After all, there are many times more people on the planet today than when Malthus first formulated his hypothesis and most of us are richer than Malthus’s contemporaries. Technological progress, which did not figure in Malthus’s theories, has a way of making resources appear from nowhere; when there are more people around, there are more people looking for new ideas, and so perhaps technological breakthroughs are more likely. Indeed, for most of human history (starting in 1 million BC), regions or countries that had more people were growing faster than the rest.8 The case is therefore unlikely
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