disaster such as an asteroid strike or a global spasm nuclear war or other "extinction event" or the equivalent large event in economic or energy terms that materially slowed or eliminated technological progress by the species.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | August 16, 2007 2:08 AM

Richard Steven Hack,

Here are three suggestions for you:

1) If you haven't read it already, read Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age". It's set in a future infused with nanotech.

2) Look at Harris & Harris Co.. It's a publicly traded venture capital company that invests in nanotech.

3) Understand that most non-high people will think you're a little daft when you talk about "transhumanism" on a political blog.

Posted by Fred | August 16, 2007 2:27 AM

If there's a significicant decline in living standards thanks to the depletion of critical fossil fuels in the not-to-distant future, that would be a vindication of Marion King Hubbert, not of Thomas Malthus.

I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that "a significant decline in living standards" would be accompanied by a significant decline in population. There are several billion people on the planet who are living pretty close to the edge right now and "significant" disruptions would likely push many of them over it. Given the modern system of food production, Hubbert and Malthus are, philosophically speaking, conjoined twins.

While you can possibly consider the universe a "closed" system in the sense of entropy, this is not going to be an issue for some billions or trillions of years.

I consider the Earth to be a closed system for all practical purposes, and I fail to see how farming the solar system, much less "the universe", is going to help us in the next few hundred years. I think the technical and economic hurdles are far higher than we are likely to overcome anytime soon. The earth's gravity well is a bitch, to say nothing of traveling even the measly 4 light years to the nearest star.

Appeals to "Transhumanism" and "Nanotechnology" are just so much rhetorical handwaving that fail to address the physical limits of the systems we rely on to sustain the global population. After all, photosynthesis, from a certain perspective, is just nanotechnology, and I doubt that we are close to devising something better to replace it.

Even if these technologies are feasible and have the magical properties of reversing longstanding trends of per capita consumption, there is no reason to believe that the human population won't grow to "take up the slack", and that we will have simply postponed Malthusian considerations rather than eliminating them. The question was aptly put somewhere else on the intertubes that I can't remember now: Are humans smarter than yeast? History suggests that the answer is no. After all, it is rational (and biologically adaptive) for each person to want more children but it is foolish for the species to keep growing. Any solutions to that dilemma will certainly need to be "transhuman".

As Jeff Davis said at the top of the thread, "Malthus is the most patient of economists".

Posted by DMonteith | August 16, 2007 9:35 AM

Re: I consider the Earth to be a closed system for all practical purposes,

Then you are very wrong. The Earth is an open system since every second it receives a huge influx of solar energy, a very tiny of fraction of which is sufficient not just for humankind's energy needs, but for the support of the entire ecosystem.

Re: there is no reason to believe that the human population won't grow to "take up the slack"

There is absolutely no reason to believe that it will. In fact, current trends point the opposite direction. Birth rates are falling all over the planet, in fact in significant large areas they are below replacement. Moreover there is no reason whatsoever to think that will change any time soon. Something very crucial has happened in the last century: children ceased to be economic assets and became economic liabilities. As long as we lived in societies where human labor (supplemented by animals) was primary, it was a viable strategy (THE viable straegy) to have as many as possible. They were net consummers for about the first ten years of their life, but then became net contributors to their parents' income for at least another ten years, perhaps longer. That doesn't happen now, not even in the Third World. Children are net consummers of their parents income for twenty or more years, then they go out on their own and provide little or nothing in return for what they consummed. Hence people have far fewer children. And I cannot see anything that is going to change that fact. Time is a one way street; it never runs backward. Wherever we go from here it won't be back to the pre-modern past, and I am fairly confident that for a very long time to come our numbers will very gradually dwindle, while our life spans may lengthen enormously. The transhuman stuff is a bit weird, I agree, but for sure the world of 500 years hence is likely to be as unrecognizble to us as the world of today would be to a Neolithic farmer.

Re: After all, it is rational (and biologically adaptive) for each person to want more children

See above. It is no longer rational or even desirable for people to want children at all. That we are still having children at all is due to the lingering force of biology, expressed through sentimentality.

Posted by Jonf | August 16, 2007 10:44 PM

"1) If you haven't read it already, read Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age"."

I have read it - wasn't bad, but I liked "Snow Crash" better.

"2) Look at Harris & Harris Co.. It's a publicly traded venture capital company that invests in nanotech."

Thanks for the type. Unfortunately I have no money to invest. Plus I think it might be a little early yet to be concerned about a "nano-bomb" cycle.

"3) Understand that most non-high people will think you're a little daft when you talk about "transhumanism" on a political blog. "

That's because people who write on political blogs tend to be ignorant about technology and big on social problems that will probably vanish when technology changes the landscape.

It is true, however, that Transhumanism is so far off the mainstream from a philosophical standpoint - it's far more radical than Libertarianism, although there is a good deal of crossover for some Transhumans - that most people can't understand it. And I'm not just a Transhumanist, I'm a RADICAL Tranahumanist.

