One of my best friends, Rob, told me to look into Malthusianism after reading my last post. I know I've heard the concept thrown around before. The term has been rattling around in my head all day and I couldn't place it until I did some research.

Wikipedia told me Malthusianism was born out of Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus' 1798 writings, An Essay on the Principle of Population. It is the idea that certain "checks" need to occur to keep the population stabilized and sustainable. Some "checks" make sense for a number of reasons, like access to contraception, while others border on or dive right into the darkness.

A Malthusian catastrophe is, according to Wikipedia, "a prediction of a forced return to subsistence-level conditions once population growth has outpaced agricultural production – that there will be too many people and not enough food." It could be a condom or it could be war, starvation, or a plague.

Later I realized Malthusianism is the best way to describe one of my favorite stand-up comedian's recurring bits of population control. Enter Bill Burr: