1
00:00:00,441 --> 00:00:02,520
The seventeen hundreds in Europe are often

2
00:00:02,520 --> 00:00:04,942
referred to as the age of enlightenment,

3
00:00:04,942 --> 00:00:07,403
it was a time we had come out of the renaissance,

4
00:00:07,403 --> 00:00:10,523
we'd rediscovered science and reason,

5
00:00:10,523 --> 00:00:11,888
and in the seventeen hundreds,

6
00:00:11,888 --> 00:00:13,192
we saw that come about

7
00:00:13,192 --> 00:00:15,723
with even more progress of society.

8
00:00:15,723 --> 00:00:17,376
As we exit the seventeen hundreds

9
00:00:17,376 --> 00:00:19,262
and enter into the eighteen hundreds,

10
00:00:19,262 --> 00:00:21,139
we start having the industrial revolution,

11
00:00:21,139 --> 00:00:23,709
and people saw the steady march

12
00:00:23,709 --> 00:00:26,309
of human reason, of human progress.

13
00:00:26,309 --> 00:00:28,159
And because of... because of this,

14
00:00:28,159 --> 00:00:29,241
a lot of people were saying

15
00:00:29,241 --> 00:00:31,808
'hey, humanity will continue to improve and..

16
00:00:31,808 --> 00:00:32,920
and it will improve forever,

17
00:00:32,920 --> 00:00:35,354
to a point that poverty will go away,

18
00:00:35,354 --> 00:00:37,777
we will turn to this perfect utopian civilisation

19
00:00:37,777 --> 00:00:40,574
without wars, without strife of any kind.'

20
00:00:40,574 --> 00:00:43,090
And, there was something to be said about that

21
00:00:43,090 --> 00:00:44,677
you had significant improvements,

22
00:00:44,677 --> 00:00:46,359
in fact you had even more dramatic improvements

23
00:00:46,359 --> 00:00:48,603
once the industrial revolution started.

24
00:00:48,603 --> 00:00:51,958
But not everyone in the late seventeen hundreds

25
00:00:51,958 --> 00:00:53,113
was as optimistic,

26
00:00:53,113 --> 00:00:57,323
and one of the more famous not-so-optimistic people

27
00:00:57,323 --> 00:00:59,314
was Thomas Malthus.

28
00:00:59,314 --> 00:01:02,774
[writes Thomas Malthus] right over here.

29
00:01:02,774 --> 00:01:05,650
and I will just quote him directly,

30
00:01:05,650 --> 00:01:09,658
this is from his essay on the principle of population.

31
00:01:09,658 --> 00:01:12,107
[Quote] 'The power of population

32
00:01:12,107 --> 00:01:15,142
is so superior to the power of the earth to

33
00:01:15,142 --> 00:01:17,556
produce subsistence for man,

34
00:01:17,556 --> 00:01:20,427
that premature death must in some shape

35
00:01:20,427 --> 00:01:22,358
or other visit the human race.'

36
00:01:22,358 --> 00:01:23,592
Very uplifting.

37
00:01:23,592 --> 00:01:25,861
'The vices of mankind are active

38
00:01:25,861 --> 00:01:28,227
and able ministers of depopulation.

39
00:01:28,227 --> 00:01:30,073
They are the precursors

40
00:01:30,073 --> 00:01:31,960
in the great army of destruction,

41
00:01:31,960 --> 00:01:35,090
and often finish the dreadful work themselves.

42
00:01:35,090 --> 00:01:38,375
But should they fail in this war of extermination,

43
00:01:38,375 --> 00:01:40,891
sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence

44
00:01:40,891 --> 00:01:44,840
and plague advance in terrific array,

45
00:01:44,840 --> 00:01:47,022
and sweep off their thousands

46
00:01:47,022 --> 00:01:48,702
and tens of thousands.

47
00:01:48,702 --> 00:01:50,792
Should success still be incomplete,

48
00:01:50,792 --> 00:01:54,388
gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear,

49
00:01:54,388 --> 00:01:57,299
and with one mighty blow levels the population

50
00:01:57,299 --> 00:01:59,835
with the food of the world.'

51
00:01:59,835 --> 00:02:01,992
So not..not so uplifting

52
00:02:01,992 --> 00:02:03,504
of a little quote right over here.

53
00:02:03,504 --> 00:02:05,353
But this was his general sense.

54
00:02:05,353 --> 00:02:07,385
He lived in a time when people were being

55
00:02:07,385 --> 00:02:09,168
very optimistsic that the progress,

56
00:02:09,168 --> 00:02:11,869
the march of progress, would go on forever

57
00:02:11,869 --> 00:02:14,342
until we got to some utopian civilisation.

58
00:02:14,342 --> 00:02:16,967
But from Thomas Malthus' point of view

59
00:02:16,967 --> 00:02:19,772
he felt that if people could reproduce

60
00:02:19,772 --> 00:02:21,842
and increase the population, they will.

61
00:02:21,842 --> 00:02:23,821
That there's no way of stopping them.

62
00:02:23,821 --> 00:02:25,938
So from his point of view, the way he saw it -

63
00:02:25,938 --> 00:02:28,159
so let me on that axis,

64
00:02:28,159 --> 00:02:32,739
let's say that, that is the population,

65
00:02:32,739 --> 00:02:34,253
and this axis right over here,

66
00:02:34,253 --> 00:02:37,427
let's say that.. that is time.

67
00:02:37,427 --> 00:02:38,858
So by his thinking

68
00:02:38,858 --> 00:02:41,547
and everything he'd seen in reality up to that point

69
00:02:41,547 --> 00:02:42,999
would back this up

70
00:02:42,999 --> 00:02:45,443
that if people had enough food and time,

71
00:02:45,443 --> 00:02:46,946
they would reproduce,

72
00:02:46,946 --> 00:02:48,461
and they would reproduce in numbers

73
00:02:48,461 --> 00:02:50,174
that would grow the population.

74
00:02:50,174 --> 00:02:52,016
So in his mind the population would just

75
00:02:52,016 --> 00:02:53,364
keep on increasing.

76
00:02:53,364 --> 00:02:55,637
It'll just keep on increasing,

77
00:02:55,637 --> 00:02:57,975
until it can't support itself anymore,

78
00:02:57,975 --> 00:03:00,216
until the actual productivity of the land

79
00:03:00,216 --> 00:03:02,098
can't produce enough calories

80
00:03:02,098 --> 00:03:03,815
to feed all of those people.

81
00:03:03,815 --> 00:03:05,674
So in his mind there would be some

82
00:03:05,674 --> 00:03:07,220
natural upper bound,

83
00:03:07,220 --> 00:03:09,974
based on the actual amount of food

84
00:03:09,974 --> 00:03:11,228
that the Earth could support.

85
00:03:11,228 --> 00:03:12,659
So let's say that this is -

86
00:03:12,659 --> 00:03:15,119
(let me do that in a different colour)

87
00:03:15,119 --> 00:03:18,727
So in his mind there was some upper bound

88
00:03:18,727 --> 00:03:20,346
there was some upper bound,

89
00:03:20,346 --> 00:03:22,239
and once you get to that upper bound

90
00:03:22,239 --> 00:03:23,530
then all of a sudden

91
00:03:23,530 --> 00:03:25,674
the vices of mankind will show up and

92
00:03:25,674 --> 00:03:27,413
if those don't start killing people

93
00:03:27,413 --> 00:03:29,096
well then all of these other things will -

94
00:03:29,096 --> 00:03:33,447
epidemics, er.. pestilence, plague and then famine

95
00:03:33,447 --> 00:03:35,212
people are actually starving to death.

96
00:03:35,212 --> 00:03:37,179
So in his mind, once you got to this level,

97
00:03:37,179 --> 00:03:38,677
maybe you had a couple of good crops,

98
00:03:38,677 --> 00:03:40,126
people are feeling good about themselves,

99
00:03:40,126 --> 00:03:41,589
they overpopulate.

100
00:03:41,589 --> 00:03:43,921
But then all of a sudden you have a bad crop,

101
00:03:43,921 --> 00:03:45,862
or because you have a bad crop,

102
00:03:45,862 --> 00:03:48,007
people start fighting over resources,

103
00:03:48,007 --> 00:03:49,124
and wars happen,

104
00:03:49,124 --> 00:03:50,912
or maybe the population is so dense that

105
00:03:50,912 --> 00:03:52,110
a plague develops.

106
00:03:52,110 --> 00:03:55,424
And then you have a massive wave of depopulation.

107
00:03:55,424 --> 00:03:58,893
And so you would just oscillate around this limit.

