Pete, See below
Harry ****************************** Henry George School of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 (818) 352-4141 ****************************** -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of pete Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2011 8:32 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] The rise of miserity On Sat, 15 Jan 2011, Harry Pollard wrote: > > Actually, in 1979, Henry George in Progress and Poverty trounced > Malthusianism and properly so. I doubt his opinion would change if he > were to be alive today. When I began teaching in the US, I would > divide the population of the earth into families of four and put them > in single family homes in the State of Texas. They weren't crowded. > Probably, today I would have to put them into fourplexes (four > apartment buildings) - I haven't checked it but it's easy enough to do. The absurdity of this comment is stupefying. Are you telling us that you are one of those physics-defficient economists who believe that endless growth is possible on a finite planet? Populations limits are not about whether it is possible for us all to Stand on Zanzibar. I can assure you that there is not a tiny fraction of the fresh water needed to support seven billion people in Texas, but it is not the supply side which limits populations. Whatever fresh water they had to start with would soon be polluted to the point of unusable by their wastes, which would also destroy the land, and the oceans. //////////////////////////// One thing at a time is a good rule. The first wrongful impression that must be dealt with is that humanity is like ants on an anthill with hardly any space left for anyone. So, we use a simple illustration to show that Mankind is not running out of room, in fact there is plenty of room for everyone, so that's not the problem. Many economists seem to be on the endless growth routine. I'm not, but I know why they adopt this position - why they have to adopt this position.. As to water in Texas, I suppose they have the whole of the rest of the world from which to draw water. If we had an efficient economy and sensible governmental management, supporting such an artificial situation would possibly be work out, As we have neither of those things, I don't think much of the Texans' chances. //////////////////////////// It doesn't really matter where the 7B people are, they require more inputs than the biosphere can possibly deliver while still absorbing their excretions, both bodily and industrially. It may take a while before our current poulation overshoot really rears up to bite us, but the day is coming, and it is likely already too late to avert it. We are currently vacuuming up the oceans, and there is very shortly going to be a nasty situation when all the asian nations that rely heavily on seafood are going to see their fishboats coming back empty cuz there's nothing left to catch. Our "green revolution" agriculture is totally dependent on refilling the nutrients stripped from the soil in crops, using fertilizers processed with fossil fuels, and resources whose low cost high concentration sources are almost depleted. Soon remaining phosphate sources will be low-grade, requiring far more processing, just when the supply of fossils fuel reaches critical depletion. Well, hey, we can always use other energy sources, right? except that there is no planning in place to meet the impending demand in a timely fashion, and other sources usually means solar, which has a serious density limit; collection of solar energy will compete with agriculture for space. And again, it is the sinks rather than the sources that will really do us in. 7 Billion people trying to live a technological lifestyle generate an immense amount of toxic swill, which is poisoning our garden. Harvests suffer in consequence. CO2 is just one of the excretions whose effects happen to appear relatively rapidly. There are lots of others, and we will continue to discover them to our dismay. //////////////////////////// Doesn't look good. does it? The way to handle the oceans is to restore our common ownership and set up a property right Global organization to lease out fishing grounds to fishermen. We can sell them areas where they may fish along with limits to how much they can take until the fishing populations recover. The best of this is that the fishermen are automatically against poachers. If they have paid rent for a section of the ocean, they won't take kindly to free riders. An analogy occurred in Botswana where the natives were given ownership rights to the elephants. They sold licenses to hunters and made sure the animals that were killed were the older and unhealthy animals. They obviously were opposed to poachers. The elephant population increased. In Kenya, where poachers were shot (mostly the victims turned out to be local villagers) a less market based approach reduced the elephant population in extraordinary fashion. It's not starvation, or toxic sinks that are the problem. We can handle anything we are likely to run into - or could. The trouble is our governmental structure which seems more designed to obstruct reforms than to encourage them. A favorite phrase for government at the moment down here refers to finding a can in the road. You could pick it up and dump it in a garbage can, or you could kick it down the road for someone else to deal with. The pattern for all levels of government seems to be to kick the can down the road. The recent Governator of California, Arnold, came to power full of aspirations, but finished by 'kicking the can down the road'. The new Governor has great plans but will California government continue to kick the can? Probably - in fact, make that certainly. We can't get our potholes filled, so don't expect any important things like a possible food shortage to attract their attention (in any event, the Feds are too busy growing corn to burn in our car engines). So, you are right about the problems, but they are not natural limits on the earth's ability to support us. They are happening because the people we elect and appoint to handle such problems are failures and we can do little to change things. The Tea Party people may be able to force some things to change, but they are fairly weak and I don't know whether they can be bought off. Also, I suspect they have nothing too positive to promote. They are mainly critics of the mess. Are well, sanfairyan, as the British Tommies used to say. Harry //////////////////////////// -Pete _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
