From: pete@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Peter Alexander Merel)
Subject: Re: Global Sterilization (was Re: The Marching Morons)
Organization: Sydney University Computing Service, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 02:35:32 GMT

dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz) writes:
>Excuse me, but that's just silly.  Natural resource industries are
>typically cutthroat and uncontrolled.  Profit margins are usually
>quite thin.  Inflation-adjusted raw materials prices show, in general,
>a long term downward trend.  Natural resources are *not* doled out as
>if they were scarce; the problem is usually that prices fall so low
>that mines (or whatever) get closed.

What you say makes a lot of sense, especially considering that, as you
note, many of these natural resources are owned by third world
countries, who do not have the economic power to control their prices.
But since the third worlders cannot make a decent buck on their natural
resources they do not have a profit source with which they can buy the
natural resources that they do not own, and since the first world has
so much greater buying power the third worlders cannot even afford to use
resources that they do have.

>The third world has problems because they just aren't productive
>enough, for various reasons.  Once the social impediments are removed,
>however, they can explode with growth, since they need not reinvent
>the wheel, and can start with modern, resource-efficient technologies
>(for example, 50% efficient gas turbines rather than 10% efficient
>steam engines).

The improvements in available technology serve to make the first worlders
still more competitive than the third worlders. It's a matter of concentration
and systems. If you have just a few components of a system it doesn't matter
if they're of high quality, because the system itself won't work unless all
the components are in place. Likewise if you have just a few systems in place
they will not supply sufficient benefit to satisfy an ever increasing demand.

As to the social impediments you mention, that brings us back to the 'moron
memes' contention at the base of this thread. If a culture contains elements
that make it difficult for its adherents to master various technologies, and
if those elements combine with encouragements to breed, then we're back to
square one.

>Witness Korea, and Thailand, and soon China, Mexico and India.

Hmm. Do Korea and Thailand have 'moron memes'? As to the other three, this
is conjecture.

>> will be first worlders. And you have sidestepped the issue of juvenile 
>> availability for education; in third world countries every set of hands is
>> put to work trying to acquire food - and children who are not available for 
>> education will not be educated. Vicious Circle.

>An unexpected thing happened in China when the market was liberalized
>in rural areas.  All sorts of light manufacturing enterprises sprang
>up there.  In some rural areas fully half the workers are now of the
>farms.  

Whether it is farms or factories, it doesn't matter. Are they being educated?

>Contrary to dogma, in most parts of the world outside Africa
>food has been getting more abundant, and prices have declined.  As in
>the US, these gluts are making farming a low profit activity that will
>drive workers to other sectors of the economy.

As you yourself have commented, cheap natural resources are not a blessing to
the producers of those resources. If a farmer cannot make a buck on his wheat
he may be forced to release his workers, but without the alternatives that
exist outside the third world this may not be a good thing for those workers.
As I remember China currently has about a hundred million people out of work.

>> But just a couple of weeks ago in this thread some of your compatriots
>> were complaining that your populace is becoming less well educated as
>> they become crowded and impoverished in your cities.

>We have a long tradition in the US of exhortations to crack down on
>crime.  It's a Hot Button that social engineer wannabees press all the
>time (for example, with the Prohibitionists in the early part of this
>century).  A Crime Wave Threatens Society at least once a generation.
>In retrospect, there's a substantial amount of demagoguery here.

So you're saying the whole thing is just a media beatup? Barring informed 
denials from your countrymen I won't argue with that, but it seems unlikely 
to me.

>>>How about this: list a nonrenewable resource, and I'll argue how it
>>>can be extended, substituted for, or be made available in effectively
>>>unlimited amounts.

>> Rainforests.

>That's simple: for all the hype, rainforests are not a vital
>resource, and we could easily live without them (although their
>destruction would be a shame on grounds other than their effect on our
>material wellbeing.)

Wrong. It is very easy to point at an ecosystem and say it is inesssential,
but what you forget is that all of these systems are bound up together, and
loss of any one part endangers all of the rest. Witness the global 
disappearance of frogs, for example. Without frogs we'll get <ooh I always
wanted to use this phrase> plagues of locusts, and plagues of other frogbait, 
and many species of bird, reptile and fish will die. Without those creatures 
still others will die or assume plague proportions, and so on and so on.

Of course, eventually other life forms will fill the empty niches, but by that
time we may not be around to appreciate evolution's splendour.

>Yes!  If the poor are allowed freedom to improve their lives, if free
>economies are allowed to operate, then growth and improved standards
>of living follow naturally.  

So how do you account for the middle ages? No efficient gas turbines? There
was scientific knowledge aplenty locked up in monasteries all over Europe, but
moron memes enforced a stagnation that might have lasted for good if it had 
had the stresses of overpopulation to encourage it. As it was it lasted for
more than a thousand years.

>This has happened again and again all
>over the world.  Poor countries will, unfettered by stifling
>bureaucracy, disorder or oppression, grow *faster* than rich
>countries, since they need not reinvent the technological wheel.

Sure, post war Japan being an perfect case in point. But we're talking about
overpopulated countries, not just poor ones.

>> How does affluence limit population growth? Don't people reproduce with full
>> bellies?

>The "demographic transition" is an observed effect.  One thought is
>that prosperity makes women more independent of men for their
>survival.  With women more free to decide for themselves how many
>babies to have, birth rates drop (birth is dangerous and painful, so
>this isn't surprising).  There is a delay, so growth rates first soar
>as death rates fall.

Alright, but then that only goes to the original thesis, that wealth and
education concentrate over time as the ignorant unwashed masses breed 
themselves into an ever increasing burden. 

-- 
Internet: pete@extro.su.oz.au             UUCP: {uunet,mcvax}!munnari!extro!pete
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