Assuming then my postulata as granted, I say, that the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.
Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will shew the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second.
By that law of our nature which makes food necessary to the life of man, the effects of these two unequal powers must be kept equal.
This quote is, in effect, the entire essay boiled down to its essential. Everything springs from this thesis: unless population growth can be checked, the inevitability of an inability to grow enough food to feed everyone is unavoidable. If the calculation of these two ratios is correct and it is a given that production of food can never keep up with production of people, that means there is only one other option. If you can’t improve supply, then you must decrease demand. And that is point at which Malthus becomes one of the most controversial social philosophers of all time.
The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction; and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague, advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and ten thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world.
And there’s the answer, of course. When supply outreaches demand the one thing that civilization can always depend upon is the ability of natural world or their own vices to take care of the pesky problem of people. To an extent. But if population increases geometrically while food production just continues to lag farther and farther behind, then eventually there will come a time when there simply aren’t enough epidemics, plagues, famines, disasters and other various pestilential outbreaks simply won’t be enough to do the job.
The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation.
Fortunately—from the perspective of half the world eventually horribly starving to death—mankind need not rely entirely upon nature and his own inevitable mortality to do keep things in balance. Man has proven himself more than capable of stepping in to show Mother Nature that he has her back. A variety of vices can contribute to impacting the rate of population growth, of course, but none quite so efficiently as that which takes out the largest chunk in the least amount of time: war.
The foundations, therefore, on which the arguments for the organic perfectibility of man rest, are unusually weak, and can only be considered as mere conjectures. It does not, however, by any means seem impossible that by an attention to breed, a certain degree of improvement, similar to that among animals, might take place among men. Whether intellect could be communicated may be a matter of doubt: but size, strength, beauty, complexion, and perhaps even longevity are in a degree transmissible. The error does not seem to lie in supposing a small degree of improvement possible, but in not discriminating between a small improvement, the limit of which is undefined, and an improvement really unlimited. As the human race, however, could not be improved in this way, without condemning all the bad specimens to celibacy, it is not probable that an attention to breed should ever become general.
Where Malthus starts to get especially controversial is in the unexpected raising of a third possibility to deal with stated problem. The assumption naturally concludes that only two viable options exist: either restrain the rate of population control or increase the production of food. Malthus, however, raises another a tempting third possibility: what if the population of the earth could be made a more efficient consumer of food while at the same time limiting the percentage of that population comprised of less efficient consumers. The idea of genetic breeding of humans in much the same way as that used to create “better” livestock seems so appealing to Malthus that the only obstruction he can find worthy of commentary is that the problem faced with trying to convince the less genetically efficient stop having sex with each other. Needless to say, this particular theoretical aspect of Malthus was quite popular within the scientific community of the Nazi Party.
The poor laws of England tend to depress the general condition of the poor in these two ways. Their first obvious tendency is to increase population without increasing the food for its support. A poor man may marry with little or no prospect of being able to support a family in independence. They may be said therefore in some measure to create the poor which they maintain.
In addition to the controversy of Malthus seeming to be willing to experiment with genetically produced “master races” at least in theory there is the controversy of Malthus calling for concrete legislation targeting the poor. Malthus does not just target the poor for legislation oppression that would create stricter and more rigid guidelines for qualifying for public assistance, but goes so far as to blame them for the state of their own economic deprivation.
