A recent discussion about limited resources and economic growth and their relationship as it affects our sustainability got me thinking about a book I just finished last week: The Logic of Life
. A truly fascinating book that covers topics from race discrimination, crime, CEO pay and gambling to gambling and urban demographics and much more. All this is enveloped in a frame work by which seemingly irrational outcomes and occurrences are quite rational when seen through the prism of rational choice theory, game theory, tournament theory and other constructs. The book is also available on audio. The book is not in any way partisan, polemical or shrill. A great read for the curious mind. As an aside, I may discuss other chapters in the near future but hadn't really had the motivation as of yet.
But I did get to thinking about the very last chapter during this aforementioned discussion about economic growth.
In the last chapter, A Million Years of Logic, Harford departs a little from the previous eight chapters in that he takes a broader view on the world rather than zero in on my precise daily and personal issues. It is a bolder chapter.
For the matter in question, a very subtle and complex one IMO, we jump to page 209 (12:30 from end on the downloadable audiobook).
He refers to a notable 1798 work by economist Thomas Malthus called An Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthus based his point on two axioms:
1. Food is necessary for existence
2. Sex and the urge to reproduce are rather constant.
IOW, people have to eat and will always have sex and babies. Simple enough.
Next he suggests: "Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio."
He assumes population growth would always be checked our ability to produce food. Without technological progress, long run population growth would be nearly zero...like for other animals. Of course, Malthus knew technology was improving but assumed technological improvement grew arithmetically---"10, 20, 30, 40 , 50, 60, 70...etc.", while population grew geometrically--"2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128...etc." IOW, in this numeric example, people would run out of food between 64 and 128.
Says Harford:
The implication of Mathus's analysis is not apocalypse, but the more prosaic conclusion that while potential population growth could be geometric, actual population growth will be arithmetic as human fecundity constantly bumps against the steady progress in human technology.
On this point, as Harford shows, Malthus was very, very wrong. The truth was just starting to become discernible during the time of Malthus and he was enable to see it in real time. It's not even the pill that shot down Malthus's idea but rather:
His mistake was to assume that technology progresses arithmetically.
In 1993, Michael Kremer of Harvard published an explanation of why Malthus was wrong. He boiled it down to one simple equation:
The rate of technological progress is proportional to the world's population.
Any man at any point in time is just as likely to offer a life altering idea...an axe, fire, a wheel, crop rotation, the espresso machine, video porn, Viagra, electricity, gene splicing, Flash Player, Google, cable TV, aspirin etc. Ideas are shared and spread to all. As a greater number of people share the idea, the idea spreads faster and contributes with other spreading ideas into newer ideas. Grossly simple but very true.
According to fuzzy math and some speculation, the idea is that in 300,000 bc we had one such idea every 1000 years, in 1800 once every year, in 1930 once every six months and today we get about every 2 months....spreading, compounding and making their mark on the future.
Says Harford on all this:
It's an absurd, grotesquely oversimplified model; it also fits the data perfectly.
Malthus seemed justified by one million years of history but didn't see the real rate because it was during his life that the real geometric rate began to barley show itself. From a small number, the difference between arithmetic growth and geometric growth is not always visible. But once its compounding power takes wind, the difference is staggering over the long run.
Concludes, Harford:
It remains to be seen whether...global warming, overfishing, soil erosion, or the end of oil will eventually outwit human technology and bring livings standards crashing down....So far, there is little sign of that. Most commodity prices fell during the 20th century, suggesting that despite ever-higher demand, better technology was winning the day.
Granted it's not with a whimsical "Oh, problem solved!" attitude that I approach this whole matter. Not at all. Do remember that my response, in that cited discussion, to the question:
Does the "economic growth is always good" equation assume unlimited resources?...
I answered "No.". But what I did try to convey is that economic growth, IMO, assumes exponential technological progress, which fuels unlimited possibilities for the resources we have and shapes limitless future possibilities and realties. Compared to man at any other time, we are far more resourceful and the relationship between resources invested to outcomes produced is the most efficient ever...and will be dwarfed further by future generations and as populations continue to rise, we should expect the churning out of ideas to speed up even faster.
Now, in some absolute sense, of course, we have less of any number finite resources at our disposal. But that, in itself, is rather meaningless to our future prospects. But when I say resources, I refer to everything we use: finite fossil fuels, renewable resources, products of human ingenuity etc....
But when I say we should never over-judge or over-assume what the future holds in store based on current knowledge, I mean just that. At any point in the past, if we assume geometrical population growth and economic growth without accounting for technological and exponential idea sharing component, we make the same error as Malthus. Could you imagine, sustaining our current world on year 1800 know-how? even 1900? Of course, not. Methods, resources, innovation and know-how and the geometric growth of life altering ideas make our current sustainability impossible with the limits of technology at those times. Cost constraints, cost effectiveness, innovation and other real-time realities play an enormous role in guiding our future growth and choices we make. A somewhat Hayekian view.
Comments welcome.
__________________________
Great discussion;
my only criticism - or at least a request for more info, although if the author hasn't done it himself it's probably way too much research for either you or me to dig up on the internet - is that available resources are treated here as a non-functioning variable: that is, the rate of technological development is treated as a fact in itself, without a comparison to availability of resources to work with.
