 Hi, I'm James. And I'm Anthony. And this is Words and Numbers. So today we start with perhaps the happiest thing we could possibly start with. That's right. Malthusian economics. Malthusian economics. This is probably the most mean-spirited branch of economics that most people will ever encounter, right? Why don't you give us a quick thumbnail sketch of Malthus before we move on? Well, roughly speaking, Malthus writes in 1798, so roughly right before 1800, right? And he looks back at world population going back to, you know, zero or earlier. And what he sees is this exponential growth. You know, you hear about the hockey stick. He was at the tail end of the hockey stick looking at this and saying, oh my god, look at the growth in world population. And to compound matters, at the time that he's writing, the world poverty rate was 95%. So 95% of the world is living in poverty. The world population is going almost vertical. There's a billion people on the planet. And he says, oh my god, we're going to have mass starvation over the next couple of decades. Right. And that's not, I mean, that's actually a forgivable observation, right? He's looking at some data right before him. And it makes sense to come to that conclusion. It actually does. Yeah. That's not a crazy conclusion. The problem is in his solution. Let people starve. Right. Don't help them. That will cause all kinds of problems down the road. I mean, look, I'm not a Malthus expert, but this is what people talk about when they talk about Malthusian economics. The idea that maybe it would be better to just cut people off early and end their suffering before it compounds over generations. Right. Which sounds heartless. But remember at the time, you're talking about the hockey stick population and 95%, 95% of the people in poverty. Right. So at the time Malthus wrote, there were about, more or less, about a billion people on the globe. It has come to be the case that population did explode. It did. There are way, there are way more people on the planet now. I think we're in excess of seven billion, which puts this, which puts us roughly about seven times the population that existed in Malthus' time, which was just, you know, 200, 250 years ago. Yeah. A nice 700% increase. You'd probably want that in most avenues of life. But maybe not this one, given the poverty problem. At his time, roughly 95% of everybody lived in abject poverty, and here's where it gets really curious. Yeah. Because 95% of the global population doesn't live in anything approaching abject poverty. No, world poverty rates now for the first time, I think this happened maybe five years ago, we dropped below 10% for the first time in human history. There are fewer than 10% people living in abject poverty. Which is an absolute crowning achievement for humanity. I mean, we've got work left to do, and I wouldn't want to rest on that laurel. Absolutely. But wow, from 95% to under 10, that's astonishing. And in the face of population rising 700%. Right. So, here's where it gets a little interesting. Because, you know, you and I both have a lot to do with young people and education. And almost every young person I come into contact with talks about the overpopulation problem, and how it's going to lead to all kinds of terrible social outcomes. Right. Not that it necessarily is right now, but that it's going to. And from time to time, they'll, they'll, you know, show me pictures of very crowded places, say in India and say, see, thus leaving the other roughly 100% of the globe off the table. But, you know, this is kind of the go to position of young people. And it seems they've learned nothing from the time of mouth is forward. Yeah. Right. Because if anything, we should be left to conclude that a population explosion is actually helpful. It is. And I think this is the, this is the piece that Malthus missed. And it's understandable that he missed it given where, where, where he was writing from. And that is that as you get more and more people, you get more and more, every person comes with a brain, you get more and more brains and humans are fantastically ingenious. They'll figure out ways to do things in the future that were impossible to do in the past. And consequently, what you get is the rise of technology. We find new ways to grow food that we couldn't do before new ways to prevent spoilage to transport all of this. And before you know it, we're able not only to support seven times the number of people that existed in Malthus time, but to support them at a much higher quality of life. Right. And I think another thing that gets lost in the shuffle here, it's something that we talk about in other contexts, it's quite a lot. But what's happened over the years is all 24 hour news channel presentations to the contrary. People have become much, much more cooperative. Yes. And much more willing to work together. We typically see the world as a place that's defined almost entirely by war and conflict. But if you look at the numbers, that's just not the case. Yeah. Is there a war and conflict? Absolutely. There is. Is it unfortunate? Yeah, in every instance. But there's far less of it now than there ever was before. Yeah. On a per person basis. It's the lowest it's ever been in the history of Homo sapiens. By a country mile, right? It's not even close. So not only do we live in a world defined by exploding population, remarkable advance in technology, but we also live in a world that's defined by relative peace and prosperity too. Yes. Right. So and I think the piece has a lot to do with that. And for whatever the reason, people are unable or at best unwilling to see how all of these things fit together to yield a better world, not a worse one. And I'm a little confused by how that is when every day you can walk out your own door wherever your door happens to be and experience the benefits of all of it. Yeah, I think part of the problem here is all of us today suffer from the same thing that Thomas Malthus suffered from, which is you just can't anticipate what ingenious things humans are going to come up with in the future. The economist Julian Simon, when asked about what you do about the population problem, his answer was have more children. Because the more people you have, the more people you have figuring out ways to do things. For example, once upon a time, oil was