Andrew Whitby

Malthus was lucky; he lived before the institution of the London school of Economics and the host of schools throughout the world mimicking it.

He did not know of the veritable flood of graduates from these institutions. Had he known, what would he have thought?

Would he have thought of them on the same line on which he reckoned that the inordinate growth of population would be exceeding the growth of essentials for the sustenance of human life?

For how long will society be capable to feed, clothe and keep amused an ever engrossing torrent of economists and assorted university graduated whose useful product is nil?

Andrew, as I understand it, Dick Smith is using the name Wilberforce as a kind of corollary where in the slavery debate, the main argument was that commercial enterprise would not be possible without slavery. As we know, capitalism has prospered well despite its abolition.

So to make plain the comparison, the current argument is that there cannot be increasing prosperity without increasing population.
Dick Smith doesn't take this argument for granted, and like Wilberforce is challenging conventional opinion, hence the use of the name Wilberforce for that iconclast intent.

Hi Andrew,

We each have different levels of knowledge.

A simple example, then the solution.

If you want to catch fish easily, the best place to go is to an area where there are very small numbers of our species.

If you want to feed the world; encourage, educate and support the universal ideal of around 2 children at about 30 years of age.

Cheers,

Ralph

Overpopulation has been taken care of, because corporations running this planet are "TOO BIG TO FAIL "

On every road in Australia, tailgaters on hi-beam hunt for cars travelling at the speed limit and create a rage scenario. Its legitimate. They get to travel faster than the speed limit and get a superiority rush while police look on and smile while booking some mum or dad for 3Km/hr over the limit.

This is unsustainable behaviour but we have to live with it, especially in NSW. And the stress it creates makes all our lives go faster, more accident prone &dangerous and more expensive to the glory of forever economic growth.

The point is, on the current social trajectory, the middle classes are & will be essentially executed in their beds when resources run out in our unsustainable economies. The police will look on and smile as usual. Only Wall street, its expensive armed forces, its goverment bailout legislators, all the middle class deceased estates and backtaxes & the wild druggy spend-it-up youth markets will remain.

This form of 'economic dictatorship' could go on forever under the guise of 'too holy to fail democracy'? Why?

Because the middle classes are too media-complaced & gutless to stand up and tell governments "we WANT "corporations and banks too big to fail" to actually fail when they stuff up". The inevitable consequences of unemployment, injustice and poverty are already here, They cannot get any worse. The TRUTH is, OUR ingenuity not wall Street's, will PREVAIL.

But hush! That's Wall Street's biggest secret apart from the fact that GFC#2 is less than a year away while Wall Street fudges $accounts to make it look like the global economy is forever in the black, even when its not..

Even dopey Bravehart knew: "THE COST OF FREEDOM IS ETERNAL VIGILANCE". But does it have to be on YOUR middle class deathbed?

"No meaningful long term limit" to growth,eh?

That just about sums up this cornucopian rant from an economist of the old (and discredited) school.Mr Whitby.I recommend a reading of the work of Hermann Daly who recognizes the ECOLOGICAL limits to growth.

That is,of course,if you can climb down out of your ivory tower to access information which does not concur with your preconceived pixie notions.

The founders of the older schools of economics saw no need to consider limits to growth, just as 18th century gunners didn't need relativity theory to work out their trajectories, even if they had known about it (unlike modern particle physicists). These economists grew up at a time when there were less than 2 billion people worldwide, most of them living in appalling poverty. Humans were capable of doing some local environmental damage, but not of interfering with the vast natural cycles that sustain life on earth. New technologies were unlocking vast natural resources per person.

Paul Ehrlich and quite a number of others were wrong about widespread famines in the 1970s because they were unable to predict the success of the Green Revolution. Even the agronomist William Paddock was caught out. However, our problems today are far more extensive than theirs were then. We are facing shortages or losses of arable land, fresh water, fish stocks, biodiversity, fossil fuels and minerals that are vital for our agriculture and other technology, and capacity of the environment to safely absorb wastes. See for example the famous 9 Thresholds paper in Nature

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html

This is Nature, probably the most respected peer-reviewed science journal in the world, not a blogsite run by a few ignorant fringe Greenies. Or see Lester Brown's Plan B, recommended reading for his May 2009 Scientific American article and available as a free download

http://www.earthpolicy.org/images/uploads/book_files/pb3book.pdf

Does Andrew Whitby seriously think that we will be able to come up with technological solutions to all these problems, and in time to make a difference, while also continuing with massive economic and population growth? Perhaps he should follow the example of Herman Daly and listen to the natural scientists who do understand these issues.