Is Malthus relevant post-Copenhagen?
Is Malthus relevant post-Copenhagen?
Thomas Malthus died on December 23rd 1834. The work of Malthus raises two important questions. First, are there now too many of us? Second, are there now too many of us doing things we shouldn’t be doing? These are problems of fact and value. The problem for economics has always been how to conjoin the two. The positive-normative distinction has always been a curious one for a social science since its ultimate unit of analysis is an evaluating being that lives immersed in systems of values.
The positive-normative distinction derives much of its authority from Hume’s guillotine. The guillotine is:
In every system of morality which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of God or makes some observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not concerned with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but it is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it is necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. (Treatise on Human Nature vol 2.)
The fact-value problem is one that economics must reconcile itself to in order to be able to produce consistent and plausible approaches to ‘are there now too many of us and are there now too many of us doing things we shouldn’t be doing.’
The fact-value problem is fundamental to how economics addresses the problem of the environment, or, more accurately, how economics address the problem of wo/man for the environment and, by extension, the problem of our and every species survival as part of that environment.
My question to you is: how would you proceed? What solutions does economics offer?
This brings to mind those who relentlessly dispute the ‘fact’ that there is an environmental problem. Climate change is fabricated, according to them, by self-interested rent-seekers. But the environmental problem deniers are subject to the same criticism. Have we reached a point where all facts surrounding this issue are value-laden? politicized? I also seem to remember that Malthus has been criticized for circular arguments…
Hello Ian, are you suggesting that by raising the problem of facts and values I am relentlessly disputing a given fact? I’m really not. The fact-value problem has various permutations, common ones include:
1. Values affect facts derived from research because they affect what is researched and how…
2. Values are derived from ‘facts’ since research implicitly or explicitly makes the move to should… (this is particularly so for a discipline like economics which focuses on systems of allocation of resources).
1 & 2 occur at various levels: from the overall framework of a discipline that shapes what is recognized as legitimately within it (schools, methods, theories, concepts) to the specific claims of individual research…
As such all facts entail values but this may not be the same as to say that all facts are value-laden if by this you mean that they are not then recognizably ‘facts’ because values are involved in the orientation to what then is oriented on to be presented as (significant) fact. Thereafter the problem of fact is the problem of how to avoid conflation of some real X with the putative representation of it (a problem of epistemology in terms of correspondence theories, deflationary theories etc. in philosophy and subject to such issues as raised by Tarski, Gettier etc). ‘It is a fact that’ remains a meaningful statement… neither the entailment of values nor value-laden are ‘politicised’ per se… fact-value is one dimension of the recognition of a basic problem of what we know and how we think we know it (for which there are various forms of warrant and justification but rarely if ever full certainty – if there were then disagreement would be next to impossible, research would not be a complicated business, and ‘politcisation’ would be pointless…). To state a fact is to claim ‘We are reasonably confident/justified in holding that…’ That degree of confidence occurs on a spectrum…
Yes Malthus core proposition is circular but not viciously so… It is not unreasonable to ask about sustainable populations in context…
My point Ian was that it is the confusion over the relation of values and facts that creates problems for economics and thus for the role of economics as a discipline in addressing environmental issues. Most market economics are value-laden but not value inquiring – mainstream economics method is likewise value entailing but marginalises the problem of values rather than prioritising it. This is deeply curious since many of the founders of what has become mainstream economics – particularly Walras and Jevons – were deeply interested in the articulation of values as an instrincis part of economics… this has simply been repressed over time.
The question remains, what solutions does economics offer?
Jamie
Malthus, who took snippets of information about the breeding habits of goats and haphazardly applied them to humans, was amply discredited within his own lifetime.
However, his theory has been kept propped up because of its political usefulness. Remember, Malthus was writing in the aftermath of the American and French revolutions. British elites, alarmed at the prospect of an uprising at home, were looking for rationalizations for the continued exploitation and even genocide of the poor.
A later denizen of the English upper classes, Darwin, provided a scientific-sounding gloss for this policy. Under Darwinism, that the strong (or the “Favoured Races”) ought to devour the weak was the law of nature, the great engine of progress.
