An Essay on the Principle of Population

By: Thomas Malthus

Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong

While millions face hunger, malnutrition, and starvation, the world's population is increasing by over 225,000 people per day, 80 million per year. In many countries, supplies of food and water are inadequate to support the population, so the world falls deeper and deeper into what economists call the "Malthusian trap".

Here, Malthus examines the tendency of human numbers to outstrip their resources, and argues that poverty, disease, and starvation are necessary to keep societies from moving beyond their means of subsistence.

Public Domain (P)2013 Audible Ltd

amazing how relevant this is, 250 years later

this work is a classic. Mathus has had it all figured out centuries ago. paying people to not work and subsidizing these people to have children is a tremendous drain on society. no one has the right to have children and expect others to pay for them at the expense of their own. this puts a huge drain on the progress of society. as malthus says, sloth will always lead to poverty, and industriousness to wealth, and nothing will change that. any attempts to do so would bring about the downfall of society. he uses the analogy that while the roots of a tree are far away from the tree top, that is how a tree grows. trying to stop the tree from growing or its roots from expanding will kill the trunk.

Important historically but still relevant

I wasn't sure what I expected. Malthusian is such a negative term I almost expected this text to be filled with cruelty and callousness.
Malthus points out that there is a limit to food production, and that limit is lower than humanities ability to reproduce. There is no good solution in a world where there isn't enough food to feed everyone, it will be filled with misery and early death. He does several thought experiments on how to resolve this issue but they are either impractical or too cruel.
This is an issue we need to solve globally sooner rather than later.