Escaping the Malthusian Trap: What an amazing graph-in-motion by Kieran Healy. Malthus believed that as population in a given locale rises, a point is reached at which food supply can’t keep up, which then leads to a decline in population. And if you look at the early moments of this visualization, you see what the Trap looks like (with the added complication of a severe drop in population as a result of the Black Death). But then things start to change.