Later still we have the eugenics movement — growing out of the work of the abovementioned gentlemen — developing scientific programs to speed the evolutionary process for the benefit of the “Favoured Races.” This movement spread like wildfire through the elites in Britain and the U.S., also reaching a young German soldier and art-school dropout named Adolf Hitler.
After WWII the same camp found itself a bit embarrassed by the gaucheries, the outre approach of their pupil Hitler. They preferred a more subdued approach. So they adopted various guises, preferring to work through UN agencies, since they also believed they must establish a world government by which to exploit, and when necessary, cull the lesser races. One of the guises they adopted was phony “environmentalism”: subtly diverting the real environmental movement from real threats to human health and the ecosystem (like GMO food and poisoned food, water, air, and products; the real causes of poverty, including maldistribution of land and resources; etc.) to the phantom threat of global warming. It just so happens that AGW is the *one* threat that was conducive to their prized goal of a centralized one-world government.
So is Malthus relevant? Yes, as an intellectual progenitor of centuries worth of oppression an genocide, as well as naked, massive scientific fraud and now, the unabashed grab for power over the entire globe.
So, without hashing out by pure reason which “facts” about population are facts and which values we all ought to value, we can look at history and find certain actors acting in certain highly self-interested ways and we can take note and this ought to raise suspicion. When they also have written piles of books and policy papers announcing what their intentions are, it becomes even easier to figure out what is going on. Given such a factual backdrop, it ought to lead anyone to seriously question any belief system containing even a hint of Malthusianism.
Finally, you have to look at the fact that, 200 plus years later, the world is not even close to fully populated nor is it running out of food. Getting the food to those who need it — or more to the point, allowing them to grow or catch their own — is the problem, and that is 100% a problem of politics, not population. You’ll notice the Copenhagen crowd has nothing to say about these real and crying needs.
All interesting points David, though you do seem to be missing the point I wanted to make – which I expect is my fault. You’ll notice that one of the two questions I asked (and they were questions not statements) was whether there were too many of us doing things we shouldn’t be rather than simply too many us. Still, at some point the question must arise what is a sustainable population; or what is a desirable population? They are reasonable questions and do not entail ‘phony’ environmentalism, genocide, racial hierarchies or any other such position – none of which I endorse. They are questions that require collective dialogue and reasoned debate on how we view ourselves in regard of the planet and what kind of policies we can agree and impose on ourselves to maintain ourselves and that planet. Again, I simply wanted to ask an open question what does economics have to offer as a discipline on these matters and how does it deal with facts and values in a consistent way? Your point about history is well taken, but those actors were acting on the basis of values (values economics has helped to create and legitimate). Our world in which we identify current facts was shaped by them. So it is not simply looking at history but looking at the processes of history that got us to where we are. Talk of facts and values is not beside the point where you can simply direct the argument at self-interest etc. as a trump card to denigrate the need to analyse where facts come from, and what values we value.
As an aside: Your argument is replete with values is it not? Do you favour an infinite population? I expect not. Yet your position implicitly seems to suggest that no population limits should be imposed… At the same time, the current situation of unfair distribution/exploitation/appropriation etc. of the global commons, food resources etc. is one you seem to be against and would presumably alter – do you then favour some impositions over others or are you in principle against imposition?
If against imposition but in favour of change you would then be endorsing the possiblity of reasoned agreement… willed consensual change perhaps? Is this likely or are we now doomed?
I’m not asking these questions in order to argue for impositions… I’m simply looking at the structure of what you said and asking you what you think it is you are arguing in favour of – are you saying talk of facts and values is irrelevant, are you saying that economics need not discuss them or consistently incorporate them, are you saying anything about economics?. I’m not clear here.
Nb, To say a problem is 100% political does not mean that it is pointless to analyse it from the point of view of how a political argument is derived, developed and legitimated – it’s grounds will include economics and its construiction will include facts and values in various ways.
As a final question do you think Malthus saw himself as an oppressor or a scientific fraud? If not isn’t it important to understand what system of thinking created his way of thinking since that way of thinking had real world effects?