108
00:03:58,893 --> 00:04:00,524
And this limit some people would refer to as a

109
00:04:00,524 --> 00:04:03,970
Malthusian limit, but it's really just the limit at which

110
00:04:03,970 --> 00:04:05,824
the population can sustain itself,

111
00:04:05,824 --> 00:04:08,091
and from Thomas Malthus' point of view,

112
00:04:08,091 --> 00:04:09,847
he did recognise that

113
00:04:09,847 --> 00:04:11,659
there were technological improvements,

114
00:04:11,659 --> 00:04:13,375
especially in things like agriculture,

115
00:04:13,375 --> 00:04:16,775
and that this line was moving up.

116
00:04:16,775 --> 00:04:19,538
He had seen it in his own lifetime

117
00:04:19,538 --> 00:04:20,954
that this line had moved up.

118
00:04:20,954 --> 00:04:22,173
But from his point of view,

119
00:04:22,173 --> 00:04:24,104
however far you move this line up,

120
00:04:24,104 --> 00:04:27,929
the population will always compensate for it

121
00:04:27,929 --> 00:04:29,223
and catch up to it

122
00:04:29,223 --> 00:04:31,668
and eventually get to this Mathusian,

123
00:04:31,668 --> 00:04:34,958
eventually get to this limit and then the same kind of

124
00:04:34,958 --> 00:04:37,000
not so positive things that he talks about

125
00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:39,472
would actually happen.

126
00:04:39,472 --> 00:04:40,733
And some people now say

127
00:04:40,733 --> 00:04:42,617
'Oh Thomas Malthus, he was so pessamistic,

128
00:04:42,617 --> 00:04:45,041
he was obviously wrong, look at what's happened,

129
00:04:45,041 --> 00:04:47,084
we have so much food on this planet right now,

130
00:04:47,084 --> 00:04:50,755
we've gone through multiple agricultural revolutions'

131
00:04:50,755 --> 00:04:53,691
And they are right, in the last two hundred years,

132
00:04:53,691 --> 00:04:56,486
since Malthus or since the early eighteen hundreds

133
00:04:56,486 --> 00:04:59,423
we really have been able to outstrip population.

134
00:04:59,423 --> 00:05:03,137
So this line, this line up here, has been moving up

135
00:05:03,137 --> 00:05:05,251
much faster than even population.

136
00:05:05,251 --> 00:05:06,784
So right now we actually do have

137
00:05:06,784 --> 00:05:09,005
more calories per person on the planet

138
00:05:09,005 --> 00:05:11,419
than we've had at any time in history.

139
00:05:11,419 --> 00:05:14,537
But it's not saying that Thomas Malthus was wrong,

140
00:05:14,537 --> 00:05:17,706
it's just saying that maybe he was just a little bit, er,

141
00:05:17,706 --> 00:05:19,386
he was a little bit pessimistic

142
00:05:19,386 --> 00:05:22,675
in when that limit will be reached.

143
00:05:22,675 --> 00:05:25,467
Now the other dimension where you might say that

144
00:05:25,467 --> 00:05:26,554
he was maybe wrong,

145
00:05:26,554 --> 00:05:28,652
was in this principle that

146
00:05:28,652 --> 00:05:30,954
a population will increase if it CAN increase,

147
00:05:30,954 --> 00:05:33,575
that if there IS food and there IS time,

148
00:05:33,575 --> 00:05:34,986
people WILL reproduce.

149
00:05:34,986 --> 00:05:36,840
And a good counterpoint to that is

150
00:05:36,840 --> 00:05:38,290
what we've now observed

151
00:05:38,290 --> 00:05:40,327
in modern developed nations.

152
00:05:40,327 --> 00:05:42,650
And so this right over here shows

153
00:05:42,650 --> 00:05:44,258
the population growth.

154
00:05:44,258 --> 00:05:46,039
I got this from 'The World Bank',

155
00:05:46,039 --> 00:05:47,859
that the population growth

156
00:05:47,859 --> 00:05:49,614
over some modern developed nations.

157
00:05:49,614 --> 00:05:52,445
You can see that the United States is pretty low

158
00:05:52,445 --> 00:05:53,760
but it is still positive,

159
00:05:53,760 --> 00:05:57,479
it's still...well, it's still over half a percent in,

160
00:05:57,479 --> 00:05:59,373
but even that adds up when you compound it.

161
00:05:59,373 --> 00:06:01,810
But if you look over here, Japan and Germany,

162
00:06:01,810 --> 00:06:03,775
and Japan and Germany have

163
00:06:03,775 --> 00:06:05,567
less immigration than the U.S,

164
00:06:05,567 --> 00:06:08,825
especially Japan, they are actually negative.

