Shah and Malthus

Shah's essay is aiming to expand on Malthus' claims, sometimes in the form of a counterarguement. He first tackles Malthus's assumption of higher population equaling more competition, thus lower wages. He cites David Ricardo's analysis of the rich having a higher profit as wages fall. Although, they both agreed that the dropping of wages would result in a large gap between the rich and the poor.

Shah also points out the Dismla Theorum which states that "if the only check on human population is starvation, then population will grow until it starves." He calls upon welfare economists to reduce devastating hardships such as famine, disease, war, etc., which are wasteful, in order to sustain population.

Shah then points out the Mesa metaphor in which it is possible that the poor overtake the rich. The wealth gap will then be closed and society will be dominantly poor. This so happened in the French Revolution, which Shah thinks Malthus did not consider enough.

It is interesting in the last section where Shah talks about the new abundance of resources in North and South America. He argues that because the abundance of these lands' resources were just recently providing such "sustainability," Malthus's proposal would be postponed until these resources were to run out. Today, we see these resources running out. Nutritional levels are lowering with mass agriculture, as Malthus talks about in his essay.