Jamie
Optimum population is a concept loaded with values. Does one desire less suffering in toto? (human and non) Does one desire less violent conflict? Less hunger? More freedom and mobility on average? Better average health? Fewer toxins in the food chain? Increased biodiversity including in fresh waters and oceans?
Or does one opt for more homo rapacious-superstitious, hoping that the techno-optimist and cornucopian fallacies are imaginary?
I suggest you have a look at:
http://www.homerdixon.com/academicwriting.html
and:
http://www.optimumpopulation.org/
Thanks Steve. As an open question do you think the capabailities approach has anything useful to say here?
Jamie
Sorry, Jamie. I don’t know what you refer to as capabilities approach. A link would help.
Steve
Hello Steve, the work of Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum and others who take a broadly Aristotelian approach to human need, wants, and potential as constitutive elements in economy (flourishing etc.).
Jamie
Surely there is a relationship between population and wealth. Not necessarily a simple one. Take two families, each with an income of 50,000 USD, same housing costs and food/clothing costs per individual. One family has two adults and two children. The other has two adults and 12 children. Assuming no exterior assistance, one family is reasonably well off compared to the other, other things being equal.
Equally if someone has a gene for a hereditary disability, then it is likely that their progeny are less well off if only due to greater health costs.
Biology matters and needs to be factored in to real world economics.
Economics is a sub-system of ecology. The current ability of humans to effect the planet is demonstrated by many effects such as the ozone hole, global fisheries decline and so on. This suggests there is an optimum global product of population times consumption (resource use).
A simple planetary model explored the relationships between population, resource use, pollution etc was constructed about 1970. This was published a book with the title ‘limits to growth’. If you look at the generated graphs you will see that our current and future problems were predicted along with possible solutions to avoid the consequences. It is of interest that this study was commissioned by a group of industrialists, the Club of Rome.
What worries me is that if we are to have post autistic economics then surely economics should be based on what we know from mathematics and the sciences, Physics, Chemistry and Biology as well as applied science.
Scientific laws work regardless, you cannot repeal the Law of Gravity.
What has temporarily allowed us to increase our population is the utilisation of previously stored sunlight, the energy of fossil fuels. This does not discredit the Malthusian argument. Unless we generate alternative sources of energy at a reasonable EROI then we will not be able to support the current global population at the current level of consumption.
As an aside eugenics has not been discredited, what Hitler did was not eugenics, he deliberately killed off millions of fit able people. Eugenics is currently practiced in almost all developed countries. Medical advisory services discuss with people who have in their genetic background genes likely to cause serous consequences the likelyhood of their children being carriers of those genes. Parents can then make a choice either of ignoring the advice, limiting their reproduction or medically intervening in a number of ways.
I would argue that economists have a duty to be well informed as they seem to have great influence in society.
Hello Miles, there is a lot to reply to here. I’ll start from 4 arising issues you might want to elaborate on:
1. Wouldn’t it make more sense to say that economics can be udnerstood in some uses as a way of understanding the possibilities and constraints situated to ecology – what is resource allocation, how do we think about it, model it, justify it… what human systems does it occur in which then occur within ecosystems that are affected by humans…
2. Your point about wealth and famnily size explicitly introduces assumptions and might then indicate the need to make sense of 1. above – num,bers of people matter for the type of economy and type of broader system within which that economy operates… but why start by assuming the centrality of the family and assuming family-wealth and no redistribution… the former perhaps because it is an existent phenomena but the latter point about redistribution…
3. The problem of eugenics is also one of specific historical claims and technical implications isn’t it… claims about inheritence and intellgience for example are not well grounded… then there are issues in terms of interventions: what one can do is not necessarily what one argues one should do…
4. one may not be able to dispense with the law of gravity but is the sense of a scientific law to which you might be read as referring (ineluctable, always and everywhere manifest) actually how scientiifc laws concretely occur in events and is this also a relevant way to think about ‘laws’ of human systems – including economies -being subject to material constraints may not be exactly the same thing as determined by them, as such the idea of economy as a sub-system of ecology would again need some elaboration… if we can change ecosystems for the worse we are interacting with physical laws through human manipulation of them and through human convention in regard of what it means to be human in a material world… well-informed about the sciences might well also be a constructive process for sustainability but it would not be reducible to other sciences.