But if everybody would prefer to have neocons and neoliberals running the show, be my guest. It will only work for us Transhumanists.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | August 17, 2007 2:25 AM

"I consider the Earth to be a closed system for all practical purposes, and I fail to see how farming the solar system, much less "the universe", is going to help us in the next few hundred years."

Your "failure to see" is due to ignorance of how it can be done and when.

Not to mention that it ignores the basic end result of the technology curve - the replacement of biological humans with a more advanced species that doesn't do anything that humans do - making human problems irrelevant. This is the whole basic point of Transhumanism - to transcend unsolvable human problems by transcending "human nature."

"I think the technical and economic hurdles are far higher than we are likely to overcome anytime soon. The earth's gravity well is a bitch, to say nothing of traveling even the measly 4 light years to the nearest star."

The technical hurdles are not "far higher". And if things develop as I foresee, faster than light travel is irrelevant as well, since the entities that replace humans will not be concerned with the passage of time in the same sense that we are. Therefore, speed will be irrelevant. And such entities will probably not need massive resource consumption, so the only reason for interstellar travel will be to increase knowledge.

"Appeals to "Transhumanism" and "Nanotechnology" are just so much rhetorical handwaving that fail to address the physical limits of the systems we rely on to sustain the global population."

Nonsense. This merely displays your ignorance of the potential of nanotechnology. "Malthusian economics" is just so much handwaving to justify forcing a lower standard of life on everybody - except the politicians and academics who advocate it, of course, who will expect to find themselves among "the elite" who, of course, need greater resources in order to control the "hoi polloi."

"After all, photosynthesis, from a certain perspective, is just nanotechnology, and I doubt that we are close to devising something better to replace it."

Nanotech is not about developing something to replace natural systems - although it conceivably could in some cases. It's about developing systems that function as well as natural systems on the molecular scale - but under conscious control and conscious engineering for human benefit.

"Even if these technologies are feasible and have the magical properties of reversing longstanding trends of per capita consumption, there is no reason to believe that the human population won't grow to "take up the slack","

Yes, there is every reason to believe this. Because the ultimate purpose of nanotechnology will be to alter the human body and brain so that population growth will be irrelevant.

"and that we will have simply postponed Malthusian considerations rather than eliminating them."

Postponing them for some millions or billions of years is a little different than postponing them for a few decades or even centuries.

Not to mention that Transhumans probably wouldn't have any need to reproduce or consume resources in a way that produces a Malthusian curve - effectively breaking the notion entirely.

"The question was aptly put somewhere else on the intertubes that I can't remember now: Are humans smarter than yeast? History suggests that the answer is no."

I'll give you that one. Most of the anti-tech arguers certainly give that impression.

"After all, it is rational (and biologically adaptive) for each person to want more children but it is foolish for the species to keep growing."

Neither is true, although the latter will likely become irrelevant once the former is recognized as false.

"Any solutions to that dilemma will certainly need to be "transhuman"."

Correct.

Back in the 1970's, Paul Ehrlich wrote "The Population Bomb". Leaving aside the fact that virtually every prediction he made in that book turned out to be wrong, if you read it carefully, you will notice that his only recommended solution to the problem was the genocidal extermination of most of the world's population - especially of the population of the United States.

He established by proclaiming that there was no way the Earth could support more than 500 million people sustainably. Keep in mind that we had, oh, I don't know, three billion or so people at that point. Then he argued that it was impossible to ship these people into space, it was impossible to feed them using new technology, it was impossible basically to do ANYTHING about the problem.

What was left, then? How do you reduce a population of 3 billion to 500 million by, as he required, the year 2000 or so? Genocide is the only conceivable answer.

And genocide of who? Well, he made a point of saying that American children consume 20 times more resources than children in the rest of the world. So you can guess who his main targets were.

He didn't have the nerve to say it directly, of course, because he would have been dismissed as a crackpot.

Strangely, he probably was wrong about everything but that. But it won't be due to "Malthus" that the human species ends up being destroyed, but rather the fact that the only solution - Transhumanism - will be rejected by most of the species for precisely the reason that they will be unable to give up their "humanity" for even the slightest chance of long-term survival.

They will end up trying to destroy Transhumanists. And unlike the Star Trek or Terminator stories where the humans always win out over the "inhuman enemy", in the real world, the "inhuman" Transhumanists will wipe the floor up with the human species.

There are only four possible outcomes:

1) Transhumans exterminate the human species.

2) Transhumans convert the human species into Transhumans, whether they want to or not.

3) Transhumans develop such power that they can safely ignore the humans species, and go about their business.

And the most likely outcome:

4) A little of all the above - some humans who attack Transhumans get exterminated, some who embrace Transhumanism get converted, and the rest get left to stew in their own juices.

The bottom line: You humans are, if you buy into the Malthusian line, all going to die - or at least live pathetic lives until you die.

We Transhumans won't.

Have a nice day.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | August 17, 2007 2:51 AM