hunger, poverty, and population growth among digital bugs and humans

first off, check this out: http://www.betaruce.com/java/life/applet/

one of the most frustrating things about animals, humans included, is that their populations will pretty much always expand to the biggest size possible until they are restrained in some way. in nature (or, more accurately, that portion of nature which does not include humans) animal populations are restricted by access to food and predators. among human populations the big limiters are economics (ie access to food) and warfare (ie predators). funny how that works, ain’t it?

here’s where it gets deep though: animal populations will always expand to and just beyond their natural carrying capacity, that’s true of locusts, elk, and humans in equal measure. which makes me wonder, is it ever possible to truly eliminate poverty? or will there always be “red bugs”, no matter how much food is on the table? are we doomed to be like the digital bugs so that as we’ve got everyone fed and housed there are going to be more babies then we can feed and house? a quick glance at population growth figures over the course of the last 2 centuries provides some pretty damn persuasive evidence that this is indeed the case. or is it just another facet of capitalism? or maybe it’s religion? after all, it’s the fundamentalist christians and muslims that are the most vocal about their opposition to things like birth control. or maybe it has to do with our economic mode? most horticulturalist / permaculturist / pastoral societies tightly controlled their population growth, knowing that their tribes could only grow to be as big as the land would support. by contrast, many (though not all) agricultural societies have historically striven to boost their populations as large as possible in order to be able to field larger armies, conquer more land, and expand their economic base. as those cultures expanded and pushed aside their neighbors over the last few thousand years they’ve come to dominate the planet, so I suppose in evolutionary terms aggression and population growth has been a successful strategy. up until now at least. thing is, we’re at a point now where we can’t expand outwards much more, the only room for expansion left is into each other. which I suppose is at least one of the driving forces behind the massive global migration from global south to global north that’s going on right now as millions and millions of people from areas with more poverty and higher birthrates move to countries with lower birthrates and more wealth. the fact that 1 in 10 people living in the united states is an “illegal” immigrant is a facet of this, so is the huge immigration boom going on in europe – one that will probably make europeans a minority in europe within the next hundred years, maybe much sooner.

so what exactly is the relationship between population growth and wealth? it’s complex…. on the one hand, many economists would argue that a growing population is necessary to support an expanding economy and facilitate the creation of wealth. but that argument pre-supposes a capitalist economy that must always either expand or shrink and is incapable of simply remaining constant. the problem is that, again, we live in a finite world. so infinite expansion simply is not possible, either in our populations or our economics. if we assume a finite amount of resources and a growing population, therefore, we are left with the inevitable conclusion that population growth = poverty. yes that’s a glib simplification of how real human economies work. but it’s also true. interestingly enough, the reverse may be true as well – the Black Death of the 1340′s revitalized europe’s economy and paved the way for european imperialism and the conquest of most of the rest of the planet. after all, with between 1/3 and 2/3 of the population dead, it was suddenly much easier for the survivors to gain access to the land and capital and their economic activity during that period initiated a booming outward expansion in europe’s economic growth that has never really stopped since. a more modern example of population shrinkage accompanying rapid economic growth would be post-Mao china. It’s no accident that the 1-child policy has remained on the books even as the new chinese empire marches down its own path towards super-power status and global hegemony. none of this should be surprising – having fewer people is an incredibly efficient way to ensure that there will be more wealth per person (assuming that “wealth” is measured in capital goods like land and and not in peices of paper with pretty pictures printed on them).

all of which boils down to a basic problem for people like me who are trying to work out a new economic model that can eliminate poverty. based on our biology, it would seem like eliminating poverty is impossible. and maybe it is. past experience would indicate that capitalism definitely can’t do it, because capitalism requires infinite growth and a scarcity of capital relative to labor. in real terms that translates into using the economic coercion of poverty to force the majority into the demeaning low-wage jobs that form the base of the capitalist economic pyramid. marxism can’t do it either because by placing a dictatorship in charge of the economy they virtually guarantee massive corruption and inefficiency, so even if the red fascists follow china’s lead and forcibly restrict people from having children there will still be poverty. just look at china’s rustbelt…. sure a few people have gotten wealthy off of their recent “reforms”, but most chinese people are in incredibly bad shape right now economically. the soviets did pretty well for a while, but the USSR was never exactly a land of plenty. at least part of that is because all the countries where marxist revolution have seized power were desperately poor to start with (yet another thing Marx was wrong about), but at least part of the persistent poverty in the USSR has got to be chalked up to a totally inefficient and unwieldy economy. to my mind at least, anarcho-communism also fails because it removes any economic restraints on people that would influence them to have fewer kids and because it removes any incentive to work. I don’t know about ya’ll, but if I was living in a perfect anarcho-communist utopia and didn’t have to worry about starving or paying rent I’d spend a hell of a lot more time hanging out and making music or playing video games, which is good times, but not exactly productive economic activity. maybe that’s just me though. mutualism – with it’s combination of collective ownership of primary and capital goods and a market economy for consumer goods might work – in theory at least it seems like as close to a perfect system as anyone has ever come up with. But even in that kind of a system unrestrained population growth would inevitably result in poverty. It’s a big question, one I don’t have a good answer for yet.

in short, how can we avoid being digital bugs?

Posted: October 13th, 2007 under economics, science and history.
Comments: 4

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