I’m not suggesting you favour reducibility, determistic science or anything else I’m simply curious as to how you would expand what might be inferred from what you have succinctly stated
Jamie
Thank you for your comments Jamie.
I agree with your first comment in point 1 but not the second.
We are in a highly complex relation ship with the ecosystem of which we are part.
Humans as part of the animal kingdom are part of the ecosystem. We know from earths history that we have not always been a dominant species. We also know from experiment and observation that animals can damage their environment and decrease the carrying capacity either permanently or temporarily. In the absence of predators and initially adequate food species can have a population explosion, leading via disease and hunger, to a decrease in population and carrying capacity. This can happen with insufficient predators and this happens regularly in Northern Canada with rabbits and their predators, this being one part in a coupled oscillation, rabbits and their predators periodically rising to peak populations (out of phase) then crashing to reduced numbers.
Ecosystems often have complex system behaviour, we seem to have severely damaged the Grand Banks Cod fishing industry off Newfoundland by overfishing and apparently due to ecological niches being filled by other species recovery of the cod population is not immanent but may take decades and is uncertain.
Certainly the ecosystem provides goods and services and economics is a way of understanding the constraints and possibilities, but alone this is not adequate. We are only recently in the last 70 years beginning to understand complex non-causal probabilistic systems. The work arising from people such as R A Fisher in statistics, Howard Odum in ecology and so on. Institutions and organisations such as the Santa Fe Institute have been set up to try to understand the nature of complexity (not complexity as in the difficulty of solving families of problems with a general algorithm but a wider study of complex systems ).
Point 2. It is not about the centrality of the family but about reproduction with limited supply of resources. If we take the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, over the last 30 years there population has exploded whilst the per capita average income has declined. They are literally breeding their country into poverty. If their population continues to expand one may calculate a BUA date when there is no longer oil for export, domestic consumption adsorbing all production. A finite depleting resource is not a sound foundation to exponentially increase population however the resource is distributed. This is equally true on a planetary scale.
Point 3 Intelligence and heritability. First one has to define what is meant by intelligence. The simplest definition is what is measured by Ravens matrices. What the definition of intelligence is, is the subject of philosophical arguments. Whether this is general or made up of specific factors such as musical ability is also a controversy. It is a product of a complex system, the collection of neurons and other cells and the connections between those cells in the human brain. However using some such definition we do know that there is a complicated interrelationship between the environment and inheritance. This has been demonstrated by natural experiments such as identical twin studies where the twins were adopted into different environments. It does appear that intelligence is polygenetic. We also know that environmental effects such as poor nutrition during pregnancy can affect two generations. Further that stress due to violence affects brain development. This means even if there was no complex heritability people who are raised in poor environments are more likely to raise their children in poor environments, cultural inheritance leading to lower cognitive ability. This cultural inheritance calls into question the redistribution of income as an effective tool for combating poverty. We need a cultural change as well.
However there are evolutionary reasons why cultural change is very difficult. An example if one believes that the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse’ gases is leading to a world where human survival is more difficult, whether due to desertification, extreme weather events, changes in sea level, spread of disease, acidification of oceans, reduction of wheat yields then we should reduce the production of those gases. This means cutting/changing consumption. However in our mating rituals display of consumption is important. To consume more than your fellow (wo)man is a demonstration of status.
This is related to a major problem of Human rationality is that one worries instantly about the nearby tiger but starvation or other threat in a year is discounted. This is a product of our evolutionary history. This can cause deep future problems and ethical dilemmas.
