{"id":4973,"date":"2021-02-21T21:45:26","date_gmt":"2021-02-21T21:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2021\/02\/21\/the-malthusian-economy-productivity-produces-people-not-prosperity\/"},"modified":"2021-02-21T21:45:26","modified_gmt":"2021-02-21T21:45:26","slug":"the-malthusian-economy-productivity-produces-people-not-prosperity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2021\/02\/21\/the-malthusian-economy-productivity-produces-people-not-prosperity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Malthusian Economy: &#8216;productivity produces people, not prosperity&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Max Roser of Our World In Data takes a close look at historical economies. I&#8217;m drawing attention here to the &#8216;Malthusian Trap&#8217; section, not the parts after that. He makes the case that pre-industrial economies are essentially Malthusian: new technology doesn&#8217;t improve people&#8217;s lives, it just results in more very poor people. I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s very controversial, but the charts really bring it home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"625\" height=\"438\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/gdp-and-gdp-per-capita-in-england-since-1270-768x5381882305409391814414-1.png?resize=625%2C438&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4971\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/gdp-and-gdp-per-capita-in-england-since-1270-768x5381882305409391814414-1.png?w=768&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/gdp-and-gdp-per-capita-in-england-since-1270-768x5381882305409391814414-1.png?resize=300%2C210&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/gdp-and-gdp-per-capita-in-england-since-1270-768x5381882305409391814414-1.png?resize=150%2C105&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/gdp-and-gdp-per-capita-in-england-since-1270-768x5381882305409391814414-1.png?resize=624%2C437&amp;ssl=1 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 625px) 100vw, 625px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"625\" height=\"370\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/malthusian-econ_people-not-income-800x4738068520985932675740-1.png?resize=625%2C370&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4972\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/malthusian-econ_people-not-income-800x4738068520985932675740-1.png?w=800&amp;ssl=1 800w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/malthusian-econ_people-not-income-800x4738068520985932675740-1.png?resize=300%2C177&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/malthusian-econ_people-not-income-800x4738068520985932675740-1.png?resize=150%2C89&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/malthusian-econ_people-not-income-800x4738068520985932675740-1.png?resize=768%2C454&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/malthusian-econ_people-not-income-800x4738068520985932675740-1.png?resize=624%2C369&amp;ssl=1 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 625px) 100vw, 625px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ourworldindata.org\/economic-growth\">https:\/\/ourworldindata.org\/economic-growth<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Max Roser of Our World In Data takes a close look at historical economies. I&#8217;m drawing attention here to the &#8216;Malthusian Trap&#8217; section, not the parts after that. He makes the case that pre-industrial economies are essentially Malthusian: new technology doesn&#8217;t improve people&#8217;s lives, it just results in more very poor people. I don&#8217;t think [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-1id","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4973\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}