Timeline for When would prices increase according to Malthusianism?
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16 events
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| Dec 18, 2014 at 20:28 | comment | added | 410 gone | @Mathematician I don't see a way to salvage it, myself. It's predicated on something that's untrue, and I don't see it as an informative counter-factual either. The Malthusian population growth model turned out to be nonsense, and his model of food growth was no better either. | |
| Dec 18, 2014 at 19:43 | comment | added | Jason Nichols | Again, @Mathematician I didn't vote to close. I think the question is broad, but not close worthy. I think it rests on faulty and self-contradicting premises, but that's addressed in the answer, and I don't know that it could be 'edited' to be less broad. I'd say more specific questions like, "Would an increase in population trigger a substantial rise in food prices?" would be better, and could be answered more accurately allowing for discussion of the relationship between money multipliers, velocity of money, demand and price at much greater depth. | |
| Dec 18, 2014 at 19:36 | comment | added | Mathematician | @EnergyNumbers Any help on improving this question would be appreciated. So far, no one has offered any constructive criticism on the question (though the constructive criticism on the prospective answer has been insightful, to me at least). | |
| Dec 18, 2014 at 19:35 | comment | added | Mathematician | @AlecosPapadopoulos Any help on improving this question would be appreciated. So far, no one has offered any constructive criticism on the question (though the constructive criticism on the prospective answer has been insightful, to me at least). | |
| Dec 18, 2014 at 19:35 | comment | added | Mathematician | @JasonNichols Any help on improving this question would be appreciated. So far, no one has offered any constructive criticism on the question (though the constructive criticism on the prospective answer has been insightful, to me at least). | |
| Dec 18, 2014 at 17:39 | comment | added | 410 gone | @JasonNichols If a question needs editing before it's a good question (and I think that applies to this question, YMMV), that is exactly what closing is for: it puts the question on hold for a week to give the OP and others chance to improve it. Reluctance to close bad questions will lead to them crowding out good question. | |
| Dec 18, 2014 at 17:37 | comment | added | Jason Nichols | @EnergyNumbers, that's what I meant by "can't vote". I try to keep a light hand, and let the community sort it out, unless it's really, really egregious, then I'm more apt to just delete. Otherwise I try to comment. I also don't believe all "bad" questions need to be closed, that's why we have downvotes. | |
| Dec 18, 2014 at 17:34 | comment | added | 410 gone | @JasonNichols as a mod, you can vote to close: the difference is that your vote is always decisive. The community can reopen a mod-closed question, so there are checks and balances (whereas the community cannot undelete a mod-deleted question). You've been trusted with mod tools and mod powers, and it is ok to use them: when you know a question should be put on hold, please do it. Having said that, it's also good to let the community find its feet and get used to moderating itself too. Do ask in the Teachers' Lounge if in doubt. | |
| Dec 18, 2014 at 17:24 | answer | added | Jason Nichols | timeline score: 4 | |
| Dec 18, 2014 at 16:31 | comment | added | Jason Nichols | working on one now, mostly just citing the original work by Malthus, since he explicitly did not predict either a catastrophic rise in food prices or population (in fact his prediction was about the gradual stabilisation of food prices to historic norms and the fact that the quality of life hadn't changed for the peasantry in 2100 years or so). | |
| Dec 18, 2014 at 16:25 | comment | added | Alecos Papadopoulos | @JasonNichols Ok, If I want to be strict, I would say that indeed, your comment would be a bona fide answer if it included some references/studies to the fact that we do not expect a constant rise in human population over the long-term. In case you have the time to find some such studies, it would be even better. | |
| Dec 18, 2014 at 16:21 | comment | added | Jason Nichols | @AlecosPapadopoulos I didn't vote to close (as a mod I can't vote) I deleted the one-liner non-answer. Ironically, I added mine as a comment because I felt it wasn't up to the standards of a good answer either. :) | |
| Dec 18, 2014 at 15:42 | comment | added | Alecos Papadopoulos | @JasonNichols I would propose to turn this comment into an answer. Indeed, currently there is a consensus that there is no projected long-term trend for continuously growing population, so the Malthusian argument becomes irrelevant. But I don't see reason to close the question. | |
| Dec 18, 2014 at 14:44 | comment | added | Jason Nichols | This question doesn't seem answerable, as no accepted economic theories (that I know of) predict such a timeline. Some would predict the possible causal relationship between increased real food prices and decreased fertility, but economics tends not to deal with delusional demographic sensationalism. The world population is ageing quickly with "peak population" having occurred in much of the developed world, and even China's growth rate slowing. Consequently no model would predict a Malthusian crisis, let alone a timeline for it. | |
| Dec 18, 2014 at 13:08 | review | Close votes | |||
| Dec 18, 2014 at 17:42 | |||||
| Dec 15, 2014 at 20:15 | history | asked | Mathematician | CC BY-SA 3.0 |