Human beings have an insatiable desire for more stuff; this is not a function of capitalism.Originally Posted by AmericanPride
There is an absolute contradiction between the desire to alleviate poverty and the desire to reduce pressure on the resource base. There is no "solution" or "answer" to that contradiction, certainly none that the US can persuade or compel others to adopt. It's one of those things we can only manage as we go along, to the extent that we can, as one nation among many.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
Kill! Kill! Kill! (in LAR terms)
We are campaigning against AIDS on the African continent. How does increasing the lifespan of a state's or continent's population serve our national interests, assuming that the benefits of longevity only serve to increase the competition for resources across the long run.
Last edited by jcustis; 01-18-2012 at 03:51 AM.
Jon,
Reading music...Fuel by Lars Ulrich and the boys
My riposte to the argument advanced by the good Reverend Malthus is that the human animal occupies a very small portion of the 510 million square kilometers, or so, of the Earth and our time as a species has been astonishingly brief as compared to the estimated 4.5 billion years or so our world has been around. As a result, there is much that we as a species do not know of and this further is compounded by the fact that we truly understand very little of what we claim to 'know'.
The cell cycle, or growth patterns (lag, exponential growth, stationary, and endogenous phases), F/M Ratios, the S-Curve, ecological succession, etc are all concepts to think about when describing natural systems but I would also advocate reading Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. Consider balancing the concepts of human/economic specialization and market segmentation against the mind boogling biological specialization present in our world as partially described in the epic Bergy's Manual of Determinative Bacteriology...then head on over to descriptions of the other biological kingdoms and take a look at the diversity and specialization on display with respect to the utilization of resources.
'Brief' local shortages, surely, 'sustained' system-wide shortages, surely not...humans are way too adaptable...when we ran out of caves, we built....
Ask yourself, who is it that definitively knows where the brain-pan currently resides that will help our species to leap today's perceived hurdles? Perhaps that answer should guide our actions in the world...
Sapere Aude
I didn't specify innate human behavior. Capitalism is a form of human relationships that promotes certain actions while discouraging others regardless of mankind's predispositions.
When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles. - Louis Veuillot
Capitalism is about harnessing human nature, rather than trying to restrain it. An imperfect system of course... but since you seem to dislike it intensely, I'm curious about what you see as an alternative?
Agree that the AIDS work is less about saving Africans than about Americans feeling good about themselves... but where exactly do you see the US expanding?
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
First, the "natural-ness" of capitalism is very much in dispute. Secondly, I have never stated any dislike or distaste for capitalism. I hate losing, regardless of whatever game is being played or by whatever name it goes by. But let's be clear, everyone here (assuming everyone is a civil servant of some kind) is really not a capitalist in practice. And further, my criticisms of capitalist practices have been narrowed to runaway finance capitalism, which is certainly not the end-all be-all of human nature.
When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles. - Louis Veuillot
Most of us here are participants in a nominally capitalist economic system... of course there has never been a truly capitalist economy, just as there has never been a truly socialist economy.
Why would you assume that "everyone is a civil servant of some kind"? Seems a bizarre assumption to make. I for one am neither servile nor particularly civil.
I've seen no such qualification in your previous references to capitalism.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
I would have to disagree with the second part of your statement there. That is an awful lot of money to feel good about ourselves. That kind of money has an ulterior motive attached to it. Someone more cynical than me might suspect an attempt by a Republican president to curry favor with centrist voters but I believe that it is more about trying to gain some control of the narrative in Africa. China is increasingly visible in Africa, often at our expense. Combating AIDS is a fairly low risk investment to rebuild our political capital in Africa. Compared to economic development or conflict resolution it is relatively straight forward and uncontroversial with little chance that we will find ourselves on the wrong side of an issue. Whether we are getting a good return on our investment is debatable but, based on my experience in Africa, we are at least getting some return.
