From Thanos to Zobrist: The re-emergence of Thomas Malthus and Malthusianism in the 21st Century

One of the major aberrations that could be seen in the nature of antagonist characters of popular cinema in recent times is that antagonists have started looking for better rationality in the mass murders they are engaged in.  The iconic antagonist characters such as the Joker (The Dark Knight, 2008; Director: Christopher Nolan), Ernst Stavro Blofeld (James Bond Series) or Solomon Lane (Mission Impossible Series), have all been depicted as the antithesis of their protagonists and who are, in general, megalomaniacs and anarchists attempting to attain world dominance. In the words of the Joker:

“Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Chaos is fair.”

However, some of the recent antagonist characters in mainstream cinema such as Thanos (The Avengers Series) or Bertrand Zobrist (Inferno, 2016; Director: Ron Howard) seem to have found a bigger and better reason for the mass killings they are so strongly convinced about. In the words of Thanos:

 “When I’m done, half of humanity will still exist. Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.”

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Thanos and Zobrist believed strongly that the major menace faced by the world is its ever-burgeoning population, given its limited resources and the only way the world or human beings can survive, is by eliminating half of the world’s population. If not, people would die out of hunger. In the words of Thanos himself:

“Going to bed hungry.. scrounging for scraps. Your planet was on the brink of collapse. I was the one who stopped that. You know what’s happened since then? The children born have known nothing but full bellies and clear skies. It’s a paradise.”

These words of Thanos may sound very familiar to any student of Economics.  It might remind them of the classical literature An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) and its famous author Thomas Robert Malthus. Perhaps it would not be wrong to state that the characters of Thanos and Zobrist appear to be antagonists influenced largely by the economic concept of Malthusian Catastrophe.

What is Malthusianism and Malthusian Catastrophe?

A standard textbook definition of Malthusianism will be that it’s an idea derived from the economic thought given by the classical thinker Thomas Malthus in his book An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) which suggests that the population growth in the world is exponential while the growth of food supply is linear. This might lead to a situation known as the Malthusian Catastrophe in which the population growth will outpace the agricultural growth resulting in a situation of too many people and too less food. In the words of Thomas Malthus:

"Famine seems to be the last, the most dreadful resource of nature. The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or the other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world."

- An Essay on the Principle of Population. Chapter VII, p. 61

These apocalyptic like words of Malthus had inspired a lot of scientists and thinkers like Paul R. Ehrlich, as well as laymen, who become ardent believers of the Malthusian idea and predicted the occurrence of Malthusian catastrophe in the 20^th century. The population explosion that occurred in many underdeveloped countries in the world gave momentum to this belief. But the Malthusian Catastrophe never happened. Nevertheless, one cannot take away the fact that when Malthus wrote his magnum opus, England was essentially an agrarian economy just engaged in its first industrial revolution and perhaps he did not anticipate the role technology was to play in improving the agricultural yield by leaps and bounds in the coming ages. The population growth also got major checks through continuous major wars, genocides and natural catastrophes throughout 20^th century.

The Malthusian prediction was rubbished and became largely regarded as a failed proposition in the mainstream economics literature of the 20^th century. But the sudden re-emergence of the idea through popular culture in the 21^st century and the widespread reception it received would force any student of economics to take a relook at the idea and check if there exists any empirical possibilities for Malthusianism in the 21^st century.

The Empirical Investigation

A basic empirical investigation was done using secondary data collected from the World Bank and FAO database for the period from 1960 to 2017. A preliminary graphical analyses show that the world population has been steadily increasing, along with the crop production (in this case, rice and wheat are considered). It was interesting to observe that while the crop production has been steadily increasing, the area of cultivation has remained more or less the same or has declined over the decades which indicates that the rise in production has majorly been due to the higher yield.

Though a graphical analysis of the yield showed a clean upward trend, it was observed that this was occurring at a diminishing rate. Hence the growth rate of yield was taken for both rice and wheat along with the population. A trend analysis using Least square method showed the growth rates are on a downward trend. A forecast based on the estimates provided a very interesting result. The forecast showed that if the present trend continues, the conditional mean of rice yield growth rate and wheat yield growth rate would become zero by the year 2040 and 2050 respectively. Though the population growth rates are also on a decline, the forecast shows the conditional mean of population growth rate to become zero by only 2070.

Assuming that the area of production and yield for rice do not fall but remain constant at the 2040 level and the same for wheat remain constant at 2050 level, the per capita crop production was calculated. The results showed a steady decline in the per capita crop production post-2040 and this decline escalates post-2050. Assuming that the population growth rate goes negative post-2070, the situation of per capita crop production can reverse. However, the result suggests that the period between 2040 to 2050, if the present trend continues, shall result in a period of very high inflation and the period between 2050 to 2070 may turn out to be a period of severe food crisis. Looking beyond the food-population relationship, an exponential forecast shows that the per capita habitable area shall also reduce from 80,000 sq. ft in 2018 to 40,000 sq. ft by 2060.

Both these findings are only possibilities provided the prevailing conditions and trend persist. The possibility of a food crisis can be averted with another green revolution which looks very much a possibility with the advent of nanotechnology. The steep decline in the per capita land availability is a bitter reality but can be managed through the construction of more vertical cities replacing horizontal.

Conclusion

There, of course, do exist an impending possibility of a food crisis in the near future. But through another technological revolution, the crisis can be very well be averted. Hence the growing ideology promulgated through characters like Thanos and Zobrist, which gained quick popularity among the present-day youth, is without any doubt too farfetched and extremist in nature. However, if the developing countries in the world which would be housing around 85 per cent of the world population by 2030, do not adopt these technological and structural changes with immediate urgency then the scenario could be a little scary. As a recent FAO report suggested, “hundreds of millions will remain hungry” post-2030. Then perhaps Thomas Robert Malthus will be back in business, once again.


(The article has used only basic data analysis methods. The forecasts are based on Least square estimates uncorrected for any assumption violations. Hence the precision can be affected due to biased estimates.)