| Article | Page(s) | Quote | Keywords |
|---|
| "Foreword to Malthus's Population, the First Essay" |
|
The Dismal Theorem: If the only check on the growth of population is misery, then the population will grow until it is miserable enough to stop its growth. |
Thomas Malthus ecology |
| "Foreword to Malthus's Population, the First Essay" |
|
The Utterly Dismal Theorem: Any technical improvement can only relieve misery for a while, for so long as misery is the only check on population, the [technical] improvement will enable population to grow, and will soon enable more people to live in misery than before. The final result of [technical] improvements, therefore, is to increase the equilibrium population which is to increase the sum total of human misery. |
Thomas Malthus ecology |
| "Foreword to Malthus's Population, the First Essay" |
|
The Moderately Cheerful Form of the Dismal Theorem: If something else, other than misery and starvation, can be found which will keep a prosperous population in check, the population does not have to grow until it is miserable and starves, and it can be stably prosperous. |
Thomas Malthus ecology |
| "Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth, The" |
9 |
The closed earth of the future requires economic principles which are different from those of the open earth of the past. For the sake of picturesqueness, I am tempted to call the open economy the "cowboy economy," the cowboy being symbolic of the illimitable plains and also associated with reckless, exploitative, romantic, and violent behavior, which is characteristic of open societies. The closed economy of the future might similarly be called the "spaceman" economy, in which the earth has become a single spaceship, without unlimited reservoirs of anything, either for extraction or for pollution, and in which, therefore, man must find his place in a cyclical ecological system which is capable of continuous reproduction of material form even though it cannot escape having inputs of energy. |
|
| "Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth, The" |
9 |
In the cowboy economy, consumption is regarded as a good thing and production likewise; and te success of the economy is measured by the amount of the throughput from the "factors of production," a part of which, at any rate, is extracted from the reservoirs of raw materials and noneconomic objects, and another part of which is output into the reservoirs of pollution. ... The gross national product is a rought measure of this total throughput. ... By contrast, in the spaceman economy, throughput is by no means a desideratum, and is indeed to be regarded as something to be minimized rather than maximized. The essential measure of the success of the economy is not production and consumption at all, but the nature, extent, quality, and complexity of the total capital stock, including in this the state of the human bodies and minds included in the system. |
GNP economics |
| "Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth, The" |
10 |
Does economic welfare involve having nice clothes, fine houses, good equipment, and so on, or is it to be measured by the depreciation and the wearing out of these things? ... On this view, there is nothing desirable in consumption at all. The less consumption we can maintain a given state with, the better off we are. |
GNP economics |
| Publication | Page(s) | Quote | Keywords |
|---|
| Collected Papers |
|
The Dismal Theorem: If the only check on the growth of population is misery, then the population will grow until it is miserable enough to stop its growth. |
Thomas Malthus ecology |
| Collected Papers |
|
The Utterly Dismal Theorem: Any technical improvement can only relieve misery for a while, for so long as misery is the only check on population, the [technical] improvement will enable population to grow, and will soon enable more people to live in misery than before. The final result of [technical] improvements, therefore, is to increase the equilibrium population which is to increase the sum total of human misery. |
Thomas Malthus ecology |
| Collected Papers |
|
The Moderately Cheerful Form of the Dismal Theorem: If something else, other than misery and starvation, can be found which will keep a prosperous population in check, the population does not have to grow until it is miserable and starves, and it can be stably prosperous. |
Thomas Malthus ecology |