As to the question of whether combating AIDS is worsening things by increasing the demand for limited resources, I would have to say no. I would even say that it is probably reducing it. More and more countries are lowering population growth rates to the "replacement" rate of about 2.1 births. It is paradoxically the poorest states that have the highest fertility rates. HIV/AIDS has been hypothesized to have contributed directly to higher fertility rates as a means to counterbalance the high infant mortality rates. It is not, by far, the only or even the greatest cause of higher fertility rates in poor countries but it is a significant one and lowering the rate of infection will have a positive effect on fertility both directly as infant mortality rates secondary to HIV/AIDS fall and indirectly as the reduction or eradication of infection in a given region will likely have some positive effects on prosperity.
“Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.”
Terry Pratchett
Why do you think that the money we spend on AIDS gets so much more attention than, say, money spent on controlling malaria? Is that not because AIDS is an issue and a problem with greater resonance for Americans?
If that's the goal I suspect we'll be disappointed. Aid of any sort will never bring the kind of influence or favor that investment brings, and I don't think anything we do about AIDS will give us real political capital in Africa or "gain some control of the narrative in Africa".
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
I think a key matter will be how a brief global shortage of a central element of our modern society, like petroleum will influence the global economy. Today it's slice of the costs in manufacturing most goods and transporting them over the sea is pretty small. A sustained high price should have a ripple effect, allowing for the extraction of so far too costly sources of fossil fuels, make alternative energetic sources more attractive and shift demand away from uses such as heating. The big question is just how smoothly and quickly such adaptions can happen and how far the finite ressourcs can be streched.
Firn,
Energy disruption resulting from today's geopolitical situation will of course have varying political and economic consequences depending upon one's location, however I do not see it as resulting in the extinguishment of our species. Anything less than the absolute worst case can be dealt with....find a way, make a way!
Leider habe ich diese bucher nur auf englisch, aber, IMHO they are worth the read:
- For context on our global petroleum economy:
- For an excellent in depth technical counterpoint to petroleum dependency:
Dr. George A. Olah (Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry), Dr. Alain Goeppert, and Dr. G.K. Surya Prakash, Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy
- For a 'how-to' hobby (if only there was enough time
Joshua Tickell, From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank
And for a quick read...
Gas Bears Up Bets on Catastrophic Surplus, By Asjylyn Loder, January 16, 2012 11:03 AM EST, Bloomberg News
Hedge funds turned bearish on U.S. natural gas for the first time in eight weeks as a surplus and warmer-than-normal weather pushed the price of the heating fuel to the lowest level in more than two years.
The funds and other large speculators switched from bets that futures will rise to a bearish, or short, position of a net 10,344 futures equivalents in the week ended Jan. 10, according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commissions Commitments of Traders report on Jan. 13.
Natural gas plunged 13 percent last week on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the biggest decline since August 2009, after forecasts showed above-average temperatures through January. Stockpiles in the week ended Jan. 6 stood at 3.377 trillion cubic feet, 17 percent above the five-year average, the U.S. Energy Department reported on Jan. 12.Storage slipped 95 billion cubic feet in the week ended Jan. 6, compared with a five-year average decline of 128 billion, the Energy Department reported. Inventories rose to an all-time high of 3.852 trillion cubic feet on Nov. 18.
Supplies may reach a seasonal record of 2.4 trillion cubic feet in March, which is when heating demand usually ends and producers begin piping more gas into storage, Cooper said. Unless production falls or cold weather bolsters demand, prices will drop to $2.40 per million Btu, and perhaps below $2, as gas overflows storage caverns and clogs pipelines, he said.
This is a situation that has never been seen before, Cooper said. If we hit 2.4 trillion, youre looking at storage capacity constraints by July or August where you literally have system problems because the system is so full.
Oil refiners: Europe runs out of gas, Lex, January 8, 2012 5:45 pm, Financial Times, www.ft.com
A decisive shift in the equation of global energy supply, Roger Altman, January 2, 2012, The A-List, Financial Times, www.ft.comVanishing operating margins and chronic overcapacity. No, not the airline industry. Think Europe’s oil refineries. Petroplus, a Swiss refining company, is dangerously close to collapse. Nine European refineries have closed since mid-2008 and 2.6m barrels a day of refining capacity has been removed from advanced economies since the global financial crisis, according to the International Energy Agency. Moreover, operating margins were negative in November. There could be more casualties ahead.
