"This universe is finite. Its resources, finite. If life is left unchecked, life will cease to exist." So declares the Marvel supervillain Thanos near the end of Avengers: Infinity War, when he destroys half of humanity with the snap of his fingers.
In Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet, Marian L. Tupy of the Cato Institute and Gale L. Pooley of Brigham Young University–Hawaii note that Thanos was channeling millennia-old critiques of progress and population growth. In the best-known version of this argument, the English political economist Thomas Malthus contended that an increase in the number of people inevitably means famine and starvation.
