On Sun, 21 Mar 2004 00:38:54 +0000 (UTC), Sander Vesik
wrote, in part:
John Savard wrote:

Why should I have to "prove" the obvious, whereas the obviously silly
notion that a larger population, in which resources such as arable
land, water, and metals would be driven to higher prices, being
scarce, and human labor, being common, would become cheaper, would
lead to prosperity and not poverty is not given the burden of proof?

No, you have to prove it because you are using an extremely silly
Malthusian notion that has no basis in practice and to which any
number of counterexamples exist - while being suported at best by
one example in which total destruction of basicly all of the territory
of a country in going after a single mineral resource has left the
country in poverty after depletion accompanied by squandering of money.

Belgium is a country with modern technology and which is wealthy, so
of course they can engage in manufacturing.

Things like raw materials, energy, and arable land are *vital* inputs
to productivity. And the number of people in the population represent
how many ways the output of production must be divided; if that
fraction of the production isn't enough, then some people will not
have enough.

I have not denied that resources can go further when you have
technology and capital. But these are also not unlimited at any one
time.

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html