The Reverend Malthus Prize for being absolutely 100% correct

An informal and occasional prize to be sure but one we think worthwhile.

We generally think of the Reverend Malthus as being entirely wrong. After all, the last two centuries have been proof perfect that technological advance can indeed raise the living standards of all, substantially and sustainably, rather than just turning up as more people living in the same old subsistence style. The thing is though, Rev. Malthus was entirely correct for all of history up to the moment he sat down to write. Other than this past couple of hundred years it was true that economic growth turned up as just more people. In parts of the world it continued to be - India’s GDP was very much larger when the British left than when they arrived. But that it was spread across some four times as many people meant that GDP per capita hardly budged. That is, it’s not that Malthusian growth stopped happening, it’s that non-Malthusian growth started, in some places, happening.

Which gives us the outline of the prize. Someone who was entirely correct given history and knowledge to that time. But who managed to write down, insist upon, that truth at just the moment is stopped being true.

At which point we give you Jean Gimpel, from his lovely little book “The Medieval Machine”. The recording of how the early middle ages, rather than the later renaissance, incorporated the sort of technological advance that led to the later Industrial Revolution we find most interesting. But it’s this from the preface that qualifies for the prize:

We are witnessing a sharp arrest in technological impetus, save in the military field: it was in the declining Middle Ages that the cannon was developed, Innovations - that is, inventions that have been financed, tested and made commercially available - are few and far between, a fact particularly remarkable in the pharmaceutical industry. Even computers have not spread into every home in the country, as was forecast. Like every previous civilisation, we have reached a plateau.

…

While I hope that the reader of The Medieval Machine will want to pursue his own comparisons, I must point out one alarming contrast. The economic depression that struck Europe in the fourteenth century was followed ultimately by economic and technological recovery. But the depression we have moved into will have no end, We can anticipate centuries of decline and exhaustion. There will be no further industrial revolution in the cycles of our Western civilisation.

It’s that this was published in 1976 which qualifies it. It’s entirely true that the computer was not in every home at this point. Yet Intel was founded in 1968, they created the first commercial microprocessor in 1971, Apple was founded in 1976, the Apple I released that year, the Apple II - actually useful - in 1977. The TRS -80 and Commodore PET in 1977, the IBM PC in 1981. The mobile phone, which is by far the most widespread computer today, was demonstrated in 1973, Arpanet was up and running by 1971.

That statement about computers and technological advance was made at the exact moment that it became untrue.

We welcome further entries for this very occasional prize…..