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Originally posted by GePap
Its not honest debating to ignore 2/3 of humanity and pick and choose the groups you decide to illustrate human growth with.
Human population has gone frm 1 Billion in 1840 to 6 Billion in 2006, when it took 15,000 years plus to get to 1 Billion. Last time I checked, that is exponential growth.
As for declining birth rates, I fail to see how someone like Malthus could have forseen the declines in fertility which have lead to that without knowledge of the deep social changes that brought them about. For the most part he was pretty accurate about where human populations were going. He was till wrong about the ability of the specieis to feed and clothe those numbers.
Its not honest debating to ignore 2/3 of humanity and pick and choose the groups you decide to illustrate human growth with.
Human population has gone frm 1 Billion in 1840 to 6 Billion in 2006, when it took 15,000 years plus to get to 1 Billion. Last time I checked, that is exponential growth.
As for declining birth rates, I fail to see how someone like Malthus could have forseen the declines in fertility which have lead to that without knowledge of the deep social changes that brought them about. For the most part he was pretty accurate about where human populations were going. He was till wrong about the ability of the specieis to feed and clothe those numbers.
Exponential Growth means constant growth rate (where growth is measured relative to the population).
Historically, say from 1800 to 1980, growth was in fact SUPER-exponential. I'm talking about the world as a whole, you attacking Kuci's "developped countries" is a straw-man because the trends are actually pretty similar world-wide.
And as you so nicely explained yourself, Malthus couldn't have predicted all the factors which made the growth become sub-exponential.
But that's the whole point. In fact he was very wrong because even the population boom of the post-war era say is very NOT-malthusian in being supra-exponential.
Malthus's whole point is that with illimited ressources and STABLE conditions, population growth will be exponential. That is true.
In the beggining of the 20th century, conditions were improving (mainly health related issues) so the growth was super-exponential (which is not exponential in the strictest sense, even though laymen tend to think of exponential= anything that grows REALLY fast) and now, for different reasons, mostly social, the growth is sub-exponential.
So he was pretty much never REALLY right.
It is still VERY important and interesting to discuss why he was.
I'll get you the numbers for world rate of growth over time if you disbelieve this aspect, they are easy to find.
One thing you need to keep in mind is exponential rate of growth predicted by malthus is a somewhat technical term (it means constant relative rate of growth) and has not really been true since his time, even closely.
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