Malthus and the limits to growth.

[unmerged(209114)]

I searched if this topic had already been done and found no sign of it, so forgive me if I am asking a repeat question.

Will there be a population limit to a given country/province? It was not uncommon to have games where Germany far exceeded its carrying capacity and became a 220 million man behemoth well inside it's historical Reich borders in Vicky 1.

 

[unmerged(75409)]

I searched if this topic had already been done and found no sign of it, so forgive me if I am asking a repeat question.

Will there be a population limit to a given country/province? It was not uncommon to have games where Germany far exceeded its carrying capacity and became a 220 million man behemoth well inside it's historical Reich borders in Vicky 1.

How is that unrealistic? You can cram a lot of people into any given piece of land.

Arguably it was not hunger and disease, i.e. Malthusian effects, which limit(ed) population growth in industrialized countries, but rather social and economic developments.

The topic of how to model social transitions and declines in the pop growth rate was debated a few months ago in this forum ("Will there be country-specific growth rates?" was the title IIRC) and the devs mentioned something like "Yes, there will be, because we will not model stuff that even social scientists to not know how to model."

 

[unmerged(68110)]

Ahhh... Malthus, that bastard...

Considering the he overlooked the technological factor and capacity of land organization, not to mention that there was a pretty damn huge world beyond Britain, I say good riddance to him.

In Victoria, he serves to help justify immigration ("Malthusian Thought"), and that is it. Over and over and over again he was beaten by sociologists, economists and else that is not even funny.

 

[alvaro]

Ahhh... Malthus, that bastard...

Considering the he overlooked the technological factor and capacity of land organization, not to mention that there was a pretty damn huge world beyond Britain, I say good riddance to him.

In Victoria, he serves to help justify immigration ("Malthusian Thought"), and that is it. Over and over and over again he was beaten by sociologists, economists and else that is not even funny.

couldn't agree more

 

[Earl Uhtred]

Uh... the last word has not been said on the subject of overpopulation.

 

[Minchandre]

Uh... the last word has not been said on the subject of overpopulation.

If we adopted more sustainable practices and solved the food distribution problem (the big one!), I think that humanity has definitely not hit Earth's carrying capacity yet.

 

[Earl Uhtred]

If we adopted more sustainable practices and solved the food distribution problem (the big one!), I think that humanity has definitely not hit Earth's carrying capacity yet.

Is 'the Earth's carrying capacity' not something to be stopped well short of? I'm not some sort of dolphin fiddling hippie but it sounds like hell.

The Optimum Population Trust has it right.

 

[Mozart41st]

Uh... the last word has not been said on the subject of overpopulation.

Well said, I think recent events point out how real Malthusianism actually is. We wouldn't be drilling for oil a mile below the sea if our resources are as plentiful as people say.

Consider this chart, and consider it well before you say the world has not exceeded it's carrying capacity.

http://www.vhemt.org/world.pop.time.jpg


All of that said, I do agree that a Malthusian element in the game would be interesting to see, though it wouldn't really be something that we would see too often in the timeframe of the game.. Maybe resource deposits will only have a certain amount before they deplete or something like that. Again though, probably not worth coding considering the game's time frame, a time when we truly did have nearly infinite resources.

 

[Herbert West]

If we adopted more sustainable practices and solved the food distribution problem (the big one!), I think that humanity has definitely not hit Earth's carrying capacity yet.

Earth carrying capacity is nigh infinite, we could, if we wanted, convert the whole planet to solar farms and wheat fields.


Earths sustainable (or at least, very slowly depleting) carrying capacity is another matter enterily.

 

[unmerged(63310)]

It has alot to do with resources consumed per person as well. At current resource consumption typical in N America then there might not be a lot more room for more population if everyone was consuming at that rate but that depends on technology changes quite heavily just on the consumption/rate of use variable not to mention the social variables of consumption.

The biggest single factor might well be energy use/conversion however. The planet has near inexhaustible resources for basic subsistence if that was the only goal but distributing the consumables and providing more than subsistence living requires energy, the higher the consumption the higher the energy requirements.

 

[unmerged(48800)]

well i have to say that there was a pop limit (or in some sort growth problem) that when solved beame the pop boom of the sXX and partially in sXIX.

The factor that before sXIX pop havent growth than much is not because people had less sex y was because various factos, as food production (the indias in the pampas had food problems and they were living in one of the mso fertile land on earth)l, water (there is not much people in araby or sahara, even if it has been populated much before america) weather such as extreme cold.
But also factors as sewer systems, healthcare and sanitation. China and India growth much more than europe, but in the sXIX Europe growth much more, why? because all that factors.

