European Tribune - Comments - Overshooting ... was Malthus right?

Overshooting ... was Malthus right? | 155 comments (155 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Modern humans first emerged about 100,000 years ago. For the next 99,800 years or so, nothing happened. Well, not quite nothing. There were wars, political intrigue, the invention of agriculture -- but none of that stuff had much effect on the quality of people's lives. Almost everyone lived on the modern equivalent of $400 to $600 a year, just above the subsistence level. True, there were always tiny aristocracies who lived far better, but numerically they were quite insignificant.

WTF?

Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sat Jun 9th, 2007 at 12:46:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]

LOL (4.00 / 2)

WTF is probably the right abbreviation for that newspaper...

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Sat Jun 9th, 2007 at 01:12:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LOL (none / 1)

This is what hostorical world population (the best proxy we have for world GDP for the far past, especially accepting the WTF's claim that the standard of living was essentially constant before 1800) looks like. The dashed line is the watershed before which "nothing happened".

Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sat Jun 9th, 2007 at 01:17:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Overshooting ... was Malthus right? | 155 comments (155 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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