I'm having trouble wording this, so I'll try to give a concrete (but hypothetical) example. Let's say we're talking about arable land for farming. Someone arguing about diminishing resources might point out that we face a steady decline in arable land, both through natural processes (desertification) and human intervention (pollution, use of land for non-farming purposes). You can point to the way technology grows steadily as well, increasing the efficiency for every acre, and thus balancing out the decline in available land. That's a fair point, but if the decrease in availability continues at the same rate, you eventually hit zero: and no amount of technology can change that.
You might argue that the technology will shift to another resource - maybe hydroponic farms - and that by the time arable farmland becomes obsolete (as if that were possible), we wouldn't need it anymore anyway. True, but the level of available freshwater has also been in steady decline...
In other words, even though technology might develop rapidly enough to shift resources, there's also a totality of Resources (capital R) that only decreases (yay entropy!) Unless the technology model is putting us on other planets, I don't see how this problem is solved. Even the most efficient use of every possible local resource leaves us with a net loss. Technology increasingly minimizes that loss, but cannot eliminate it entirely.
(Incidentally, this was part of Hawking's point that the only way the human race can survive is by expansion to other planets. He was mocked for that, but he was right. For other reasons, as well.)
(Also, I use parentheses entirely too often.)
__________________________Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
Progress
Technological progress, while it can result in increased resource possibilities and decreased resource use (solar power, energy-efficient appliances), can just as easily result in increased resource use (plasma TVs, Hummers). We are certainly using more resources per capita now than at any time in the past, and I would argue that that is a direct result of economic growth and technological advances. I just don't think there is enough economic incentive to conserve resources until those resources are sufficiently scarce.
I do think that a sustainable, or nearly sustainable*, economy is a possibility, but I don't see market forces alone leading that way, especially with the attitude of "don't worry, we will always find new resources." At least not unless market forces take into account all the actual costs of resource depletion (which I am not sure is even possible, because I do not believe all costs can be measured in dollars).
*A nearly sustainable economy would give us more time to expand to pico's other planets! On that I agree with pico and Hawking - it's the only way humanity will survive and flourish.
__________________________We are the environment. There is no distinction. What we do to the earth we do to ourselves. —David Suzuki
The course that nature takes.....
could also include some superbug that cuts back the population, and therefore increases the resources available to those left behind.
After the Black Plague in Europe, the elite were forced to till their own land to survive. The lush ground of Italy, that had previously been used to harvest only necessary crops for feeding a larger populace, was cultivated with luxury food items, such a sweet crisp apples and the farmers were able to experiment growing many varieties of 'innovative' foods.
__________________________It is the economy, stupid.
Supply and Demand was still pretty important
The amount of land was the same, but the number of laborers went way down. As a result, the land owners weren't able to get away with the same level of oppression. Another land owner would be happy to offer better working conditions and a higher cut of the proceeds than when there were before.
Under feudalism?
I think the way it worked the carrot meant basically less stick. With lower number of serfs working the same arable land the landlord was less likely to punish them in a way that would prevent them from performing free labor on his behalf. But surely they'd have to work more to cover all the work that used to be performed by more people. Craftsmen, artisans and merchants whose competitors died in the plague might have benefited from it but all peasants always got was a stick - working for a particular landlord wasn't exactly a choice.
__________________________Sic semper tyrannis
Not sure if that is true
immediately after the plague started disappating.
I thought the population was decreased so drastically in some areas...... that some poor could just go adopt a farm because so many of them were deserted.
The rich elite were left holding the bag with no laborers.
I also think that the Catholic Church walled itself off from the Plague by sealing out the infected and the well could pay a fee to be safe inside the walls. This is where the Catholics started making money.......!
This is all from memory so I could be way off.
__________________________It is the economy, stupid.
Serfs could flee
Even under feudalism.
From wikipedia
Another interesting side affect was that untended land could get turned into grazing land, making meat more available (and the higher protein led to a healthier, less stick-able peasantry.)
innovation depends upon...
First, as a caveat, I doubt that innovation can really be quantified, so I suspect that it is total BS for that guy to claim that it is proportional to population.
Second, as I remember Malthus's analysis, he totally ignored the prospect that technology/capital could increase the efficiency of natural resource use. At least, I think any reasonable model would assume an increase in total productivity as a result of increased population--just that per capita productivity would drop as fewer resources are available per capita.
Finally, I suspect that innovation is more connected to total disposable income than to raw population size. Of course, historically, more people -> more produce -> more disposable income. As long as human populations were expanding into hospitable habitatit (where marginal land is just as good as already settled land) this linear relationship would hold.
As long as our society has some disposable income for investment in technology/capital, we have hope that it would increase our productivity to account for resource depletion. However, if we ever reach a point where we no longer have disposable income, we can't rely on investments to save our asses.
To summarize, I think this needs to be viewed as a dynamic system with certain tipping points in it, rather than being a simple linear relationship (population -> prosperity)
__________________________"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was
made a man." --Frederick Douglas