The odd thing is that the way out of the Malthusian trap turned out to be education for women and availability of birth control.

The Victorians believed that education for women made them less likely to have children. Were the Victorians must making things up, or did they observe a real pattern? In any case, they thought something was bad which, so far, has turned out to look like a good thing.

So far as I know, the thing that controls bad governments is a middle class-- they're people with something to lose and at least a few resources for protecting it.

The thing is, these are weirdly idealistic and indirect solutions. They aren't reaching down and rearranging things to aim directly at a goal.

If I'm on to a real pattern, this doesn't mean that charities to save lives are a bad idea, but it would imply that increasing large numbers of people's access to choice is where the big but hard to anticipate victories are.