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Page added on March 21, 2014
Doomsaying math whizzes just don’t understand capitalism
Here we go again.
A group of mathematicians sponsored by NASA have purportedly proven that humanity is doomed. Ho hum. No queue-jumping, please. Doomsayers are a permanent feature of human existence, but have achieved a veneer of scientific respectability ever since the 19th century’s Thomas Malthus won economics the name “the dismal science” by predicting that population growth would outstrip agricultural productivity. He predicted mass starvation.
Then there was Paul Ehrlich predicting the exhaustion of Earth’s resources, followed by the Club of Rome and The Limits to Growth, Al Gore, Sir Nicholas Sterne and others peddling the apocalypse.
We’re still waiting.
The NASA mathematicians are only the most recent example of well-meaning and highly intelligent people who nevertheless do not understand that human beings are not objects, prisoners of some Newtonian clockwork universe. We are not passive objects, but learning machines. In fact, the ability to acquire, understand and deploy new knowledge is perhaps humanity’s greatest strength.
Just because humanity appears to be headed in one direction, like Malthusian mass starvation, does not mean that we must ineluctably arrive at that destination. On the contrary, what Malthus failed to realize was that the burgeoning population was an opportunity for those who knew how to seize it. That opportunity helped to unlock a revolution in agricultural productivity that caused food production to overtake population growth.
Because the doomsayers can see today’s measurable trends, but cannot understand how human intelligence and opportunity work together to respond over time, their knee-jerk response is invariably that humanity must be saved from itself. And they are always willing to cast themselves in the role of saviour.
Give us the power to curb population growth, to spread the wealth, to prevent overconsumption, they murmur seductively, and we will save you from the doom that awaits. According to The Guardian newspaper’s writer who first drew the world’s attention to the NASA mathematicians’ gloomy prognostications, their work shows that only egalitarian socialism can save us from ourselves.
Ah, now I see. The system that during a time of relative plenty condemned millions to mass starvation in agriculturally rich places such as the Soviet Union and China, a system abandoned by those societies because it does not work, is now to be our salvation if universally applied. Please don’t quit the mathematics day job to become a Platonic guardian.
Of all the world’s roughly 7.2 billion people (according to the world population clock), the vast majority owe their very existence to the system the doomsayers condemn – capitalism.
Hunter-gatherer technology can only support a world population of a few million. Scratching the ground with a stick, then adding workhorses and ever more sophisticated plows, raises the level again and again. Today we can feed seven billion people because we have ever-improving irrigation, mechanization, genetic modification, food storage, transport and efficient markets, all of which emerged quite unpredictably from the knowledge, productivity and investment of the developed world responding to opportunity.
And that’s not even mentioning the medical, communications, educational and other rich-world innovations that are every day transforming the lives of the world’s poor for the better. If developing-world telecoms depended on copper land lines, billions of people would do without. Instead, we’ve developed technologies that connect those billions to the world wirelessly, freeing up scarce resources for other uses.
Far from exploiting the poor of the developing world, the developed world has created the ideas and technologies that have made their very lives possible in such large numbers, and improved the standard of living they can enjoy.
Excitingly, this revolution created by the application of reason to humanity’s challenges is increasingly moving to the developing world. New ideas, processes and techniques in every field are being developed in India, China, Kenya and Chile. But there, too, this explosion of innovation was made possible not by empowering bureaucrats to tell us what to do for our own good, but the opposite. The increasing freedom of people in these countries to act on their own knowledge, and pursue the opportunities they see, is allowing them to become part of the solution.
What is missing from the equations of the mathematicians of doom is the institutions we have developed – individual freedom, trade, markets and liberal democratic capitalism – thanks to which we are rewarded for experimenting and learning previously unknown and unsuspected things, and adjusting to new and unforeseen circumstances. These institutions allow us to act on more knowledge of the world than any central planners could ever possess, while using scarce resources ever more sparingly. Taking the doomsayers’ advice would destroy the very system that keeps billions of us alive.
15 Comments on "Doomsaying math whizzes just don’t understand capitalism"
Beery on Fri, 21st Mar 2014 3:30 pm
And this article shows that cornucopian capitalists just don’t understand math.
ghung on Fri, 21st Mar 2014 3:56 pm
Indeed. I have yet to meet a capitalist who can demonstrate an understanding of capitalism. Religions are like that.
westexas on Fri, 21st Mar 2014 4:00 pm
Payden & Rygel has been running the following ad on CNBC for some time, noting that nearly a quarter of all goods & service produced in all of human history have been produced in just the past 10 years:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm-qqkF6Ork&list=PL848F15B913CBF0EA&feature=plcp
From the ad:
“Seen in that light, global trade, investment and economic activity are still in their infancy.”
My comments:
Of course, close to a quarter (about 22%) of all crude oil ever consumed globally was consumed in just the past 10 years (through 2013).
And then we have the net export situation. Since 2005, developing countries, led by China, have consumed an increasing share of a post-2005 declining volume of Global Net Exports of oil.
Plantagenet on Fri, 21st Mar 2014 4:01 pm
This shows how bloated the federal government is. While this study is interesting, it just repeats earlier work done by the Club of Rome. Even worse, NASA shouldn’t be employing a stable of Ph.d. economists to rehash prior economics work that has nothing to do with outer space.
Jerry McManus on Fri, 21st Mar 2014 4:05 pm
Funny, it’s like the guy straining to hold a boulder over his head. Triumphantly shouting “Look what I can do!” just before gravity wins.
