Word: malthusian
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...United Nations, 550 scientists from 49 nations bent their heads over the problems of the old earth. They saw the present 2 billion population increased to 3 billion by the year 2000. But they were plunged in no Malthusian gloom. They could see, on the contrary, a day when the whole world would be better off. Science was the tool-but not the answer. The answer was man himself. Said The Netherlands' Dr. Egbert de Vries, expert on rural economies: "People are an asset, a natural,resource, and not a liability . . . Humanity has the right, the duty...
...Rockwell Cage, a huge, airy gym standing apart from the columned halls where man's spirit was under investigation, the scientists discussed man's material condition. In the panel on "the Problem of World Production," Fairfield (Our Plundered Planet) Osborn once more raised his familiar Malthusian bogy of ever-shrinking resources, ever-increasing population...
...demographer or biologist would deny the validity of the Malthusian Law. Malthus postulated that populations tend to increase faster than do the means of subsistence, and must be controlled by either positive checks or preventive checks. The positive checks are those which increase the death rate-famine, disease, epidemics, excessively hard labor, and war. The preventive checks are those which reduce the birth rates-celibacy, delayed marriage, "prudential restraint" in married life, and other forms of birth control. Although Malthus underestimated man's capacity to increase the means of subsistence, he did not underestimate man's capacity...
Congratulations on an excellent expose ol the fallacies in the Neo-Malthusian school of economists' argument in reference to population and food supply [TIME, Nov. 8] Those chappies are long on theory and dialectic, short on soil science...
Fruit Flies Do It. An essential part of the Neo-Malthusian creed is the conviction that people will multiply blindly (like fruit flies) as long as they get enough food. Biologists can put a few fruit flies in an air-conditioned bottle, give them the same amount of food each day, and predict pretty accurately how fast they will breed. The fly population grows until there are just enough flies to eat up the daily food. Only then does the colony stop growing...