Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 53 of the late, great Harold Demsetz’s excellent 2008 book, From Economic Man to Economic System:

Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus differed in their forecasts of mankind’s future. Smith (1776), in his Wealth of Nations, offered an optimistic view, basing this on his understanding of the new economic system that began its emergence in England during his lifetime. Malthus, who wrote his famous Essay on Population twenty-two years after Smith’s great work, offered a pessimistic view, basing this on his understanding of the past. At the time Malthus wrote, the evidence in support of his view was nothing less than what then was the entire prior history of mankind as we now know it. Smith’s view, in contrast, was a product of his vision and a bare few decades of data.