(Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus, RFC. 1798. Image wiki).

It was a chaotic staff meeting on Tuesday. Monday had been marred by placement of the Chairman’s detritus works of arts on walls not designed to accommodate them. So, discussion was wide-ranging on the information streams and the various interests behind them. Quite a ride.

The Atlanta riot thing was interesting. You may have heard of the fight over the new Police Training Center. A couple dozen people were arrested, including a Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) attorney. Most were charged with “domestic terrorism.” All but two of those arrested were from out-of-town. Two were from out-of-country (Canada & France). The narratives demonstrate a fusion of kinetic action with full motion video. Tapes this morning looked like a planned attack within certain rules of engagement by the visiting arsonists.

That is just one component of the domestic thread. There are all sorts of social issues in play, some with doom associated and an election looming next year with everything accomplished in ‘America’s Fundamental Transformation’ at stake. Those are the extremes being set by the opposing ends of the spectrum. Those of us somewhere in the old “Good Government” school of public policy have almost given up our position on ‘things that work’ to the Malthusians who seem to favor the opposite.

There is some old-school policy thought going around. By old, we naturally refer to the Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus and his landmark 1798 writings on population. The engines of the industrial revolution were evolving. Rail and steam power were rising toward a new synergy.

Malthus took on the portents of technical advance as a scientist but was informed by his religious ethos. He suggested that while improved cultivation methods could increase food resources, subsequent abundance would encourage population growth that would eclipse the bounty and bring misery. The Irish diaspora that followed the famine years could have been used as a teaching tool.

That view appeals to something primal in us. The argument then and now is parallel. The revolution in modern agriculture has produced abundance and unlikely consequences. Like an epidemic of obesity. According to Malthusians, time will run out and the system will collapse unless we surrender to a greater good.

We are generally opposed to big social experiments without a great deal of discussion. In our time, Paul Ehrlich has had a remarkable run of Malthusian thinking. His 1968 book “The Population Bomb” got a lot of us agitated back then. From a Malthusian perspective, there is advocacy for strong population planning to forestall the coming disaster. That naturally includes things to which people would probably object.

That was the Chinese experience in the implementation of the “One Child” policy. Social response to strong central planning has left China with a surplus of 41 million young men in their reproductive cohort and a deepening decline in total population. Whether this demonstrates a fatal flaw the notion that no matter how good things get they will inevitably collapse.

Some of us endorse the concept but would prefer to defer that to the next generation or two.
But appreciating where the Malthusians are coming from is useful in understanding the information streams and the messaging that drives them. They could even be right, though we prefer we work together to keep things going safely and efficiently until something incontrovertible shows up. We took a poll at the end of the meeting when the rich scent of Chock Full O’ Nuts coffee filled the new Executive Conference Wing, rich with old wood and new whimsy.

A plurality was in favor of trying to make things work while we can.

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
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