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Re: Lebensraum
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John Perkins
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Nov 05, 2003 16:43 PST
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At 20:05 05/11/03 +1100, vyu-@mail.labyrinth.net.au wrote:
If I may offer some comments on the article referenced by Valerie, I would
suggest that to base views on human population growth solely on biological
or sociological interpretations, but ignore economic ones, is to rather
miss the point about what has happened over the last two hundred years.
Malthus, who was an economist, had the view that as population grew, there
would develop a scarcity of resources, particluarly food, and this scarcity
would drive prces up. At the same time the larger population would provide
an over abaundence of labour, driving wages down. This double squeeze would
drive real wages below starvation level, causing mass starvation and death,
thus reducing the population, and restoring balance. It was because of this
bleak scenario that economics was called the dismal science. These cycles
did in fact occur throughout history, all over the world, but the last one
of any magnitude had already occured by the time Malthus was writing his
book.
Since the industrial revolution, population has grown exponentially, (ie at
an approximately constant rate, compounding). But so have average real
incomes per capita. How? Because technical progress has allowed
productivity to rise at an even faster rate, equal to the sum of population
and income growth. Because of this, resource use percapita has not risen
exponentially, and in some respects, because of greater efficiency, may not
have risen at all.
Of course these are broad trends an there are anecdotal exceptions, but
technical progress, the fruit of science, has been the great benefactor of
humanity, and thankfully, we may confidently expect that technical progress
will continue.
John
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