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--- Val Clancy <valclancy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> To understand his thinking you have to understand the big picture.
> The name of the game is "Maximum Sustainable Growth".
> The overall goal is "Long Term Survival of Human Species and Life on
> This Planet."
> The only way we humans can survive long term, since the earthly
> resources are
> are being depleted at accelerated rate, is through technology.
i disagree with the assessment that natural resources are being
depleted to the point where they're running out. some natural resources
are being renewed each year from within the earth, such as oil and gas
in the gulf of mexico, and metal sulfides precipitated at the oceanic
ridges. granted, some of these theories are controversial, but the
implications are clear, in that we are not running low or even in the
danger of running out of petroleum or industrial metals. the technology
has been around for a while to harvest these minerals and process them.
it's only a matter of supply and demand. [sidenote: carter pursued a
foolish natural gas scarcity or running out policy in the late 70's.
all it showed is that given sufficient economic incentive, exploration
will occur and much more natural gas will be found.]
> Technology should
> allow us to decrease the rate of depletion of natural resources to a
> minimum, maximizing the
> duration of the survival of human species on this planet, decreasing
> pollution,
> decease, etc. The indirect measure of technology is productivity. For
> technology to advance productivity needs to increase. One person
> should
> be able to do the work of 5 then 6 then 7 then 8 etc. as time goes
> by
> and consume less resources.
technology in the petroleum sector has allowed companies to explore
more efficiently, thus utilizing capital to achieve maximum effect, and
keeping product prices low thru the last decade. like or it or not,
most industrial economies will continue to be petroleum based well
until the next century. we are not in danger of running out of oil or
natural gas anytime soon.
> Maximum sustainable growth is simply economic growth at highest
> possible
> growth rate with lowest possible rate of fluctuations in this growth.
> Those fluctuations in the growth rate can actually get out of hand
> and can
> bring negative consequences such as recession, depression or crash.
> Look at it as a rising line with bands on both sides. As growth rate
> nears
> the upper bad - the economy is overheating and if it goes below the
> lower
> band the economy is too slow. The FED's job is to monitor the
> fluctuation
> rate through different economic indicators and control it through
> interest rates
> by increasing or decreasing the money pool available or to keep the
> line as
> straight as possible, slope as high as possible and pointing up. As
> the rate gets outside
> the upper band FED will raise rates and make it harder for businesses
> to borrow
> money from banks resulting in contracting economy - tight money
> supply, vv if
> it get below the band. The reason that FED does not like the market
> is obvious: as the
> bubble grows things get out of hands and the line goes above the
> upper band,
> the economy is overheating, consumption and depletion increases, life
> becomes a party.
> Economics is the "science of allocating scarce natural resources"
> explains
> it all. Basically we either gradually deplete our resources and this
> planet turns into another
> lifeless
> planet or we build Garden of Eden through careful planning and
> technological innovations.
> Up till about 1930 we were doing the first and only in this century
> we started planning and
> implementing the second and only in the '90s we are starting to
> understand how to do it
> and how to get the things under control. That's the main theory.
> There are other theories too...
i'm suggesting that natural resources are not scarce because of
technology. technology has allowed for resources to become abundant
thus lowering prices. the fed is operating under the old business cycle
model. but the new paradigm allows for accelerated economic growth and
low product prices to coexist simultaneously. if the fed is not
careful, it could plunge us into a wicked deflatory spiral because of
the wrongheaded focus on inflation. this theory is clearly
controversial, but such is life under paradigm shifts :))
take pollution....air and water pollution have decreased yearly thru
the 90's. why? technology? in part. but the earth takes up much of the
pollution itself. vast quantities of carbon from co2 are stored in
plant roots and in coral reefs. the truth is that the earth causes
orders of magnitude more pollution than man's activities have caused.
sulfur dioxide and chlorine from volcanic eruptions destroy the ozone,
not cfc (minimial effects). [sidenote: ozone has documented thicking
and thinning cycles] most co2 is produced by natural combustion in
forest and grass fires throughout the world caused by nature, ie,
lightning strikes, not only from autos (i'm excluding local effects in
metro areas and south american clearcut fires, thinking globally). but
what about global warming? recently debunked by nasa upper atmosphere
measurements that the earth's temperature is coller than previously
thought. [sidenote: global warming and cooling occur in cycles
independent of man's activites] iow, science and technology are showing
that the earth not only renews its natural resources, but it recycles
natural and manmade pollutants as well.
even if we were in danger of running out of natural resources (we're
not), there are other prospects outside of the earth, such as the moon.
if water is found in sufficient quantities on the moon, then i'd expect
to see a lunar colony established within the next 20 years to harvest
metals and materials and setup low grav factories. next step...mars and
asteroid belt and jovian moons
just another viewpoint on some controversial topics......
TJ
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