We’ve heard a lot recently (and quite correctly) from folks like Mark Steyn about demographic implosions in places like Europe and Japan, and distortions (30+ million ‘extra’ males in China as a result of female infanticide as a result of China’s one-child policy). I want to step back quite a bit and look at the fact that world population has grown enormously in my lifetime at the same time as has world prosperity. One has to ask: why are those two things correlated positively instead of negatively?

I’ve been thinking recently about how materially gifted we are (those of us who can afford computers and the leisure time to read and post on blogs anyway). To an degree unprecedented in the history of the planet, even those in poverty are better off than ever before — in purely material terms. It is natural though (if not morally uplifting or right), that our expectations for what constitutes “basic” living ratchet up continually without serious, objective challenge. (Studies show people are more happy when they’re keeping up with or beating the Joneses next door, regardless of their level of wealth in absolute terms.)

Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy my modern conveniences as much as the next guy. But it’s easy to get tangled up in a pervasive and seldom challenged set of Malthusian assumptions (especially popular in the academy and on the left) wherein the world is seen to be perpetually on the brink of running out of something or other, or collapsing due to some widespread or nigglingly personal catastrophe. (Remember Ebola? Alar in apples? mercury in dental fillings? global cooling and premature onset of the next ice age?).

Malthusians (a group so numerous that many who are may not even recognize the term) harbor a fear that we will become like deer without wolves — dumb, hungry, cold and dying in great numbers — if something is not done… by someone… soon. They fear that the world just won’t sustain us beyond… pick a number. They believe that governments and individuals are most responsible when they take measures to ensure there are no more humans around than are absolutely necessary. It is, by definition, a misanthropic impulse.

The fact that history has proven otherwise — with repetitive and conclusive vengeance — does little to damp the yelling-fire-in-a-crowded-theatre effect. E.g., the Malthus-inspired Club of Rome and with it doom-sayers like Paul Ehrlich have been shown to be dead wrong yet the doom industry is more robust than ever. A very wide range of natural resources have become more plentiful over time as reflected in their price. And that includes food and oil — the recent biofuels policy-induced foolishness and cartel/war-induced oil price hikes notwithstanding. (Economists call those things distortions… the wars and trade barriers and bone-headed know-better government policies that get in the way of people doing what they do best in a free society and moving those goods, services and opportunities around much more broadly than they are today… e.g., when nobody in their right mind would set up a factory in Sudan and create new jobs.)

This macro-historical curve of abundance amidst growing population is not just hard for some to accept. It is dramatically counter-intuitive. And yet it’s correct. In the face of it, sadly, many choose to emote and to hold onto the elegant theory rather than look at empirical reality and ask: Why is this so? Here’s an idea:

We are dear, not deer.

We (human beings) are made in the image of God. Among other things, that means we are blessed with the ability to reason and innovate our way out of all kinds of problems that at one time may have seemed insurmountable to our forbears. Our minds and lives are gifts meant to be used. Unlike deer, we do more than breed and eat.

What we take for granted today was once seen as impossible by someone. It might even have been unimaginable. By definition, innovation exists over the ridgeline of foresight. I.e., seeing it clearly is tantamount to doing it and therefore it cannot be forecast, only trusted… and trust is the sibling to faith.

It’s always tempting to think that everything that can be invented has been. In my work as a scenario planner I’ve collected countless quotes from brilliant men and women who were at one time certain that a particular problem would never be solved, that it would take X and so many years to do so, and/or that the potential limitations of an invention were such-and-such. (One of the more famous came, I believe, from Thomas Watson, who felt sure that the long-term global market for computers was… five. I can see that many from where I’m sitting and I’m only in my humble home office.)

That’s all to say the assumption that a particular disaster will befall humanity is almost always wrong and, even when it’s not, it is still rooted in the deepest of hubristic instincts, i.e., that the future is knowable by man. (Which is not to say that one particular disaster is very right, although its timing remains uncertain.)

I’ll leave you with this thought: what if the person who was supposed to be born and grow up to solve a certain problem (bird flu? terrorism? climate change? the ten terabyte iPod?… take your pick) maybe wasn’t or won’t be because their mom and/or dad-to-be decided it would be inconvenient.  Because it was a whole lot easier to take that promotion and buy that new car and impress Mr. Jones than to take seriously one of God’s very first commandments. It is just as terrible that that individual is lost to some evil nut-job who killed him or her in a concentration camp or carpet-bombing campaign, but that’s another post.

Food for thought. (Don’t worry, there’s plenty more.)