Malthusian Catastrophe - Criticism

Criticism

Ester Boserup wrote in her book The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change under Population Pressure, that population levels determine agricultural methods, rather than agricultural methods determining population (via food supply). A major point of her book is that "necessity is the mother of invention." Julian Simon was one of many economists who challenged the Malthusian catastrophe, citing (1) the existence of new knowledge, and educated people to take advantage of it, and (2) "economic freedom", that is, the ability of the world to increase production when there is a profitable opportunity to do so.

The economist Henry George argued that Malthus didn't provide any evidence of a natural tendency for a population to overwhelm its ability to provide for itself. George wrote that even the main body of Malthus' work refuted this theory; that examples given show social causes for misery, such as "ignorance and greed... bad government, unjust laws, or war," rather than insufficient food production.

Friedrich Engels also criticizes the Malthusian catastrophe because Malthus failed to see that surplus population is connected to surplus wealth, surplus capital, and surplus landed property. Population is large where the overall productive power is large. Engels also states that the calculation that Malthus made with the difference in population and productive power is incorrect because Malthus does not take into consideration a third element, science. Scientific “progress is as unlimited and at least as rapid as that of population”. On the other hand, Joseph Tainter points out that also science has diminishing marginal returns and scientific progress is becoming more difficult, harder to achieve and costlier. The single gentleman scientist of the past covering several disciplines has turned into research groups with a special focus.