Let's face it. Economists have a reputation for being a miserable lot. Always looking to play party pooper when confronted with the unbridled optimism of the stock jockeys. Hence the pejorative moniker of 'Dismal Scientists' has been hard to shake over the years. As someone who originally trained as an actuary - ultimately I couldn't stand the excitement - this has always seemed a tad unfair. For in defence of the profession, most of us are more than capable of coming up with our share of positive comments. However, it appears we only can muster a real audience when waste products are becoming juxtaposed with revolving ventilation devices. And if you've been plying your trade in Asia in recent years, these have been somewhat regular occurrences. So Dismal Scientists we will remain known to all. But whom should we thank for bestowing such a gloomy handle. Step forward Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Scottish historian, critic and sociological writer. Carlyle's character and philosophy were full of contradictions. He is justly regarded as a superb historian and insightful critic but at the same time he was a vociferous advocate of authoritarian government and poured scorn on those who proffered scientific explanations for the world around them. Darwin attracted his vitriol as did the "Respectable Professors of the Dismal Science" - the great economists of the age1.
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.1Latter Day Pamphlet, No.1 (1850).

One of the discipline's great proponents especially raised his ire - perhaps fairly so - the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834). Malthus' view of the world, set out in his 1798 classic "An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society", was indeed a bleak one. Because humans reproduced geometrically yet food production only rose arithmetically, mankind was doomed to be locked into a vicious, perpetual circle of population explosion leading to food scarcity leading to population contraction.

Set against the backdrop of Europe's history of feudalism, disease and warfare, plus the depredations and dislocations of the Industrial Revolution, this may have appeared to be a compelling although gloomy prognosis and indeed, it is a theory that still has resonance today 2. However, the theory ignored or or oblivious to man's potential to innovate and raise the productivity of scarce resources. Indeed the forces of discovery and invention unleashed by the Enlightenment and the Reformation had already accommodated rise in the global population from 300 million in 1350 to 600 million in 1700 to 900 million in 1800. Moreover, by the time Carlyle was in his writing prime, economics was already moving to a more optimistic creed led, ironically, by the utopian socialism of his friend John Stuart Mill.
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.2 Lester Brown is a purveyor of a similar view in a modern China context.