16 Population

(EN: In this rather lengthy chapter, Bastiat considers Malthus's argument on the nature of population and some of the arguments against it. It was a hot topic at his time, but its season has passed. It is recognized that human population consumes resources, and there is always a fear that uncontrolled breeding will cause humanity to exhaust the earth's resources. But what has been found is that technical progress greatly extends the productivity of the land, such that far more food may be produced per acre than in past times. It has also been found that population does not grow exponentially, but tends to level out and even reverse - so the fears of Malthus's time, which were supported by the data available to them, have been found to be irrelevant. So this chapter is of perhaps historical interest only, representing a problem that never arose.)