Malthus Was Right Until The Industrial Revolution

Malthus was correct as a historian: charting English population versus prosperity from roughly 1200 to 1800 shows a pendulum where people were only prosperous when few in number, because a hard ceiling on extractable resources (chiefly food) capped wellbeing—until the industrial revolution broke that ceiling by harnessing fossil-fuel energy, allowing population and prosperity to rise together for the first time.