More than 225 years ago, prominent English scholar and political economist Thomas Malthus made one of history’s most spectacularly wrong predictions: continuous population growth arising from human passions will imperil economic growth and lead to people living on a bare subsistence income. Whereupon, England’s Industrial Revolution swept over Albion and far beyond, bringing continuing material prosperity. This is despite the fact that the planetary population has increased roughly eightfold since Malthus’s 1798 An Essay on the Principle of Population. Technological progress arising from human ingenuity, capital formation, and expanded trade overcame the law of diminishing returns.
[W]e will increasingly need to reallocate resources away from youth-oriented needs like schools towards elderly-oriented needs such as nursing homes.
But a virulently new anti-Malthusian phenomenon has arisen. The desire to have…