not a resource. It was considered this. It was actually considered pollution. It got in the way of trying to till your land and grow crops. And then somebody comes along and figures out how to harness this thing, make a resource out of it. Uranium at one time was not a resource. Now it is. Humans discover these things. And so when people talk about the overpopulation problem in terms of resources, they're getting it exactly wrong. Resources aren't limited. Now specific resources are. There might be a specific amount of oil, a specific amount of uranium, but resources in general aren't because human ingenuity will always discover new ones. Right. And you know, on an intuitive level, people should do better with these questions than they do. Because if you ask people point blank, if you could live at any time in human history and then lay out for them what it would mean to live in those periods, almost everyone would say now or sometime in the future. Right. Well, well, so there's a there's a certain optimism that comes with living here and experiencing the things that we experience in our time. And yet when pressed, people still seem to think that there's this deep, dark underlying problem. Well, I think they're simply there simply isn't. I think that's true if you stop and think about it. But you do get a lot of people who look with fondness back on, you know, the old days when people cut their own firewood and grew their own food and all of that. And the problem is we're looking at that through rose colored glasses. Right. In the back of your mind, you're imagining yourself living in that time when you've got an axe that was machine made to be, you know, very sharp. And, you know, you've got all your teeth and you're you're inoculated against viruses and whatnot. If you actually lived in that time, you know, there's a high probability to have your kids would have died from some, you know, disease before they reach age of five. Yeah, no, that that's right. And I looked into this just the other day for well, I don't know why I do these things, but I look stuff up online when I'm bored. And the average life expectancy in the United States right now is about 83 years. Right. When I was in my late teens, early 20s, the correct answer was 70. Right. In the space of a generation, we've added 13 years. And some of the the futurists now will tell you that if you can live another 30 years, you might live another thousand years. Yeah. Just astonishing, right. And we try not to think about this. But this idea of romanticizing the past, I think is dead on the money. The last thing I want to do is go out and cut a tree down so I could be warm in the winter time. That's crazy. You do it for fun. Don't do it for necessity. I'm not cutting a tree down for fun. What's wrong with you? I've got a gas line that comes to the house. I want heat. I press a magic button on my wall. Right. Heat comes out, right? I don't have to worry about that. And more than that, it's actually quite inexpensive when it comes right down to it. Well, I think when people when people talk about overpopulation, I think in the back of their minds are two things. One is resources. And I think we've made a good argument that that's actually off the table. That isn't an issue. But the other issue possibly is, and that's pollution, that as you get more and more people, there's, you know, natural tendency to pollute more and more. And here, interestingly, is possibly an appropriate role for government. And that is in you have to be careful because government can do this poorly or can do it better. But the role of government here is to prevent people from imposing harm on others. And that's exactly what pollution is. Right. And this largely goes back to, you know, we're back to John Locke again in the tragedy of the commons, right? When people have access to a common area, you can bet that that's the area that will be least cared for. And that, you know, that that applies pretty quickly and pretty easily to things like water and air and all of the kinds of pollution that we typically think about. So on the one hand, we've got this idea that overpopulation is problematic. All evidence points to the opposite conclusion. It's not problematic. It's actually probably the source of human happiness and prosperity. On the other hand, population growth probably does cause certain kinds of problems that are going to have to be addressed. And there are a special kind of problem that might only be addressable by using the force of government, which is odd. It only took us 20 or so episodes of words and numbers. But we finally found a role for government. Right. And it's keeping things clean, apparently. And I think, you know, I can get behind that you probably can too. So, and any concluding thoughts when it comes to population? I mean, if you don't have one, I kind of do. Go for it. You know, there was this, the great question, when would you like to live, right? If you could live at any period in time, when would it be? And we said earlier that most people would choose this one or something in the future. But the absolute best answer to that question I ever heard. And I'll remember it until they put me in my grave was anytime after the invention of anesthesia. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good answer. Exactly. Correct. Right. And it ties together this idea of technological advance and how comfortable that makes us. And if you're going in for surgery, trust me, anytime after the invention of anesthesia, that's going to be the right answer. Yeah. But it points to this larger idea of advance and comfort and happiness, which we seem to achieve far better together. Yes. When there's lots and lots of us. Right. And that's that's the curiosity. Population growth doesn't cause lots of problems. It solves lots of problems. It introduces a couple of others. Right. But on balance, I'll take that every time. Yeah, that's all we've got time for today. So thanks for watching this episode of Words and Numbers. We'll be back next week on Wednesday, roundabout noon with another episode. Until then, check out all the great content at fee.org and at feeonline, all kinds of great stuff there and click the subscribe button. Feel free to ask a question or leave a comment in the sections below. See you all next week too. Bye. Take it easy, James.