'In his 1798 work, “An Essay on the Principles of Population,” Malthus proposes that populations are largely limited by the availability of resources, but also recognises that populations will grow as production of resources grows.
Further, populations can increase exponentially and can “out-pace” the increase of production of resources, and when this happens, the outcome is resource shortage. This can result in forced population decline (a“population crash”), or negative social outcomes, including famine, poverty, and even violent conflict. While this is a relatively simple idea, it is especially compelling, largely because it is so simple, and the results are rather obvious and predictable.'