Mike Solana

Btw.. Adam Smith discussed this a bit in wealth of nations and so far his theories have held up pretty well. Basically he argued when economies work well people can make better choices, have more security, and can often make better choices and that large families

Are not as necessary because every family or group need not do everything reducing the need for a large family for labour. Also since people have more time and capital they have more security unlike in earlier times where security came from lots of land, people, and

Stocks of grain. In Smiths theory populations would somewhat self regulate and stabilize and be more resilient to major changes and calamities. He also caveated and explained what could g0 wrong but my favorite comment on this topic is how Mercantilism and monopolies

Create confusing signals and can create major issues including starving communities, causing unmaintable expansions "bubbles" etc. Note he did this a like 3 decades before Malthus and it's still holds up. Amazing

Can it be true that grain technology saved billions, and at the same time, Malthus was wrong that billions would die?

First that's not Malthus argument. Second Burlogh was a example of how the US has promoted world prosperity. By allowing people to grow food that takes less energy, less watter, and produces more food and is easier to grow

You allow people to spend more time on other activities to increase overall economic output as well as food production itself is directly linked to economic output. The saving of people was linked to estimates of how many people would die from famine cause by natural disaster

In concrete terms, did Malthus predict population collapse from a source _other_ than we simply couldn’t generate enough calories for everyone, which was the problem agtech solved?