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Title: An Essay on the Principle of Population (Oxford World's Classics) by T. R. Malthus, Thomas Robert Malthus, Geoffrey Gilbert ISBN: 0-19-283747-8 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Bigger than life
Comment: The reverend Thomas Robert Malthus is one of these figures that influences, in his case for good, generations to come. The concepts he developed, which is not the same to say that he discovered the fundamentals of these concepts, are of such working capability, that they can be used even today on a daily basis, some 200 + years after the first publication of his seminal and most important book, certainly one of the most important texts of all times. His name turned itself into an important adjective, malthusian, sometimes associated to a lot of misconceptions and misuse, mainly due to undue interpretations of things Malthus did not said, or did write with a different manifest meaning. Troughout his lifetime, Malthus, already a recognised and famous man, had to revise a lot of editions of his works in order to precise what he meant to say.
Dipping down into the original malthusian fountain is, in this way, a pretty much refreshing and inspiring experience, shunning aside the many bad interpretations attached to his original thinking by second hand reading. As a plus, the book presents at the end two extremely beatifully written chapters on the philosophical reasons behind Good and Evil, a necessary explanation in a revolutionary theory that could be interpreted as intrinsically evilsome. To add content and lustre to all Malthus wrote, one has to remind that the greatest economist of the XX century, John Maynard Keynes, felt himself philosophically and theoretically affiliated with Malthus in a very great scale, to the point of saying that, if Malthus had been better understood, the world would not had to suffer the weaknesses of David Ricardo's theories.
Rating: 5
Summary: The most important essay.
Comment: This small and often overlooked essay by Thomas Malthus is probably one of the most important essays ever written.
Way back in 1798 Malthus wrote this essay to expose how human population is still being kept in check by mother nature. Famine, plague and war pop up whenever a population gets too high.
The essay has been overlooked mostly because of the stance Malthus takes in this book towards the poor. He suggests that when you give money to people who don't work, you help them have children. This increases the population without increasing production of food. Also, by increasing the standard of living of these people, you then qualify more people to receive without working, exacerbating the situation. Malthus clearly supports workhouses to welfare in this essay.
This essay had influenced two notable people. First is Charles Dickens. In 'A Christmas Carol' you read how Scrooge said, "that if the poor would not go into workhouses, they might as well die and decrease the surplus population". This was aimed straight at Malthus. The second person he influenced with this essay is Darwin. While reading Malthus, Darwin realized that population pressure was that "natural selector" that made evolution possible.
If you want to read a piece of history, read this essay. If you then want to get a more modern and thorough take on the subject read Marvin Harris's "Cannibals and Kings".
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Title: Wealth of Nations (Great Minds Series) by Adam Smith ISBN: 0879757051 Publisher: Prometheus Books Pub. Date: 01 December, 1991 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Leviathan (Penguin Classics) by Thomas Hobbes, T. Hobbs, C. B. MacPherson ISBN: 0140431950 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 1982 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought) by John Locke, Laslett Peter ISBN: 0521357306 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 1988 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Great Minds Series) by John Maynard Keynes ISBN: 1573921394 Publisher: Prometheus Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Development As Freedom by Amartya Sen ISBN: 0385720270 Publisher: Anchor Books/Doubleday Pub. Date: 15 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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