So the Chinese government just said “Fuck it! Let the peasants die from COVID.”
Unreal.
I think David Malthus talked about this...
In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus observed that an increase in a nation's food production improved the well-being of the population, but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level.
Malthus wrote in opposition to the popular view in 18th-century Europe that saw society as improving and in principle as perfectible.[3]
@Madken65 @DarksideStraxus The trouble with Malthus for me is that so much of what he wrote was a kind of strange public conversation with Adam Smith.
Very true, I just loved the whole pessimism motif which bled from his writing
@Madken65 @DarksideStraxus Yes, indeed. Adam Smith is more interestin than he's made out to be (or than his Adam Smith Institute is now). But, yes, and don't forget, after both of those came Jeremy Bentham and his utilitarianism (the greatest good for the great number) and we idolised Bentham so much that University College London Medical School still own (and display) his body!!
It's SO easy to criticise Smith, but often wrong. Malthus was more interesting as an individual I agree.
@Madken65 @DarksideStraxus Just to add,if it interests you, Emile Durkheim (so often negatively seen due to poor translations), wrote an astonishing book 'On Suicide', which still, to this day, has some amazingly perceptive conmments on suicide and why and how it occurs. It's remarkably in depth (and has stats) and incredibly modern in so many ways.
@DarksideStraxus
In other words, humans had a propensity to utilize abundance for population growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of living, a view that has become known as the "Malthusian trap" or the "Malthusian spectre". Populations had a tendency to grow until the lower class suffered hardship, want and greater susceptibility to war famine and disease, a pessimistic view that is sometimes referred to as a Malthusian catastrophe.