This commentary thread seems to have really hit the Fan…

I don't have any 'answers' either and it is sadly true that not all three-year-olds in emerging economies face the same future:

http://tinyurl.com/7razoyn

Problems associated with poverty and overpopulation are variously confronted at local, regional, national and global levels depending on what you're measuring - and all of these are modified by the shared variable of time.

Globally we are 'inside' an unprecedented experiment with carrying capacity - of course a continental flood basalt event could end it before humans do - just one of those time variables which can't be factored.

It's easy to forget the Permian wasn't permanent.

It's also easy to state that, whatever the future holds in store, those humans who survive will have adapted.

Since there is no prospect of humans agreeing to together pull ourselves out of any consequences of overpopulation until catastrophe is staring us in the face and we risk coming to a sticky end, the best anyone concerned can do in the meantime, is to start with themselves…

This is akin to fiddling while Rome burns.

Though, it should be added, I can't think of any potential catastrophe that is improved by having even more people caught up in it.

Jardine K Jardine wrote: "But it's not valid to assume, as you seem to, that the making of profits automatically proves a misallocation of resources. This idea comes ultimately from Marxist theory that, since all value is imputable back to the labour factors and only the labour factors of production, therefore profit self-evidently proves a rip-off of the working class as a class."

What are you taking about? I assumed no such thing. Misallocation of resources? Marxist theory? I am not a Marxist and was not critical of corporate economic planning as such. However, I did claim that neither planning may be for the public good.

A free market may be an excellent mechanism for an efficient allocation of resources. However, corporate monopolist practices and government restraint of trade may both mitigate against a free market. In modern economic practice a free market is a rarity generally confined to commodity futures. The accumulation of capital is a necessary condition for continued industrial activity whether such accumulation is achieved by the corporation or the socialist state. However, the accumulation by the corporation or the socialist state may be done in a manner not in the interest of the general public.

You claim a lot of things I didn't say and then accuse me of being an ideologue.

I repeat: "To assume economic planning is somehow good when it is done by a corporation and bad when it is done by government is ideology not common sense."

Argue with what I write. Don't put words in my mouth and argue with what I didn't say.

Jardine K. Jardine distinguishes initially between government and corporate will to power, casting the former (democratic capitalism) as detrimentally and the latter (those disinterestedly-devoted to profit) as beneficially self-serving; blithely providing for the common good through its obsessive activity—like dung beetles.
JKJ offers no evidence that a market free of government intervention would provide for the common good, it seems to be an article of faith—it could easily be argued of course that it “would” be BAD—yet he dismisses Marx’s labour theory of value, his straw man, without a hearing: “Marx was wrong”. Excuse my demur, but how so?
JKJ says that even if “he was right then it's not consistent to tolerate any profit at all”. True, though Marx had nothing against hiving-away surplus-production; indeed the capitalist era spelled the end of the practice and the exploited live hand to mouth. “Mass starvation” would indeed ensue, but that’s “because” of privateering. Private profit begat the problem JKJ claims it forestalls.
JKJ,
None of your “self-evident” claims stand up and I’ll say why when you explain why “Marx was wrong”. I don’t believe he was, at least not on that score. We are indeed dependent now on the privatisation of the means of production, but this impasse—including our prodigious numbers and consumption—was cultivated by capitalism. It’s you who’s “blinded by ideology”.

"Mao Zedong (or Mao Tse-tung), and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao" did a lot to demonstrate the limitations, the failings and the inhumanity of Marxism with his 'Great Leap Forward' and with his '100 Flowers' deception. Maybe he did bring China a long way forward, but at considerable cost to ordinary people, and he may well be considered a mass murderer. What price progress, and does the end truly justify the means?
Mao, an even greater mass-hypnotist than Hitler. (And responsible for at least as many deaths, it would seem.) And, was Mao's tutor, Joseph Stalin, any more successful, in the end result?

david f,

>>A free market may be an excellent mechanism for an efficient allocation of resources.<<

I wonder. I'm glad you said 'may', but I still wonder. What can be the best 'free' mechanism, and can it ever really be free, considering how much of the world's resources is being annexed (one way or another) by the affluent powers, even as we speak?

JKJ, profit is essential for development, innovation and productivity improvement. Few governments make a profit, although most would be expected to invest in innovation, like our CSIRO for example.

Perhaps the greatest limitation to government innovation and enterprise is the seemingly endless need for talkfests before deciding what to do or how to do it - over, and over and over again. 'Bureaucracy' conjures up many derogatory connotations. But, free enterprise must also be subject to appropriate restrictions and requirements, if only to minimise the advent of 'unintended consequences'.

A delicate balance would seem the only certain way forward, and to my mind the current philosophy of 'level playing field' and 'free trade' really operate as a form of blackmail - with self-interested governments calling the shots.

Dear Saltpetre,

Even when the free market is the most efficient method of allocating resources the most efficient method of allocating resources is often not the most important consideration. Social justice (which has no universally agreed definition), minimising human suffering, preservation of the environment and biodiversity and limiting population growth may all be more important than the most efficient allocation of resources. Bear in mind that the free market as defined by Adam Smith rarely exists.

His definition requires:

1. No producer is big enough to affect the market by itself.

2. No consumer is big enough to affect the market by itself.

3. The commodity produced by one producer is indistinguishable from the same commodity produced by another producer.

Brand names, advertising, large corporate entities and many of the other components of a modern economic system are incompatible with Smith's vision of a free market.

Squeers, if someone pays $10 million for labour to dig a gold mine, and the mine ends up producing only one ounce of gold, the value of the ounce of gold isn’t $10 million, is it? No. So the labour theory of value is wrong.
And if you're out walking your dog and idly kick a rock, which turns out to contain a kilogram of gold, the value of the gold isn’t the market value of the labour that went into it, is it? No.
Or if I hire a top QC to knit doylies, and it takes him a day to make one, the value of the doylie isn’t $10,000, the value of his labour for a day, is it?
If the LTV were correct, no business would ever make a loss, because the value of its product would be the accumulated value of the labour that went into it.
Therefore the LTV is wrong and since Marx’s entire economic theory rested on it, Marx was wrong.

David f, I have argued with what you writ. Private and state economic planning are categorically different, for at least three reasons:
1. private revenues are obtained voluntarily which shows that the payers place a higher value on what they get than what they give; the reverse is true for states.
2. property owners have an incentive not to waste it, whereas those who dispose of public property have no such incentive, and indeed have an incentive to try to increase taxation
3. states are, to the extent of state ownership, incapable of economic calculation in terms of money prices of capital goods, which means
a) there is no way that they can know what or how is rational to produce in terms of any lowest common denominator of consumers’ evaluations, and
b) the bigger the state the greater the economic chaos and waste it generates.

Can you define monopoly in a way that describes any real-world business, and explain why it’s bad? I don’t think you can.

On the other hand, states are by definition monopolies, so that’s no improvement.