The Principle of Population for the 21st Century: The Never Coming Stationary State

Abstract

Forward-thinking is one of the most enchanting areas in economics. While Malthus and Ricardo agreed on the gloomy vision of the future, Mill described the wider stationary state and foresaw it in a more optimistic way. Space sciences and improvements in our technology provided us with the solution decades ago, although economics have not noticed this possible solution of the classical stationary state until now. This article incorporates this knowledge into economics. Calories integrate the supply of means of production and the demand for means of consumption in one market. The stationary state could come only if the demand for means of subsistence grows faster than the supply of means of production. Increasing scarcity of free calories exceeding the minimal required volume of it preventing the malnutrition and death will push the calorie price up while economy will move towards the stationary state. But where to get the land when the very last piece of it -even the deserts -will have been already cultivated? Increasing scarcity of land opens possibility for firms to make profit from producing land. Thus, the classical stationary state is only an illusion.

Death Rates in the Calorie Model

“…All possible deaths were derived. The death rate was expressed because the original article (Machay, 2012) did not anticipate it as well as deaths resulting from imperfections and, thus, preceding the stationary state itself. This paper provided proofs of seven Malthusian theorems.…”

“…Since the original theorem derived from the original Calorie model in the article (Machay, 2012) states that the rate of growth of population must be larger than the growth of technological level for the stationary state to occur it is easy to prove that for the stationary state to take place earlier in the first society alpha must be less then half of the available land for cultivation (as proved in 17). This is once again very intuitive and only proves elegance of the Calorie model and its conformity with the Classical School.…”

“…The original article (Machay, 2012) develops and uses the Calorie model to explain the terraformation production as a consequence of rational economic behavior of economic agents. While the solution to stationary state offered in the article seems rather distant from the time point of view it is obvious that the deaths from malnutrition did and will take place sooner than the stationary state itself or its solution in the form of terraformation.…”

“…This is one aspect that is missing in the original article (Machay, 2012) because the author did not even consider the possibility of reaching the stationary state.…”

“…The original Malthusian framework have been formulated quite recently in the form of the Calorie model (Machay, 2012) which builds strictly on Malthusian thoughts and within the Classical School approach using modern mathematical tools to unify the Classical/Malthusian demand for and supply of food. The Calorie model is just a mere formalization of ideas of Malthus.…”