The overall view of Botero is that the morality and justification for actions of the prince are diametrically opposed to the principles that must guide the ordinary citizen. FULL ARTICLE by Murray N. Rothbard
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/12486/giovanni-botero-the-first-malthusian/
Giovanni Botero: The First Malthusian
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Malthusianism: I suppose we could define this in the simple terms of the original essay – exponential population growth must some time stop in a finite world. True. At current growth rates there will be 1 human per square metre of land in 300 years and in 700 years the mass of humans will equal the planet. 300 and 700 years sounds like a long time; and thankfully I will be dead, but actually this isn’t so long. Certainly not when you consider modern humans as a species are around 200,000 years old.
Overshoot is a description that ecologists give to a population (of a specific species, not necessarily humans) that outgrows the available resources upon which it depends, not just for its growth, but its very survival. Typically there may be some resource on which they depend that is plentiful in the environment in which they live that they rapidly consume. Once it is finished the population suffers a die back, sometimes dying out all together. The yeast in a bottle of wine is a good example. They rapidly consume the available resource and then die in their own detritus (alcohol). Another is the reindeer herd on St. Matthews island. You can find a description of the event on Google.
So what I can almost hear you asking? What has all this ecological stuff got to do with economics? Well the Malthusianism, the yeast and the reindeer are actually all stories about scarce resources and economics is ultimately a discipline that seeks to quantify, comment on and explain the allocation of scarce resources.
The key questions facing us humans now is are we in overshoot? Is oil fundamental to our survival?. Is it true we can no longer increase production? What does it mean if we cannot? How badly will climate change impact our ability to live where we want to live? Dismissing Malthusianism because it doesn’t fit with what you have been taught in economics school is foolish. Just believing, like you believe in God, that the price mechanism will always guarantee enough energy and that private property rights can and will fix climate change is just stupid.
“Just believing, like you believe in God, that the state will always guarantee enough energy and that socialism can and will fix climate change is just stupid.”
Fixed for you.
You neglect to consider that climate change could be good for us.
PirateRothbard President of Alaskans For Global Warming
As Ayn Rand said man’s survival is based on his ability to reason. There are many things that affect human population. Of course the weather and maybe in the future global warming of temperatures. Also, we have had a nasty taste of governments and bad guys always eliminating a millions of our brothers and sisters, (Mao, Stalin, Pot, Hitler). With all of that taken into consideration if Capitalism and the free market system dies away than you can kiss the population goodby. Just think what it was like before the Industrial Revolution? Well if you read history than you know. If you don’t read history than a little book by Rose Wilder Lane, The Discovery of Freedom will be a good read.
Economics does look at scare resources. Than man applies his mind and reason to the problem and lo and behold a solution is found. Malthusianism has always missed the point. Capitalism is not a zero sum game. Man when free to use his mind and with the promise of a better life through the profit motive will survive. Get the other jokers out of the way and you would really see prosperity for the whole world.
Growth is only possible when energy flow is increasing.
It is pretty simple really. When energy flow is increasing in each subsequent time period it is possible to increase the amount of work devoted to increasing the asset base of society. Alternatively, if the energy flow is decreasing…
Short of a miracle energy flows are about to decline in a serious way. And as a result growth is an utterly fatuous notion. Unfortunately, the majority of the population, and especially the economists and politicians, don’t get it. The economists still firmly believe that if energy costs (oil, coal, etc.) rise as a result of constraints on production then we will simply substitute other sources (wind, solar PV, etc.) and keep going as we have been for the last two hundred years. This is both stupid and foolish. It is a complete failure of intelligence and wisdom.
You’re completely overlooking every single major factor – the government currently pays farmers not to grow at capacity, so we’re nowhere near the classic crisis; we have alternate means of producing electricity, but the best one we have(nuclear power) is currently prevented from operating at its peak capacity(it’s currently illegal to reprocess nuclear waste in the US, which is why Yucca mountain is even an issue); human ingenuity is always increasing efficiency, so we get more for less. Even if we do start running low on resource here on good ol’ terra firma, there’s always plenty offworld.
Because you say so, I see.
