This week I attended a forum on population housing and immigration.
There were four speakers who will remain anonymous.
The first was a speaker who opposes the wholesale construction of
multi story blocks of home units at the expense of single level family
homes. He was very critical of the planners justification of the
current trend.
He quoted figures to show that they are not as economical and environmentally
friendly as we have been led to believe.
He was the best speaker of the night.

The second speaker was an economist from a University.
His idea is to bring in as many immigrants as possible to reduce the
impact of the aging population.
When asked by a lady in the audience, how long do you keep doing this as the immigrants age ?
He had no satisfactory answer, except growth would look after it all.

The other speakers were failed to be elected politicians.
The first wanted to only import compatible migrants and the other was
away with fairies proposing that we export energy to China by use of
microwave beams to a satellite which would in turn send the power
down to China. He had several other similarly impractical ideas.
I did not bother to ask him how many decibel path loss would be involved.

My purpose in explaining all this is to illustrate how all these so
called learned and public service orientated have no idea what is
going on around them. They all spoke of a business as usual future.
Growth would resume its previous trajectory and would continue into the
distant future.

If this is typical of our universities and politicians that inhabit
our country then we are in real trouble. Several people I spoke to
afterwards were equally amazed at the presentations that we heard
except for the speaker from Save Our Suburbs who I thought had his
subject well understood and covered. He turned over many of my assumptions.

Anyone who believes that expotential growth can go on forever
in a finite world is either a madman or an economist !
Kenneth E Boulding.

If this is typical of our universities and politicians
Bazz,
it's not typical, it's the norm. Aust Standard #1

Dear Bazz,

There are many views in universities
and amongst academics. I found
the book by Tor Hundloe, "From
Buddha to Bono: Seeking sustainability,"
an excellent and interesting read.

In it he tells us:

"Humans have the intelleigence, the tools
and the natural resources to provide for
a good, sustainable life as long as there
are not so many humans that we exceed the
globe's carrying capacity. All the evidence
suggests that we must turn around population
growth and aim for a much smaller population
than we have today. Already there are highly
developed European countries where - regardless
of religion - the population is declining.

Politicians in the US, Canada, Australia and
New Zealand are absolutely wrong. The leaders in
these countries are promoting population growth.
They are derelict, probably dumb...politicians
like Peter Costello should be condemned for
encouraging large families."

There's also an
interesting website that's
worth a read:

http://www.population.org.au/

It covers quite a wide range - including Australia.

Well I hope you are right Foxy.
I think we have all been reading about how the US European growth has
been languishing despite trillions of money being thrown at the problem.

Just to prove that not all economists are madmen the Canadian economist
Jeff Rubin, author of "Your World is About to get a Whole Lot Smaller"
has written an article in a Canadian newspaper projecting the scenario
that at US$75to $80 a barrel the US economy cannot grow to any extent
and that the current unemployment levels and economic level is static.

http://tinyurl.com/2522twp

The article is at that URL.
I wonder what it means for our economy.
Is this the start of the long descent ?

OH. I cant wait for the end of this one.

TTM

<< Anyone who believes that expotential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist >>

Bazz, it’s a great quote, ‘çept for one thing…economists ARE madmen…. by and large!

Or at least, conventional economists are mad. They are really just pseudo-economists at best and outright anti-economists at worst, while real economists are those that take into account the utter absurdity of continuous never-ending growth, as well as all the quality-of-life, aesthetic, environmental, intergenerational, etc factors that are not normally included in economic calculations. And they are few and far between.

http://www.colorado.edu/econ/Kenneth.Boulding/ken1.jpg