Friday, September 14, 2012

Malthus' Vision

Although the population increase improves the labor force during the Industrial Revolution, Malthus criticizes the lower class for reproducing beyond their limits insisting upon preventive and positive checks in order to create a balance between population and food. During the Industrial Revolution the population increased because times were successful and people had work. However, the population was greater than the amount of food available per citizen so Malthus, a clergyman, proposed two solutions. First, he indicated that: "preventive check, is peculiar to men, and arises from that distincitve superiority in his reasoning faculties which enables to calculate distant consequences" (97). In other words, preventive check is based on reproducing depending on the amount of resources available. In second place, positive consists on: "every cause arising from vice and misery, which in any degree contributes to shorten the population" (99). In any case, both solutions imply a decrease of population of the lower class, since wealthy people can afford to have children and diseases usually attack the lower class, because he believes that the overpopulation is created by the lack of control of the lower class.

8 comments:

  1. Hola Claraaa I think that your paragraph is very good. Something that you could maybe do to improve it is to talk about why the poor/lower class is a large part of the extreme population increase and why malthus blames them.

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  2. I like how you used quotes to specifically describe what Malthus believes and also your use of the world 'solution.' I think you could go into a little bit more depth in your analysis of said quotes and why he believes it's the lower class's fault.

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  3. hola, me gusta mucho pero usted podria explicar como los " poor people " no son inteligentes y ellos no van a escuela. bien

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  4. I like how you talk about the preventative checks but you do not go into how it affects the poor which will make your argument much stronger overall you paragraph was very solid.

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  5. Hi Clara (aka clarbear). I think that your thesis is great and captures the essence of Malthus' opinions well. In your paragraph, though, you could try to explain a little bit more about how preventative checks will affect the population growth and how it will be beneficial. Also, in your last sentence, you created a sense of sympathy for the lower class, and that is not how Malthus thought of the lower class.

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  6. Nice paragraph Clara. You might want to consider adding how Malthus believes that the poor could rise up in rank, or at least not punish the rest of society.

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  7. I think the use of quotes is really good and you give nice background to what is happening at the time. Maybe at the end you could conclude in the last sentence what it is he wants to do to fix the population.

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  8. Thank you guys, ur feedback was great ill wotk on it over the weekend!!!

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