Evidence receipt / belief
Published · transcript-backedJoe Studwell: belief
18 Feb 2026 Conversations with Tyler Joe Studwell on Africa, Asia, and What Development Actually Requires
“I tend to not get much further when I think about this than being profoundly amused by the fact that we have spent the last 250 years being obsessed with the Malthusian view of the world and believing that we’re going to breed ourselves into a disaster.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Joe Studwell
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- belief
- Recorded
- 18 Feb 2026
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
Transcript context
…But UK — well, Britain, we’d have to call it at that time — had fantastic demographics, especially early to mid-19th century, and East Asia doesn’t. Should we just way downgrade our estimate of East Asian futures? Is there a positive scenario for any of the main countries? Yes, I think it certainly looks difficult. I tend to not get much further when I think about this than being profoundly amused by the fact that we have spent the last 250 years being obsessed with the Malthusian view of the world and believing that we’re going to breed ourselves into a disaster. And of course, at the end of the day, there never was a Malthusian risk, at least in practical terms, but depopulation is way more serious than population growth ever was, I think. For the world as a whole, how well do you feel industrial policy has worked?…
Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.