Who are Malthusians and Cornucopians? They are not one of the people known by Gulliver in his fantastic travels. Thomas Malthus was an English economist, who lived between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 1798 he published a pretty famous book "An Essay on the Principle of Population". In this essay argued that increasing population proceeded faster than the increase of capacity food production: If appropriate containment policies to counter the increase in population had not been implemented, soon society would be poorer and later started to decline resulting in the complete disappearance of humanity.

This theory was later applied to the sources of energy, first to the coal and then to the oil. The theory gave rise to the philosophical movement of Malthusianism which affirms the use of birth control to prevent the impoverishment of humanity. It's an "apocalyptic" philosophy which influenced importnat economists of the twentieth century as Keynes and Ricardo. To these so-called apocalyptic contrast cornucopians. One of the first to criticize the Malthusian theory was an American nineteenth century philosopher, Ralph Emerson.  It's well known, Americans are incurably more optimistic than the "old continent" people. Emerson affirmed that Malthus forgot to consider in his thinking the wonders that  human mind is able to create and invent. 

Probably in the biblical story of Genesis, which says that God created man in "His own image", just alluded to the mind of man and woman: in them there is a shining of divinity (and not only in their mind ... but that's another topic). The term Cornucopians derives by the name of a mythical object: the cornucopia, the "horn of abundance". The myth says that the horn was lost from the river Achelous in the fight against Hercules for the conquest of the beautiful Deianira. Hercules succeeded in defeating the river-god and conquering the woman who would become his wife.

How many symbols in this story! Hercules, the man generated by the king of the gods. He is a demigod too, image and reflection of the divine shining. There's the river. The water, the symbol of life, but death too. The Christian baptism, a ritual we see in other religious cultures too, is a symbol of passage. Passage from death to life. Baptism means immersion: plunge into water means to die. To come out from water means  back to life. A prophecy of the Resurrection. There is Deianira, the beauty. There is love. The love of Hercules for his future bride. But even the love of the river god for a woman. Both gods. Both fell in love with a woman. It represents the love of God for humanity. And from this fight was born the cornucopia. The horn that produces food and flowers in abundance. Endless. Forever. Yes, I have no doubts. I prefer to be a Cornucopian.

As soon as possible for further details...