An example is that of social welfare. If we provide greater goods and services to the less able part of our population, and that part of the population breeds faster (in evolutionary terms these people are more fit for their environment!) then this segment of our population increases as a proportion of the whole. If we encourage our able women to delay child birth and perhaps be unable to have children we get a similar effect. Even if the causes of such ability were purely environmental that argument can be made. Rohmer, the american economist has pointed out that the production of engineers and scientists is critical for a nations economic competitiveness. One can extend his logic to say that if a society does not produce sufficient (or import) engineers that the maintenance of electrical supply and public works such as sewage treatment becomes difficult. Extending the argument further we may cause a literal breakdown of civilisation (provided we have not done so already due to lack of energy supply or other resources such as phosphate) leading to greater suffering and the re-establishment of more direct evolutionary pressures. Evolution affects the future of the economy!
An example of a more immediate evolutionary effect is the regulation of some fisheries. Fish under a certain size are by regulation not caught, they escape due to the mesh size of the net or equivalent. As the larger fish are caught, there is a strong evolutionary pressure downwards on the size of particular fish species.
This has been documented. This process assists in the destruction of the fishery as the larger fish produce disproportionately more eggs, hence offspring.
The evolutionary processes can be remarkably swift.
For number 4 the point is that economists tend to think of supply and demand and similar concepts, not for example geology or the laws of thermodynamics, or the theory of evolution. (The last is more surprising as the business model of competition, creative destruction etc is essentially an evolutionary system without the quirks of biological evolution).
For example the work of Hall and colleagues of the lowering of the EROI has grave implications for the future of the world or national economies. But this is not new in that related comments have been made about the decline of the British coal industry or in an american context about 50 years ago by Admiral Rickover. The assumption that we can always substitute another resource in place of resources in short supply does not apply to energy.
Many processes in science are statistical in nature, systems can be generated with few rules or connections that display complex behaviour that is not predictable, emergent behaviour. This means that some science is not necessarily reducible. Probabilistic systems are not at the individual level deterministic but can be predictable or describable. Complex systems can be so also but can and do generate surprises and unintended consequences.
Many processes in complex systems have a relationship to fractal geometry and are intrinsically non deterministic.
Thanks for the information Miles, on a related methodological point – how would you apply a complex system approach to an economic issue – say capital markets?
This does not have an easy answer. I assume you are referring to recent problems in Capital Markets. I will try to provide a start. Complexity is a relatively new area of research and it is early days, it is not like a calculus problem for which there is a routine. I do not claim expertise, but as a beginner I will rashly make some comments.
Essentially one could try to take an approach similar to Polya’s. We would need to define what the system or subsystem makes sense. Can we define a system called Capital Markets in isolation from the rest of Financial services and securities. Can we identify our assumptions and by observation evidence of system behaviour.
I do not see how what is usually defined by Capital Markets can be separated out with clear boundaries without substantial inputs from other financial markets or services.
Traditionally Capital Markets were markets for debt, bonds, and equity, shares, that enabled governments or companies ( legal individuals) to raise funds for duration of more than one year, for long term finance. Primary markets are the issuance of new Bonds and Shares, secondary markets the trading of those securities in either the stock exchanges or bond markets, but also related securities. We really have to include the trading of any Security as defined by any government, that includes all derivatives, swaps etc and also the associated insurance contracts and rating agencies. I would also include money markets as futures and options even if written for less than one year affect the value of futures and options written for one year or longer. The distinction between Money and Capital markets is somewhat artificial. For instance Governments may raise part of their (in fact long term)funding by repeatedly issuing 90 day bonds which are then rolled over. As futures and options are traded on the commodities markets and these markets affect the values of related securities such as mining shares, these markets we really need to include commodities. Swaps may be for financial streams of money or for commodities.
Then we need to consider the functions of Capital Markets.
1/ Facilitate the flow of (household) savings to capital investment by companies and government. Again Companies get their funds from a variety of sources, from shareholders funds including retained earnings, from Bonds and also Bank Loans.
2/Provide risk pooling and sharing
3/Allow management and risk to be separated
4/ Provide information and prices to inform investment decisions.
Derivatives play a part in 2,3 & 4.
Capital Markets has a large component that is a black box. There is a lot of information that is not accessible, over the counter transactions such as swaps. There is also information that is unknown by one party but known to the other party, asymmetric knowledge. There are transaction costs, poor expert financial advice and a general problem of (lack of) knowledge diffusion or too much information for the mediators of knowledge.