The problem of space is not really a problem, exept if you want to put 200.000.000 million on rhodes. People can live on apartments as such, but need at least some sort of technology.

Food can be imported, water in the other hand is more a problem.

Healthcare equals science advancment.

 

[Sovereign]

Anyway... given that we won't see infinite capacity RGO's this time round like in Vicky1, I think there will be an upper limit. POPs shrink if they can't buy enough to eat, and only so many POPs can work in RGO's. Limit on supply, ergo limit on demand.

On a side note, I hope to see the plains of North America, Russia, India and China becoming the bread-baskets of the game.

 

[Gorgo Primus]

Sorry but every single idea Malthus ever had has been disproved 1000 times over.

Keeping the poor uneducated does not lower population, people CAN and DO have sex outside of wedlock, even if everyone in Asia and Africa suddenly died it would have no effect on pollution or population limits because the Developed World uses up infinitely more resources, the Poor do not have more children because they lack faith in his God, etc.

Malthus was a nobody who became a somebody because the ruling class loved the idea that mistreating the poor was morally good under his system. He in no background in any relevant field and has been used throughout history as a cover for racism and exceptionalism for the 'First World'.

 

[unmerged(68110)]

Malthus basic premise involved poverty and used a fair dose of moralism to complement it.

Malthus neglected completely the technological element in agriculture. In fact, his models were pretty feudal, involving continuous partition of the land until there is no more. When he died, England was beginning it's agricultural revolution, which changed it forever. The United Kingdom suddenly could produce way, WAY more in a much smaller space and fueled the eventual industrial transformation to such incredible degree that it became the workshop of the world.

Second, he believed that it was divinely mandated that population should suffer in overgrowth, thus governments should do nothing about it. And WORSE, that view was agreed by some people in positions of power. Ireland exported food during the bloody famines, and it's governors saw it fitting that it should bled it's poor over the seas or to death because it was God's providence...

For all his arguments regarding long-term stability, he seemed to forget and observe that his country was now being able to produce beyond necessity in large scale. His justification for poverty as inevitable or even necessary was reactionary and foolish to say the least, and served as an excuse for the existence of mass-scale structural unemployment.

 

[Sovereign]

Malthus was a nobody who became a somebody because the ruling class loved the idea that mistreating the poor was morally good under his system. He in no background in any relevant field and has been used throughout history as a cover for racism and exceptionalism for the 'First World'.

As can be said for many a Western 'thinker'.

But fair play, at least he kicked-off the debate, got people a'disprovin an so forth.

 

[Earl Uhtred]

Strip away whatever unfortunate period colouring and Malthus' point was that population grows exponentially while the increase in resource production tends to be linear, likely capped. That's hard to dispute, though advances in technology and infrastructure have carried us a long, long way.

If we're going to start ripping into Victorian theorists with the benefit of hindsight we can begin with Marx.

 

[telesien]

Ahhh... Malthus, that bastard...

Considering the he overlooked the technological factor and capacity of land organization, not to mention that there was a pretty damn huge world beyond Britain, I say good riddance to him.

In Victoria, he serves to help justify immigration ("Malthusian Thought"), and that is it. Over and over and over again he was beaten by sociologists, economists and else that is not even funny.

I just hope you have the same attitude regarding oil

But Malthus wasn't that much wrong. The sociological part of his theory was on spot. The reason why it didn't went as he expacted was because the factors changed and his reasons no longer applied.

But I definitely agree that basing population growth on Malthus is just bad bussiness and when I add the problem of strangely slow population growth of France, I think that different rates for different countries are good compromise.

 

[EGaffney]

Let's try to keep this out of world history discussion, eh? Malthus was not very relevant in 1836-1936. In the language of economics, this was a period when technology (including markets) expanded quickly enough to make diminishing returns and the productivity possibilities frontier irrelevant.

Malthus was, of course, writing in a period when it wasn't at all clear that technology and markets would expand as they did. Human history before 1800 was characterised by extremely low long-run economic growth. Victoria, though, is about the opposite.

There is no meaningful population limit in any part of the world that can't be represented by life ratings influencing immigration and growth.

 

[Petrarca]

While I agree with the assessments of Malthus in the thread, and have learned a few things in the bargain, I have niggling questions:

Sovereign, are RGOs being limited in size? I haven't seen anything about it, and am fervently praying that the economic system otherwise limits-- through more direct means of market pricing-- explosive population growth. King's example has certainly encouraged faith in the revised economics, but I worry about half the nations in the world emulating the population explosion of colonial New England or Green Revolution India.

 

[Colon]

You can't expand RGOs (which I find interesting for other reasons than Malthusian prophecies of doom).