they’re called money.
One of the things we’re going to have to do if we want a prosperous and somewhat egalitarian society that doesn’t drive humans into extinction is actually manage our resources.
That’s going to mean rationing, rationally. When you bring that up people are “that won’t fly”, but the thing is, we already ration virtually everything through money. Even in countries with universal health care, rest assured that the rich get better care than the poor. Generally a lot better care. People go hungry, there are homeless people, and so on.
The thing is, with moderately sane rationing, most people will be better off and a hundreds of millions will be a LOT better off. We have more than enough food to feed everyone on the planet; food that rots; and the reason we don’t feed people is that we ration by money. The US has five times as many empty homes as it does homeless people, the EU two times as many—rationing by money is failing. It is not putting people who need goods we have an excess supply off together with those goods; and it is putting people who would be better off without excess goods together with those goods. (aka. the obesity epidemic.)
The fact is that we have overcapacity to produce a lot of things, and there is no particular reason why everybody shouldn’t have those things; but we also are producing too much of stuff that’s going to kill us: like oil and natural gas, carcinogens and plastic that is choking the oceans.
So we have people who could be productive, who aren’t, because they can’t get what they need even though we produce a surplus; then we have people who are productive but we’d better off if they stopped producing, because the negatives they are creating are hurting and killing more people than the upside.
If we don’t learn to manage bottlenecks, sinks (like the ability of the atmosphere to absorb carbon) and both renewable and non-renewable resources we’re in real danger of killing ourselves, and even if we do manage to survive as a species, we are leaving a lot of people homeless, hungry and hating their lives who don’t need to be.
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David Kowalski
Great points, Ian.
We need a few other things to make this work. The first is real regulation with teeth. the second is real birth control with teeth. A one child policy, strictly enforced for one generation followed by a two child policy would salvage the mess. This may seem draconian but considering the alternatives it is a cheap and effective solution.
The delivery of goods and services is also uneven. I remember a grad school professor in the 1970’s saying that the Japanese had the best manufacturing system at the time while the US had the best distribution system. That, he said, made the US economy a giant machine for sucking up Japanese imports. That pretty much holds true 40 years later. Only now we suck up Chinese goods and Indian goods plus Chinese and Indian services as well.
As long as the Fed ignores its legal mandate to put full unemployment on an equal footing with inflation, we will have much lower growth. The political system insures that the good are rationed poorly.
subgenius
A 2 child policy definitely leads to population growth – humans compound (it’s the lifespan…)
Celsius 233
“We have more than enough food to feed everyone on the planet; food that rots; and the reason we don’t feed people is that we ration by money.” Ian Welsh
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That is actually a well known fact, at least to some of us.
That along with the points that follow that quote, make the case for rational rationing.
But then, any egalitarian minded human knows this; it’s the other 90+% who refuse to think or self educate.
The trick is how to garner the engagement of that 90%…
Larry
“it’s the other 90+% who refuse to think or self educate.”
Really celsius? They REFUSE? Granted there are those we stereotype as having little to do with the world outside their personal social media lives but to throw 90% of the global population under the bus with this assumption is a bit much.
Might the efforts of the 1% to keep as many people as ignorant as possible have something to do with this and a corporate media that seldom shares the information often enough that might better educate those selves have something to do with an uninformed public?
When 30% of the U.S. population relies on FOX for their source of information we’re going to get relatively smart people like the one I ran into on Facebook the other day that continues to insist water boarding was not torture and it was only the Bush-haters and the liberal media who created this “fantasy”.
Celsius 233
Well Larry, when you post tripe like this, you just back up my point!
…When 30% of the U.S. population relies on FOX for their source of information we’re going to get relatively smart people like the one I ran into on Facebook the other day that continues to insist water boarding was not torture and it was only the Bush-haters and the liberal media who created this “fantasy”.
I need not waste my time further…
Bill H
“When 30% of the U.S. population relies on FOX for their source of information…”
You are defending people who make bad choices? And blaming their bad choices for people starving in a world filled with an adequacy of food? I think you do, indeed, prove the point made by Celsius.
Jonathan
American “savvy” fetishists are incompetent to discuss foreign policy, because they’re too busy making the world into their own secret society with secret handshakes when they really need to get off their knees, stop begging ghost-daddy for what ghost-daddy ain’t gonna give ’em and get their asses and hands out into the fields where they won’t be an actual drag on the rest of us.
Take your rape culture to someplace that wants it.
Larry
“I need not waste my time further…”
Careful not to turn your nose up in a rain storm Celsius.
Bad math celsius. 30% does not equal 90%. And as hard it is to accept, some of the 30% are not all sheep for the lame messages coming out of FOX, no more so than some of us who read posts from MoveOn and the Daily Kos are devoted to any and all views expressed there. You can’t (logically) throw any number out there – 90% – and expect it to be accepted as fact, at least not by critical thinking people.
And if you’re going to be an arrogant SOB about this then I agree about wasting each other’s time
Larry
“You are defending people who make bad choices? And blaming their bad choices for people starving in a world filled with an adequacy of food?”
WTF??? Where did this come from Bill?