Your over-reliance on ecological analogy has clouded your understanding of Malthus, economics, and thermodynamics:
1) In the context of a free market (in the Austrian sense) economic development cannot “overshoot” since new production is always supported by prior real savings. These savings may arise directly from man’s desire to save (i.e. finite time preferences) or from the various forms of potential energy that have been “saved” on Earth by nature. We get into trouble when government (for political reasons) distorts time preference signals (through low interest rates) and fosters the notion that we have greater savings available than we really do. This is the causal genesis of the boom-bust business cycle that the Austrian school abhors. From the over-simplified perspective of energy the boom phase will lead to a bust if we cannot extract enough of nature’s savings to make up for the deficiency of man’s savings.
2) Your statement: “Growth is only possible when energy flow is increasing” may be true in a natural sense but it is false when applied in an economic context. By this I mean that if production is seen as a measure of decrease in entropy within the economic structure, then its rate of decrease would depend on both energy flow and the system efficiency. It is man’s ability to reason and act that the social time preference is effectively expressed through the depth of the production structure, and so allows him to control the efficiency of the production structure.
3) Population growth is merely one aspect of social time preference, and as such there is no law that demands that it always be greater than zero. This growth, whether by increased birth rates or decreased death rates, is an expression of a finite time preference. Current and historical circumstances have permitted positive population growth rates even with relatively high social time preferences. To the extent men want to preserve a positive population growth we must provide for it by accessing new sources of savings. In spite of all of the obstacles so far, our track record in this regard is pretty good. Unlike the bubbles of yeast in your test tube, freely acting men can work together through self-interest to alter the landscape of circumstance to their own benefit. No miracles need apply.
This is a statement of faith, and has only been observable in the last 150 years ago. It is powerfully supported by our experience in the last 150 years, but then energy flows have increased in general terms throughout that period too. The real difference now is that energy flows are very likely to decrease. As this hasn’t happened before we are in uncharted territory. Note that it doesn’t matter why energy flows decrease. There certainly is significant government interference in all sources of energy. Some of that interference is a feed back loop from the very scarcity we are talking about. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. There have already been real decreases in energy flows that have already had massive impacts in our economy.
Just as Malthus predicted.
“This is a statement of faith”
You can reiterate that all you like, doesn’t make it any truer or your own proclamations any less faith-based themselves. The energy talk makes me think of crystals though.
I’ll accept the fact that my position contains an element of faith, but it is a faith that is based on both a logical understanding of economics and at least 500 years of modern economic history.
Consider the threat to societal “energy flow” posed by the deforestation of England in the 16th century. Prior to 1550 both England and Europe fueled their economies by the burning of wood. It first became clear to the British that wood had better uses (e.g. for ship-building and as a construction material) than as a heat source for British industry and homes. That the specific production resource of coal would over time replace the more general production resource of wood as the primary heating source can in hindsight be seen as a praxeological necessity. The direct consequences of this transition led to the availability of energy potentials several orders of magnitude greater than before. As John Nef asserts in his Scientific American article of 1977:
“The substitution of coal for wood between 1550 and 1700 led to new methods of manufacturing, to the expansion of existing industries and to the
exploitation of un¬tapped natural resources.”
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Soc/soc.history.medieval/2008-07/msg00083.html
It is more than a little embarrassing for Malthusians to have to admit that civilization had already overcome a major Malthusian obstacle a full century before Malthus was born.
With regard to the future we have just begun to tap the many forms of stored energy that nature has so graciously provided us. In the near term we can make use of new (horizontal) drilling technologies to extract vastly more quantities of natural gas than was recently thought possible. Improvements in off-shore oil drilling technology will likewise expand our options for petroleum recovery. For the longer term the general production resources such as oil will be replaced by the more specific (and more energy-dense) resources such as thorium, U-238, and deuterium (from the “heavy” ocean water that you like to sail in). As in the early pre-industrial example these sources can unleash orders of magnitude more new energy and expand our production frontier accordingly.
The real question before us is whether our ignorant political tendencies to extinguish free-market activity will prevent us from meeting these technological challenges. The force of this question should be enough turn one away from the school of Malthus and towards the school of Mises.
Maybe. To be honest I just do not know. What I do know is that the current population trajectory is not sustainable. And it doesn’t much matter what date before 1900 that you start from. Malthus will step in somewhere along the way. Our economies are based on population growth, without which they are in trouble. Even coping with the retiring boomers is going to be a problem.
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/popgrografs.htm
It’s not the “free market” that is creating pyramid schemes that require an ever increasing young population to sustain the old population, dude
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