For decades, the dominant narrative surrounding population growth has been one of alarm. Thinkers like Malthus warned that population growth would cause mass starvation and ecological collapse. Ehrlich’s 1968 book The Population Bomb famously predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve in the 1970s due to overpopulation.

In this week’s column, I’d like to discuss an important contribution to libertarian theory by the philosophers Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl in their book, Norms of Liberty (2005). This book has meant a lot to me over the years, and I read the manuscript before publication.