New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | September 8, 2005

Plague epidemics? Explosive population growth? Gay marriage? Egon and Winston crossing the streams? Ron Bailey considers some explanations for why civilizations collapse.

Comments

|9.8.05 @ 12:53PM|#

"Cats and dogs living together! Mass hysteria!"

/Had to be done

|9.8.05 @ 1:20PM|#

Very good column.

|9.8.05 @ 1:28PM|#

"Fretting about overpopulation, is a perfect guilt-free� indeed, sanctimonious� way for "progressives" to be racists." -P.J. O'Rourke

|9.8.05 @ 1:30PM|#

Malthusian environmental determinism has been discounted for some time now. I believe the issues facing those examples provided by the author, and the counter-examples provided by Ron Bailey, fit quite neatly into the demographic transition model widely accepted in modern geography. geography: it's more than just states and capitals!

|9.8.05 @ 1:36PM|#

I don't think this takes Malthus out of the picture. In the civilizations pointed out, food and other resources really did seem to grow at only an arithmatic rate - that was the problem.

|9.8.05 @ 1:44PM|#

It turns out that boosting food production through agricultural research is probably the best way to reduce population growth rates. The countries where food security is highest�Europe, Japan, Taiwan, and the U.S.�are precisely the places where one finds below-replacement fertility rates

note the weasel word, probably. Emphasis mine

Hey Ron Bailey, a couple posts up, your colleague, Matt Welch, mentions the correlation/causation fallacy. Ask him about it some time.


via Matt Welch: and even have a new study to prove something or other (most likely, that the correlation/causation distinction still needs to be taught in the social sciences)

nmg|9.8.05 @ 1:59PM|#

The best way to reduce population growth rates is to increase the society's wealth. In a wealthier society, people have to work harder and prepare longer to be a success. This means that investment in children is more costly, yet each child is a safer investment because of the society's wealth and security.

So, people have fewer children, and invest more time and energy and wealth in the children they do have. Some people forgo children entirely because the costs are indeed higher.

This is what happens in nearly every industrialized nation, which also happen to be the wealthiest nations.

nmg

|9.8.05 @ 2:08PM|#

Well put, nmg. Bailey's description breaks down when he identifies increased farm efficiency as the cause, rather than a result, of economic advancement.

|9.8.05 @ 2:12PM|#

Joe, agricultural technology is both a cause and result of economic advancement. Remember, the agricultural revolution preceeded the industrial rev in this country, freeing up the farm labor to work in the factories. And im talking fertilizer and tractors, not the green revolution of the sixties.

nmg|9.8.05 @ 2:18PM|#

Matt, you have to look at long term trends vs. recent statistical variance. And yeah, there's more to it than just the added cost of rearing children, but even in European social democracies, living expenses are high admit reliable wealth and security. This appears to be a sure recipe for low birth rates and it makes sense.

But, I admit I'm no expert. Just a guy who likes to read a lot of books.

nmg

nmg|9.8.05 @ 2:20PM|#

"admit" should be "amid" above.

|9.8.05 @ 2:28PM|#

nmg, some would argue that the taxes in Europe are a of a higher life-cost and that subdues the birthrate. The flipside is interesting though, Americas' birthrate is rising. I believe it is still slightly under the replacement rate, but whats interesting is that it is rising in middle-upper class families as well as being typically higher in poorer/recent immigrant families. I dunno what it all means either, but, perhaps there will prove to be another stage in the demographic transition. One where a nation achieves wealth to the point that slightly larger families to from being a hindrance to an affordable luxury.

|9.8.05 @ 2:31PM|#

One where a nation achieves wealth to the point that slightly larger families go from being a hindrance to an affordable luxury.

|9.8.05 @ 3:00PM|#

Matt, tractors were a result of the industrial revolution. The "agricultural revolution" you speak of is more commonly known as "industrial agriculture."

And, in fact, the labor used during the industrial revolution was NEVER excess American farm workers. From the Mill Girls in Lowell to the armies of immigrants, the people who labored in factories in this country were never coming off of our farms.

|9.8.05 @ 4:28PM|#

What about the twinkie?

/gratuitous Ghostbusters reference, didn't have to be done.

|9.8.05 @ 5:27PM|#

Actually, I think the birthrate has less to do with poverty vs. wealth than with urban vs. farm economies. Think about this: if you're living on an old-fashioned farm, children are an economic plus--most of what they eat and wear can be grown right on the farm, and while they are still quite young they can do valuable chores to contribute to their upkeep. If you're a farmer, then the more kids you have the more prosperous you're likely to be.

But in the city, children are expensive--everything they consume must be purchased, and they can't make any real economic contributions to the family until they're much, much older.

Note: I am NOT saying that most people have children only because they want free labor. I'm just saying that most people DO take economics into account, when deciding how many children they can afford to have.

|9.8.05 @ 7:46PM|#

Curious that Mr. Bailey neglected to discuss the energy input into modern industrial agriculture. Petroleum has given us an end-run around Malthus for a century now, as did coal before that. This is the both a failing of Malthus (who wrote before the energy revolution afforded us by hydrocarbons), and of modern readers, who forget that "gains" in productivity are secretly a massive influx of nonedible calories into the production cycle. When we include the external energy cost of mechanized agriculture, we expend 100s (1000s?) of petroleum calories to reap a single food calorie. In Malthus' day, such a strategy would have been literally suicidal; akin to laboring all day for a single carrot.

I wonder how "discredited" Malthus will seem when oil tops $100/bl. and keeps rising. Assuming we fail to find a large-scale replacement, at some point it will be cheaper (in caloric terms) to grow your own food than trade for it, and the discussion about producers and parasites will take on a renewed urgency.

|9.8.05 @ 11:23PM|#

Diamond is a wanker of the first class; how else to explain his idiotic comment that agriculture is "the worst mistake in the history of the human race"? He is a primitivist, belonging to the class of homicidal misanthropes who, while not quite able to call directly for the extermination of the human race, spends their time rubbing their hands with glee while contemplating the results of their ever-so-creepy policy suggestions. On the deck of the Titanic, they cheer on the iceberg.

|9.9.05 @ 12:02PM|#

the people who labored in factories in this country were never coming off of our farms.

What a joke.