NMMCWR
This can be accomplished by harvesting additional raw materials (LAND), employing more people (LABOR), accumulating more tools and machinery (CAPITAL), or doing something ingenious to work smarter instead of harder (ENTREPENEURSHIP).
The preference since the IR has thus been for CAPITAL over LABOR. There was an unintended consequence of LABOR accumulation, largely credited to increased food security, but the effect was short lived. The preference for accumulating CAPITAL remains. The inevitable conclusion of this substitution must eventually be declining fecundity. This is observed across all cultures. As personal wealth increases, average fecundity falls.
Oh, come on! This like that article that tried to say falling birth rates was because of 'chemicals' in the environment (ignoring the third variable which is that fertility is affected by warmer and cooler temperatures).
What you are saying is that if we were still
laboring the birth rate would be higher.
I have a question for you.
There are two guys. One moves dirt with a bulldozer. The other moves dirt with a shovel.
The guy with the shovel works much much harder. But the guy in the bulldozer gets paid more.
WHY?
Because the guy in the bulldozer is
more productive than the guy with the shovel.
Replace 'labor' with the word 'productivity' and a better picture is made. This is why 'labor' is irrelevant to our age. Third world nations have more labor, but they aren't as productive.
Remember St8up's 'building wealth' thread? He said, "Wealth is made with a pen, not a hammer." This is absolutely correct.
Yes, there is a correlation between decreasing birthrates and increasing capital, but there is also a correlation between dereasing birthrates and the access to more peanut butter. Just as the increase of peanut butter tells us nothing why people are having less children, so too does increased capital tells us nothing why people are having less children.
There are religious communities in these highly capitalized nations that have lots and lots of children. So apparently there is much more to the depopulation issue than capital.
Fecundity rates below replacement have yet to topple any of the European nations that have been at that point for decades.
I already said before this is not a doomsday thread.
But there are several points you ought to mention:
1) the larger rising older population has not yet died off.
2) Government policies have already been changed based on declining birth rates. Money is sent to women who have children, advertising billboards go up to tell women to have children.
3) Older social programs will run out of money as there are fewer people paying in and more people taking out.
No one said nations will be 'toppled'. What I did say was that the collapse of birth signaled proof of a type of distortion in sexuality. Unless this distortion gets addressed, we will find more problems appear within this century, most of which are probably unimaginable.
No one is saying France will no longer exist. But I am saying that at its current rate, France will become arab dominated. Will this alter France? How could it not?
On the environmentalist angle, at some point, we must accept that John Malthus was correct.
In a few thousand years, the average historical population growth rate of 2%, will result in the total weight of living humans to exceed the mass of the planet. In only 18,000 years, a 2% growth rate will require that the cumulative weight of living humans exceed the estimated mass of the entire universe. This is clearly not physically possible.
How much has changed in the last century? In the last
two centuries?
How much will change in a thousand years? I cannot even begin to dream such dreams.
But in
18,000 years!? That is a LONG time and it is a crime to say that our society and lifestyle will remain the same for
180 centuries as it changes every decade currently.
Why can't population increase beyond the mass of the planet? In 18,000 years, we will be able to create more planets.
Remember, Malthus's predictions all came wrong because he couldn't imagine things like the Green Revolution in agriculture.
The point is, history shows the optimists are right.
A thousand years is a
long time.
If you are truly interested in learning economic theory, you have a few options available. I will not recommend earning a degree in Economics to anyone who is not interested in pursuing it as an academic career. (Or perhaps for those individuals who intend to pursue an MBA but have chosen an undergrad school with no business program.) An ECO minor can provide you will some excellent critical thinking skills, but the degree is no longer highly valued by employers in the United States. Some European employers remain more open minded but this also appears to be changing.
This is a very good point.
People work very hard to get masters and PHDs and some go to ivy league schools. Why do they do such work? In hopes they can work for college drop outs such as Michael Dell, Bill Gates, or Ted Turner.
No matter what job you have, you are still dependent on someone else's system. The only way to get wealth is to go out and create your own system.
Besides, in real life, you are judged not on what degrees you have but on what type of car you drive. Anyone can get a doctorate, but not everyone can buy a Lexus.
One thing I am surprised at you NMMCWR is that the posiion I was coming from in economics is from
Hayek.
The policies of nations like the US to non-nations like the Catholic Church were influenced these ideas, although academics still refuse to really look into them.
And, for some reason, they aren't even taught or explored. So whenever I say "Resources come from the mind, not from the earth, thus, resources are infinite" people go absolute BONKERS.
I have a question for you:
If a calf is born, the GNP rises.
If a child is born, the GNP decreases.
If population decline does occur, our 'model' would show GNP increasing. Does this not sound odd? It shows that substancial changes could be occuring to the economic field (and already are).
Cyrano
But there is still one glaring fallacy and a particular irony to your entire argument that man makes resources and has no worry of replacing them because he can always find something else to replace it with or a more efficient way of harvesting that.
No, that is NOT my argument.
My argument is that resources are not a bountiful gift from the Earth, but are products of the Human mind. In other words, resources come from our heads, not from the ground. The mind is the ultimate resource.
It is NOT that when we run low on resources, the price goes up, and since no one likes paying high prices, we get motivated to discover or invent something new.
The problem is that until this point, no sufficient amount of aquisition has allowed for the process to be economically viable meaning that eventually you do hit the thresholds of resource and innovation and the only thing which can provide incentive is for the value of the mineral to exceed the cost of harvesting it in contrast with its scarcity and by that time the price of the mineral itself has made it almost prohibitively expensive to the point where it is barely researched and innovation relative to it more difficult to build on producing an overall lag.
This was addressed.
The point is that there are resources ALL OVER THE PLACE.
Of course it isn't economic feasible to be able to get these now. But it eventually will.
Because we keep tapping into more and more sources of energy.
It is not a matter of
if with these resources, it is merely a matter of
time. Probably by the time we get to that stage, we'll be using something completely different and better.
You seen the reports on 'known reserves' of oil and such in the world? Well, they always keep increasing. It is not because more is being 'discovered' like a new pot of gold. It is because we keep getting smarter and better.
So I ask you, are the resources dependent on the Earth, or are they dependent on the mind?
Price is determined by a number of factors, but its essentially the level of capital required for the production of the product and the relative scarcity of the product (in relation to its demand) As we find more efficient ways to harvest resources we naturally need less capital to do it (as was already proven before) and we can harvest more. Thus what we are seeing is not an abundance (which you assume is reflected in the falling price) of resources, but rather an increase in the efficiency of the extraction of those resources.
Then why are world's known reserves keep on increasing?
It is like there is a tub of water and all the nations go to it with buckets. You say, "We need to be careful because the tub will become empty!"
But again and again, the tub not only has water in it, but is
increasing with water. The more water we take out of the tub, the more that appears!
The question that needs to be asked is, 'Is there a pipe connected to the water, creating more?' The answer is yes, it is the human mind.
Efficiency, resouce creation, and all comes from the human mind.
Everything is getting better, all the time.
