What's meta-Malthusianism
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it seems to be the abstraction of Malthus principle of population. instead of applying directly (populations reach the carrying capacity of their environment) they apply through a loop (populations lose the ability to raise the carrying capacity as the latter rises)
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At that point haven't we really left the domain of the explicitly Malthusian question - exponential population growth vs. linear food yields - and entered the broader eco question (can the earth-system sustain planetary industrialization)?
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That isn't the Meta-Malthusian point, at all. It's that improvement in the human environment leads directly to human biological deterioration, which drags things back to the Malthusian limit. ...
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Replying to @Outsideness @EBBerger and
... "Malthusian relaxation" is a near synonym for dysgenics, which indicates that the point is actually widely understood.
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Replying to @Outsideness @EBBerger and
... If "humanity has a chance at all" it can only be by not converting productivity into relaxation (which is hard, in every sense). ...
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Replying to @Outsideness @EBBerger and
... "Capitalism" stringently described could actually mean something very like that, but then people understandably get upset about it. ...
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Replying to @Outsideness @EBBerger and
... "Capitalism means that productivity improvements get Red Queened in a way that never pulls the species out of hell." -- If only, but yes, it should.
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OK, this is much clearer to me now -- and it's this last point that I'm wanting to chew on a bit, as it suggests capitalism without, well, the decadence that accompanies it (a position I agree w/, and something v. relevant to the question of war in development)
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Replying to @EBBerger @Outsideness and
To try to clear a few more things up: are you removing the agricultural aspect of Malthus, and attaching the remaining populations to Richard Lynn-style assessments of dysgenic trends? (removal of the agricultural aspect seems necessary when addressing the movement beyond limits)
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Agricultural arithmetic is definitely part of the loop. Food surplus has preconditions in terms of mean species competence that are overlooked by (right and left) progs.
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