Notice there is not one single mention of the stupendous costs of all these marvelous achievements to the Earth’s biosphere. The very same rapidly degrading, destabilizing and depleting biosphere without which we would all be, well, doomed.
Although, to his credit, he did slyly slip in an oblique reference to “scarce resources” at the end. Apparently there are now some realities that even the most delusional among us can no longer deny.
That in itself is a major departure for your average kool-aide addled cornucopian. I seem to recall it wasn’t that long ago that the Julian Simons of the world would have us believe that resources are limitless and inexhaustible.
Davey on Fri, 21st Mar 2014 4:15 pm
Amen to the god of capitalism. He is using the same augument that can be used on himself. Obviously a believer in the pseudo science of economics. He mentions how capitalism got us to 7Bil but did not mention that equates to getting us to a brittle interconnected global economic system suffering diminishing returns in the limits of growth and a population in overshoot to its carrying capacity. Further the system is facing a predicament of a finance system with excessive debt, stock markets in a bubble, and endemic corruption. Finally an economy with rapidly rising energy costs and stagnating production face with an energy trap from lack of capex to build out new capacity AltE and Natgas alternatives…woo that was a mouthful. Take that you Cornucopian.
Meld on Fri, 21st Mar 2014 4:20 pm
This is the hands down funniest article I have ever read. I thought this would be an interesting look at how disaster capitalism can (and should) work during a time of reducing energy and population. He starts off by quite rightly showing how central planning doesn’t work (communism, socialism) and then out of nowhere falls head first into a laugh a minute ride of half truths and BAU!
this is just priceless
“Today we can feed seven billion people because we have ever-improving irrigation, mechanization, genetic modification, food storage, transport and efficient markets, all of which emerged quite unpredictably from the knowledge, productivity and investment of the developed world responding to opportunity”
Umm no we have all that due to massive amounts of surplus energy from fossil fuels. We monkeys just found out a way to use it for a while.
Northwest Resident on Fri, 21st Mar 2014 4:21 pm
This article is Cornucopianism in its purest form.
First, consider the source. Author: Brian Lee Crowley, Head of Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
What is Macdonald-Laurier Institute?
From Wikipedia: The Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) is a right-leaning public policy think tank located in Ottawa, Canada. Founded and financed by large corporations in 2010. Its stated focus is on reducing the federal government’s role in society and advocating for greater private corporate development.
In other words, the author and the institute he heads are mouthpieces for the corporate elite, the masters of BAU.
Some highlights from this article:
“Of all the world’s roughly 7.2 billion people (according to the world population clock), the vast majority owe their very existence to the system the doomsayers condemn – capitalism.”
It is true. The world’s population increased exponentially in direct relation to the exponential increase of fossil fuel usage. And the world’s population will decrease back down that exponential curve right along with the decrease in fossil fuel usage. Unless, of course, some miracle technology replaces fossil fuels, which is what Brian Lee Crowley and his institute apparently pin their hopes of continued BAU on.
“Today we can feed seven billion people because we have ever-improving irrigation, mechanization, genetic modification, food storage, transport and efficient markets, all of which emerged quite unpredictably from the knowledge, productivity and investment of the developed world responding to opportunity.”
What a crock of B.S. The developed world responding to opportunity = the developed world exploiting and consuming every known resource on planet earth to the point of depletion, all for the sake of wealth and power, leaving toxic waste and wasted human life in their wake. It is a wonderful world for guys like Brian Lee Crowley, who apparently are blind to the suffering and wholesale destruction they cause.
“And that’s not even mentioning the medical, communications, educational and other rich-world innovations that are every day transforming the lives of the world’s poor for the better.”
Anyone care to pop that puss-filled pimple of a lie?
“Far from exploiting the poor of the developing world, the developed world has created the ideas and technologies that have made their very lives possible in such large numbers, and improved the standard of living they can enjoy.”
DC and Author, I know you’ll be along shortly to heap massive quantities of derision on this article. It deserves every bit of derision and pooping-on that it gets. If the Masters of BAU are really, truly thinking like the author of this article seems to be, then the world is headed for a vortex of destruction from which there is no escape. Brian Lee Crowley is living in Cornucopian la-la land, and it is a pathetic sight to witness.
J-Gav on Fri, 21st Mar 2014 4:24 pm
Another useful idiot speaks. Useful to the elites, that is, those who skim off hundreds of $billions from the rest of us through market manipulation, anonymous companies etc. and then crow about how wonderfully the market is working. “Individual freedoms,” “Liberal democratic capitalism” indeed! Has this cretinous sap not even noticed how hollow such mouthings have become today?
action on Fri, 21st Mar 2014 6:37 pm
Even the morons who believe this desperate coaxing can feel in their wallet the reality of the situation.
DC on Fri, 21st Mar 2014 8:51 pm
No NWR, not much to add, just that the globe and mail is the direct equivalent of the NYT, and all that the implies.
dspady on Fri, 21st Mar 2014 10:13 pm
I would expect this in the National Post, but am surprised that is was in the Globe. I thought the Globe had more insight and wisdom than is shown in this terrible article.
GregT on Fri, 21st Mar 2014 11:22 pm
This guy has had editorials in Vancouver newspapers as of late. He is promoting pipeline construction and LNG terminals.
Makati1 on Sat, 22nd Mar 2014 1:00 am
Nothing to add to the above correct assessments of this BAU BS article. Good work guys!
Mike999 on Sat, 22nd Mar 2014 3:52 pm
FUNNY article. Since “Capitalism” is expending a Fortune DENYING this future and global warming, expecting Capitalism to come in a RESCUE us is as insane as this Tea Party Nut himself.