In the USA for example there appears to be a financial relationship between politicians and the largest Banks. Is this a form of corruption? I notice despite the bail out of the financial institutions, banks are still foreclosing BUA. I also notice that bankruptancy legislation does not apply to individuals mortgages, whilst companies can take advantage of section 11 etc. The large banks via their employees donate funds to politicians. The Banks also directly lobby the politicians, I believe the cost of the big banks lobbyingis of the order of 3-400 million USD. Leading Bankers are also appointed to regulate the Banks in which they are recently employed and may be their future employers.
If there are regulators do they regulate fairly. There is a belief that the financial system should operate in various ways, transparent, efficient and fair. From observation, this does not appear to be always true, toxic mortgages, Enron and Chernof come to mind, how do we build in or take account of observed rather than ideal behaviour. Some of the recent concepts to do with newer financial products one needs to have a background applied mathematics, physics or equivalent to understand those products. Is there an education/ability gap in management or governance of or within institutions. Can we build this into our models.
Assuming we can define what system we are to discuss, then we have to decide on an appropriate logic.
Can the system be discussed in terms of simple cause and effect or is it multi causal. Are the relationships essentially linear or non linear. Can we make a Systems Dynamics model, that is a set of interelated differential equations to describe the behaviour of the system.(See Business Dynamics by Sterman). Is this a’good enough’ approximation/description.
Does the system produce outputs that have a complexity signature. In fact stock market prices over time would appear to be so. Also Markets are self organising.
Markets also evolve in terms of concepts (and regulations). Some of the recent concepts to do with newer financial products one needs to have a background applied mathematics, physics or equivalent to understand those products. Is there an education/ability gap in management or governance of or within institutions?
How do we build into our model knowledge creation, ability to understand and education.
There is also the issue of the ‘nice story’ creating a bias.. For example the cause of the financial crisis.
One group of people believe the cause was the collateralised toxic mortgages.
Another explanation was that the high oil prices via increased food prices and commuting costs removed discretionary income so that a section of the community could either retain their job by commuting or pay their mortgage or other debt. This increased the default rate for mortgages and exposed/created the toxic debt. Another story is that people were living on the equity change in the price of their house. Observationally a recession appears to usually follow a rapid rise in oil prices, and a recession decreases the ability to pay commitments. One could point the finger at out sourcing manufacturing and services leading to increased demand /development in China and India. I am sure there are other ‘nice’ stories. The problem is as humans we look for ‘nice’ simple explanations that are good enough and do not always examine our assumptions or pre-set beliefs/biases. Further in a system problems can be multi causal or emergent. Black Swan territory can emerge or result from inopportune beliefs or assumptions.
There are questions , analogous to Godels theorem about true (and also false) statements that are not provable in mathematical axiomatic systems, about whether the system can be described adequately to predict behaviour. (Maybe this is the source of the joke that if you put 3 economists in a room you get 4 theories and 5 different conflicting predictions.)
However by analogy with Quantum Mechanics where at a subatomic level we have unpredictability/uncertainty but at a macroscopic level we have predictability, we may be able to produce a Systems Dynamic model that produces reasonable predictability. That is the amazing results of the ‘Limits to Growth’ predicted system behaviours.
So at this stage dealing with the problem is likely to be an art not an algorithm.
Further given the USA Politician/Big Bank nexus even if there is a good recipe/prescription it may have little chance of implementation.
You ask – “First, are there now too many of us? Second, are there now too many of us doing things we shouldn’t be doing? These are problems of fact and value.”
“too many” is not a fact problem it’s clearly a value problem – too many for what and in whose opinion?
A bit late (having too recently discovering this blog), may I point out how Hume in Jamie’s initial quotation refers neither to facts nor values, yet they are still there (with Humean personal sentiment” called ‘value’) in Passerby’s final comment. A ‘fact’ in Hume is incidentally “made” (as in a factory, i.e. as a [formally agreed] representation of conscious experience).
