Thomas Malthus' most well known work An Essay on the Principle of Population was published in 1798, although he was the author of many pamphlets and other longer writings. The main ideas of his argument on the human condition were radically opposed to current thinking at the time. He argued that increases in population would eventually diminish the ability of the world to feed itself and based this conclusion on the thesis that populations expand in such a way as to overtake the development of sufficient land for crops.

The main idea of Malthus' article as described above is analogous to