165
00:06:08,825 --> 00:06:11,723
So just this population left to its own devices

166
00:06:11,723 --> 00:06:13,274
especially if you account for people

167
00:06:13,274 --> 00:06:15,346
not going across borders,

168
00:06:15,346 --> 00:06:16,989
just the population itself growing,

169
00:06:16,989 --> 00:06:19,125
they actually have negative growth.

170
00:06:19,125 --> 00:06:20,963
So there is some reason to believe that

171
00:06:20,963 --> 00:06:22,824
this is evidence that Thomas Malthus was wrong

172
00:06:22,824 --> 00:06:26,628
or not completely right, he didn't put into account

173
00:06:26,628 --> 00:06:28,891
that maybe once a society becomes rich enough

174
00:06:28,891 --> 00:06:30,332
and educated enough,

175
00:06:30,332 --> 00:06:32,942
that they might not just populate the world

176
00:06:32,942 --> 00:06:34,473
or have as many kids as they want.

177
00:06:34,473 --> 00:06:36,961
They might try to do other things with their time

178
00:06:36,961 --> 00:06:38,345
whatever that might be.

179
00:06:38,345 --> 00:06:41,697
So I just wanted to expose you to this idea

180
00:06:41,697 --> 00:06:43,756
time will tell if Thomas Malthus

181
00:06:43,756 --> 00:06:45,596
if we can always keep this line,

182
00:06:45,596 --> 00:06:48,875
if we can always keep this line of food productivity

183
00:06:48,875 --> 00:06:50,880
growing faster than the population;

184
00:06:50,880 --> 00:06:54,118
and time will tell whether our populations can become

185
00:06:54,118 --> 00:06:55,847
I guess we could say, developed enough

186
00:06:55,847 --> 00:06:58,979
so that they don't in excrib (I can never say that word)

187
00:06:58,979 --> 00:07:01,335
[execrably], they don't always just keep growing,

188
00:07:01,335 --> 00:07:04,112
maybe they DO become a Japan or Germany situation

189
00:07:04,112 --> 00:07:05,171
in the world population,

190
00:07:05,171 --> 00:07:08,608
especially if we have a high rate of literacy,

191
00:07:08,608 --> 00:07:09,992
eventually does level off.

192
00:07:09,992 --> 00:07:12,089
So that it never even has a chance of

193
00:07:12,089 --> 00:07:14,417
hitting up against that Malthusian limit.

194
00:07:14,417 --> 00:07:16,539
But though I would introduce you to the idea

195
00:07:16,539 --> 00:07:18,006
and now you can go to parties

196
00:07:18,006 --> 00:07:21,181
and you can talk about things like Malthusian limits.

197
00:07:21,181 --> 00:07:23,597
And if you wanna know what country, you know,

198
00:07:23,597 --> 00:07:26,872
is maybe closest to the Malthusian limit right now,

199
00:07:26,872 --> 00:07:28,340
and we've talked about this before,

200
00:07:28,340 --> 00:07:30,995
but a good case of example is something like

201
00:07:30,995 --> 00:07:33,794
Bangladesh. They are right now the

202
00:07:33,794 --> 00:07:35,822
most population-dense country in the world,

203
00:07:35,822 --> 00:07:38,824
they have nine hundred people per square kilometre.

204
00:07:38,824 --> 00:07:41,425
And just to give you a sense of perspective

205
00:07:41,425 --> 00:07:44,021
that's thirty times more dense than the U.S is.

206
00:07:44,021 --> 00:07:45,593
So if you took every person in the U.S

207
00:07:45,593 --> 00:07:48,278
and turned them into thirty people in the U.S

208
00:07:48,278 --> 00:07:49,824
that would give you a sense of

209
00:07:49,824 --> 00:07:51,510
how dense Bangladesh is.

210
00:07:51,510 --> 00:07:53,392
And it's probably due, to a certain degree

211
00:07:53,392 --> 00:07:54,664
that it is very fertile land,

212
00:07:54,664 --> 00:07:56,937
it's the river delta of the Ganges

213
00:07:56,937 --> 00:07:59,222
essentially makes up the entire country,

214
00:07:59,222 --> 00:08:02,055
but they do, they've had in the past had famines,

215
00:08:02,055 --> 00:08:03,857
they gotten a little bit beyond that,

216
00:08:03,857 --> 00:08:05,474
but still you do have major problems

217
00:08:05,474 --> 00:08:07,331
with the flooding and the resources.

218
00:08:07,331 --> 00:08:10,126
So hopefully they'll be able to er,

219
00:08:10,126 --> 00:08:13,000
they'll be able to say ahead of the curve.