The link between the two never seems to have occurred to Hume: that things done (like making observations) have to be done by something, somehow; that faults in the something or somehow lead to faults in the doing; therefore [to do things correctly] one ought not use equipment or methods which defeat their own purpose.
Having said that, it sounds a lot like modern economics to me. Given the way the world is going, yes, there are too many of us doing that! But I suggest Jamie is asking and Passerby addressing the wrong questions. “Too many” represents a judgement “made”, and though many of us judge matters by how we feel about imagined outcomes, a scientific judgement ought to be made on the adequacy of the judge, at least in terms of the factual evidence at his disposal.
It seems to me none of us can know enough about the world and its population to deduce that there are too many of us in it. The same does not apply for a small region like a town, where we can see directly whether or not we have enough space and renewable resources for the way we are living. Any aggregation of this has to be a generalisation taking account of empty places and “slack” – in the way we are living and the availability of resources. Any action based on this is likely to hit the mark as often as someone shooting in the dark.
The question I would like answering is why economists and social scientists have not studied how control is understood by technologists? i.e. in terms of feedback of relevant information to the subjects/object being controlled. [See also my response to Irene Staverton, PAEReview 56].
For a town to control its own population it needs to agree an annual target for births, express that in terms of the previous years’ deaths, report pregnancies (perhaps “booking a slot” by reporting an intention to become pregnant), and keep the population informed of how far pregnancies so far reported fall short of or exceed those so far expected, so that child-bearing decisions can be brought forward or foregone/delayed a little. That’s not a value judgement. It is a logical (as against empirical) fact, “made” in light of conceptual developments in the understanding of dynamic logic.
Correction. The questions I’ve addressed were not those Jamie originally asked:
“My question to you is: how would you proceed? What solutions does economics offer?”
My apologies to Jamie and for a couple of irritating typos. In any case, the replacement of a fact/value distinction with representational/logical facts is the way I would proceed, and I’ve addressed the solution to the dilemma posed by Malthus in terms of what economics OUGHT to have offered, at least since c.1948.
Very, very late reply. Much of interest here. I agree with the complexity viewpoint expressed above – and I entirely disavow the hate mail directed at Malthus and Darwin. Dear me, such ignorance! This is what I expect from right wing bloggers or evolution deniers.
The bashing of Malthus didn’t start with Marx but Marx had to show that Malthus’s attempts to construct a natural ecological law (which of course influenced both Darwin and Wallace) was wrong because if scarcity was eternal bang goes socialism. What Malthus – who did change his positions in the light of accumulated ‘facts’ and was not in any shape or form merely an ideologue for the landed classes- had to say is of direct interest to economics today . As Keynes said, it had been better that economics had proceeded from a base in Malthus’s natural economics rather than the hedonistic route it took.
There is so much ignorant prejudice against Malthus and Darwin from people who haven’t understood him and really ought to get out (to the library) a little more. For example: “A later denizen of the English upper classes, Darwin, provided a scientific-sounding gloss for this policy. Under Darwinism, that the strong (or the “Favoured Races”) ought to devour the weak was the law of nature, the great engine of progress.” What a lot of crap. Survival of the fittest stuff came from Herbert Spencer. Darwin, who was an upper class gent who did worry about population growth among the uneducated poor, said nothing of the kind; indeed although a man of mild disposition he lobbied strongly against the slave trade. What Darwin was concerned about was the economics of nature, following Adam Smith and Malthus. This is where the biological enlightenment came from. The word ecological – invented by Darwin’s follower, Haeckel, and economics have exactly the same roots and should be brought together. His mate Wallace, the codiscoverer of natural selection was a cooperative socialist who formed campaign (with JS Mill) to have land nationalised in the public interest.
Science means critical inquiry (to me at least), not a division between positive and normative. Let’s abandon such dualisms. We live in complexity. We have to address climate change, population growth, etc. in ways which give people social justice. And we in the West have to consume far less. That is the neo-Malthusian picture of the future. And there is no ducking it, despite the Panglossian fantasies of the free market or suggestions of infinite reserve of nature and technological change (by people like Matt Ridley). Let’s stop attacking our heritage of critical thought and start thinking.
Geof Rayner