A Theory of Scarcity

In and among the silliness, snark, and general smartass, Urinetown occasionally tries to touch briefly on more serious topics, if only for the purpose of making the audience feel uncomfortable.  The script adopts as its patron saint one Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, a 19th-century English scholar, who wrote extensively on theories of population change.

Malthus published his most famous work, An Essay on the Principle of Population, in 1798, to generally scathing reviews and heated controversy.  The paper sparked a national debate in Britain, as to what the "ideal" population growth rate ought to be, and how it affected the national economy.  Ultimately, this debate led to the institution of the first national census in Britain, an event which has continued to be held every 10 years to the present date.

While Malthus has been much maligned, especially by some in the present day, his theory suggested nothing more revolutionary than that population growth was somewhat self-regulating; that as population grew, additional stresses are placed on natural resources, and if allowed to grow unchecked, that population would naturally be slowed by the famine and disease which would surely result.  Scholars who point out the obvious un-sustainability of a people's lifestyle are rarely popular, and Malthus was no exception in his time.  "Malthusian catastrophe" was the derogatory phrase given to his population theories, and even today there are those who denigrate his work for political reasons.

Urinetown, a show that does not shy away from such a ready-made controversy, is set in a dystopian future where water is so scarce that a tax must be imposed for peeing.  A Malthusian catastrophe befalls the entire cast near the end of the show, prompting Little Sally to wonder aloud, "What kind of a musical is this?"  Lockstock shouts directly at the audience at one point, calling them out on their resource-wasting ways.  As the entire cast begins to die off due to the inevitable drought at the end of Act II, Lockstock bellows one final, "Hail, Malthus!", an homage to the English visionary who accurately predicted how the Urinetown tale would ultimately end.