"Malthus was actually right about the situation up to his own time. "

Rubbish. He made predictions. The predictions turned out to be wrong. Therefore he was wrong.
We can say we understand why he was wrong and why he made erroneous predictions given the information at the time, but that's not the same as saying he was 'right'. Whatismore, others at the time, disputed his assertions using the same information. They were right. And again, even Malthus eventually recognised that he'd made errors in his assertions and effectively rescinded.

But his claims were just too attractive to the millenarians in our midst and continually get regurgitated despite being perennially wrong. This essay is just another minor example of that.

As to Ehrlich he was also shown to be just straight out wrong. Again, we can understand how he got it wrong and why his prejudices led him, and quite a few others, down the garden path. But wrong he was.

Its important that we recognise that that these people were wrong and how they got it so badly astray in order to ensure we don't make the same errors, as this author does. Its therefore also important to look at those who, contemporaneously with the doom-sayers, got it right (eg Simon) and to follow their lead.

"If you look at the whole course of human history and prehistory from archaeology, and not just the last 200 years, you see a recurrent pattern."

Yes. For most of human history in most of the world, people were only one or two bad growing seasons away from starvation. But the victories of liberal capitalism have unwound that nexus. Wishing it wasn't so is one thing. But it remains a fact. The only way this gets reversed is the demise of the current economic system.

mhaze,

Malthus had a good description of how the world worked up to his own day, which is what I meant. It explains such things as why an Italian labourer had to work half again as long for bare subsistence in the early 19th century as in the 15th century after the Black Death (see Paolo Malanima's work), despite 400 years of technological progress and some amazingly productive New World crops. In so far as he made predictions about the future, you are right.

Our economy and survival are completely dependent, as they always were, on the continued functioning of our planetary life support systems. Humans are now numerous enough and have a great enough impact to do tremendous damage on the global as well as the local scale. See the link in my previous post to the Stockholm Resilience Center. I don't doubt that there will be technological solutions to some of these problems and to depletion of some resources, but all of them? Back in the 1950s and 1960s, people were seriously predicting flying cars, electric power too cheap to meter, the complete conquest of cancer and infectious disease, giant space stations like cities in orbit, and bases or even colonies on the Moon and Mars. After all, liberal capitalism can do anything! It has been 60 or 70 years, and we have none of those things.

See this short article by the economist Herman Daly for some very basic fallacies in Julian Simon's arguments.

http://www.mnforsustain.org/daly_h_simon_ultimate_resource_review.htm

fear caused by the pseudo science brigade is a far bigger danger to our future than anything else. The idiotic dumbing down of the population to believe they can control the weather, that coal is heating the planet and that we should completely destroy a country due to a bad flu shows how easily deceived the 'educated' class has become. We certainly have given God something to laugh and cry about as the lying liberal media, leftist academia and the swamp have the world's focus on lies while real issues like the mass killing of the unborn, denial of biology and corruption among the 'elite' ignored. No wonder they hide behind the virtue signalling immoral murderers like antifa and blm's. Yes the age is wrapping up but not because of the lies pedalled by the lying liberal media. Read the book and if you are half smart will repent and turn to the Only One who can save you.

Thank heavens for Divergence who is a very sensible contributor. Malthus was not to see the increase in food production that came with the Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions, so his timing was wrong but in principle he was right. First principles of biology tell us that the numbers of any population will crash if they consume most of their food supply. We are indeed facing a possible collapse of food supply and in turn human numbers before the middle of this century, largely because there is insufficient land, water and nutrients, and growing conditions made difficult with climate change.

" Malthus was not to see the increase in food production that came with the Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions..."

But that's the point. That's the bloody point. He was wrong because he made predictions based on a misunderstanding of the future. And while he didn't see the rise in food production, he had contemporaries who did. So it wasn't a case of no-one seeing the upcoming changes, but a case of him missing it.

Just as more recent Malthusians failed to see upcoming changes. Ehrlich missed the green revolution (as he admits) but plenty of his contemporaries didn't. He was wrong (Malthusians are always wrong) but he had contemporaries who weren't wrong. They are who we should be following.

"See this short article by the economist Herman Daly for some very basic fallacies in Julian Simon's arguments."

The article was written in 1982. Subsequent events showed Simon was right and Daly wrong. Simon was right that oil is not meaningfully finite. Its a complex issue that can't be explained here. But suffice to say that we have more known reserves today than we did in 1982. Which is why oil is cheaper today than 1982.

Ditto cooper which Daly also misunderstands.

Daly mentions "See his grandstand offer on page 27 to bet anyone any amount...". Well the bet was taken by Ehrlich and Simon was completely vindicated.

Why won't people accept that the real problem in society is the Peter Principle ?