Economists Please

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Originally Posted by Rollo

There was also Calhoun's "rat utopia" experiment in the late 1960s. Four breeding pairs were given unlimited nesting material, food and water but only given a nine-foot square of space, and within 3 years the rat population in "rat utopia" went from 8 to 600 to zero.
For some reason, rat society in rat utopia eventually broke down completely with social orders being abandoned, children being abandoned, rats attacking each other and males refusing to breed. Even under perfect provisions, when space is an issue, extinction was still the result.

There are 6 billion of us now (7 billion if you're watching the repeat and 16 billion if you're watching the repeats on Dave); eventually the amount of usable arable land necessary to keep human populations adequately fed is going to run out. Experimentally I don't know if humans follow the same social rules as rats, but there's certainly interesting parallels.

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Well, you did mention Easter Island, where there is evidence of human cannibalism towards the latter years of their civilization.

There is still sufficient arable land on our planet to sustain increasing population growth IF we seriously change our eating habits. Red meat, for example, is an entirely nutritionally unnecessary food as the protein it provides is readily available elsewhere with far less impact on the environment.
In terms of land use, the farming of red meats, particularly beef, is both the most nutritionally inefficient and ecologically unfriendly form of food production there is :s

Having said that, I had a BBQ’d rib-eye for dinner last night :erm:

IMO eating meat once a week is not a big issue and it's even healthy.
However eating meat every day or even several times a day is what creates an issue.
For example when I'm having lunch with colleagues in the cafeteria they will usually pick the meat meal over the vegetarian one in 99% of the cases, which means that they eat meat almost daily. And that is an issue which people are not aware of and if aware they don't care about it.
Producing 1 kg of beef needs 7 kg of high quality produce plus a much bigger amount of water. And 1 kg of chicken meat is not that far behind either.

Essentially the amount of food that we use to produce meat would be enough to feed all those people who are starving in Africa and Asia and some more, however this is not the scope of our current economic model.
In the end it all depends on what we think is right. If we want a better world we need to drive the change because one thing is for sure, those managers at the top of those multinational companies will not make the change in better for us unless we force them to change their views by changing their numbers.

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Originally Posted by ioan

Essentially the amount of food that we use to produce meat would be enough to feed all those people who are starving in Africa and Asia and some more, however this is not the scope of our current economic model.
In the end it all depends on what we think is right. If we want a better world we need to drive the change because one thing is for sure, those managers at the top of those multinational companies will not make the change in better for us unless we force them to change their views by changing their numbers.

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In terms of calories produced, the world actually produces a surplus to the requirements of total world human population now. There currently is enough food to feed the world. The reason why this isn't done is because there isn't any economic benefits in doing so. Multinational companies exist to make money; that's all. A starving person in Chad doesn't command very much money if any; if you are Conglomo-Co., what's the point to you to stop them from starving? There isn't one.

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Originally Posted by ioan

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Producing 1 kg of beef needs 7 kg of high quality produce plus a much bigger amount of water. ...

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The National Geographic Society produced an article a couple of years ago that reported that beef production requires startling volumes of fresh water annually – far more that what is required for the cultivation of all other crops (corn, beans, etc.) to produce the same caloric output. Pork production was not far behind.

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Originally Posted by Mark

The problem is when resource provision does not grow in step. Malthus tells us that it cannot.

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Malthus was narrow minded.

As I have pointed out many times here.,....... Areas that suffer from severe famine are those that suffer from a lack of the rule of law especially in regards to private property and/or Overly regulated, micromanaged economies.

Not Overpopulation.

Ah, good point vop.

Give ‘em all a plot of land, a bag of seed and a Glock 9mm with which to protect it all!


:D

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Originally Posted by schmenke

Ah, good point vop.

Give ‘em all a plot of land, a bag of seed and a Glock 9mm with which to protect it all!


:D

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No

They need a free and independent Police and judiciary along with a Legitimate Government that respects the rights of the individual. The rest will work itself out swiftly

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Originally Posted by ioan

Say, if the world economy is kept at the same level, who are the competitors who'd destroy it?

Anyway, without a change the future looks bleak, both for capitalism and for us.

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World economy is not a single entity. It consists of competitors. Each one behaves rationally, but individual rational behavior often produces a general mess. True, you may decide that the market needs an X number of items you produce, but then there are others who also want to make a little money. They start producing same stuff and compete with you. And if you only produce a fixed quantity of items, how do you develop your business, fund marketing, research and development etc.? The good strategy would be to try to occupy as big a part of the market as you can and grab as much profit as you can. And everybody does the same.

You cannot ban competition unless you subordinate everybody to a single body of authority and let it do the planning for everybody. Hey, but you and I have been through that in Communist years. Did it work?

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Originally Posted by Rudy Tamasz

You cannot ban competition unless you subordinate everybody to a single body of authority and let it do the planning for everybody. Hey, but you and I have been through that in Communist years. Did it work?

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Nah... Our socialist economy was a sort of " you take it and then give it to me ", or as we used to say "working in vain cooperative". :laugh:
Plans were unrealistic and they but were supposed to be fulfilled and of course, to be excelled. I still have the nostalgy of the years when in the honour of 1 May I reported as done loads of construction tools that weren't even launched in production.
Ironically the socialist agriculture was stronger than the one of today but we were starving.....

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Originally Posted by gadjo_dilo

Ironically the socialist agriculture was stronger than the one of today but we were starving.....

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Seriously?

Who told you that? Socialism is one of the major cause of starvation.