Since the embargo of 1973, there has been a global preoccupation with the centrality of oil, its supply, its cost and the international politics of it. As economies grew and global demand for energy increased, oil and gas exploration and production increasingly moved to distant and politically unstable countries, such as Russia, Iraq, Libya, Iran and Venezuela. At the same time, Opec rose to power; the US military assumed protection of the Persian Gulf; and concerns grew that the world might run out of oil.
This difficult era is now approaching an end, and technology is the main reason. New techniques of exploring and drilling in very deep water and tar sands have been developed. New approaches to hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have made it possible to extract deposits of oil and especially gas profitably from shale. The implications are huge. Vast reserves of natural gas are now accessible, and the role of gas in world energy supply is growing fast. Within 25 years, gas should outstrip coal to become the second biggest source of global supply, behind oil. This is positive because gas is much cleaner than coal.
Sapere Aude
Firn,
I don't see a dramatic or apocalyptic end to the age of oil for humanity in general, though it may more difficult for some states to manage than others. Estimates vary, though I think it's safe to conclude that there's enough recoverable oil to supply the global economy for about a half century or so. States and corporations are already posturing themselves for transition by exploring alternative (and renewable) energy resources. The end of the oil age may mark the end of the current global regime (at least as how we know it), depending on what emerges to replace it and who is best positioned to exploit it. Natural gas seems to be an obvious answer, but it's little more than extension, since consumption-wise, there's plenty of uncertainty and most estimates point to a longevity similar to that of oil. So, a transition is underway, slowly and surely, but without a clear end in sight, nor a clear picture of the winners and losers in the potential outcomes.
When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles. - Louis Veuillot
If you let this discussion degenerate to discussions on oil it will turn into spin pieces published by those who have the money to buy the research results they want to project, no different than global warming. The truth on these topics are hidden behind a think veneer of spin.
There are plenty of other commodities where secure access to will become increasingly competitive and potentially lead to conflict such as water, farm land, fishing areas, access to precious metals, food, etc. We're seeing chest bumping over fossil fuels in the Asia-Pacific, but we're seeing more aggressive chest bumping over access to fishing rights. Having to pay $5.00/gal for gas is one thing, not being able to put on the table is another.
Watching the demographics in certain countries like China, there will soon be a lot lusting young men and a serious shortage of women. No telling how that will play out, perhaps women from economically deprived areas will migrate to China (assuming their economic growth continues), perhaps illegal human trade will increase, etc. The bottom line is we have no idea what tomorrow will look like, but we can identify "potential" points of conflict now.
Additionally it isn't all about state versus state, but about one the gravest security concerns globally and that is the increasing economic disparity between classes. Combine that with increasing awareness due to information technology and the ability to mobilize identity groups through social media you have the ingredients for some interesting times.
Taking it to the extreme the world might be at the first glance whith such a view be better off without the North Americans and European although I think this is currently a to big issue to tackle for the national interests of others.
In general I do think that education and the resulting decline in fertility of others is good news, although it is hard to estimate how exactly it effects the use of ressources. It is an aera which would be worth of personal study, as I know little of it. I just want to add that it is certainly a complex field, with technology, productivity and efficency playing also a big part.
That's true ultimately, but it isn't necessarily true at 6bn people, or 10bn people, or 50bn people. Maybe it's only true at 100bn or a trillion. I doubt the limit is that high, but that's my point--we don't know. More efficient use of resources equals, essentially, more resources, and globally our current efficiency is pretty low.
It makes us feel better about ourselves, allowing us more latitude to expand without being held back by remorse.
Back in the early 80's at Edgewood Area -- where rats were still being used -- an E-4 dressed in whites (as I was leaving for Zaire) told me we were looking for a new frontier where the FDA dare not tread.Their lifespan was already significantly less than even the local CDC imagined and the line of volunteers for non-approved FDA drugs was bordering on 500 meters from the building each morning. It did serve our national interests and I presume had little to do with their longevity.
If you want to blend in, take the bus
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