Malthus was the first to apply math and reasoning to the well-known phenomena of population cycles.   I doubt anyone is denying this well documented aspect of human history.  Economists who are taught to believe that if there is a demand, then a supply will satisfy it, can't quite get their heads around diseconomies of scale.  

The more you try and pull out of a declining resource base, the higher unit costs go.  And Malthus would be all to happy to point out that once you have eaten your seed grain, a population crashes back down to a sustainable level.  Usually the crash results from an overstressed resource base meeting a climate wiggle.

Only the people who live in the dreamworld of fiat currency and think they can print themselves out of any problem, call for endless growth in our finite world.

Cheers,
John Meyer