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Re: Ecological Economics and Entropy



Jason McGinnis wrote,

>Your description of how horrible life was half a millenium ago is
>quite enlightening, but proves nothing except how far back you have to
>look to find a time at which things were worse, and even then were
>only worse in a localized area.
>
>The problems to which you refer resulted from the advent of
>market-based economies, (actually marking the end of medieval times),
>which - like most businesses still - formed with little understanding
>of the impact they would have. 
>
>For 800 years after the fall of the Roman empire up to this point,
>people lived in a non-market, subsistance based economy; the land did
>not belong to the people, the people belonged to the land. Very few
>had reason to be hungry.

Very few lived to be hungry.  Ask yourself whether the world of 1200 AD
could have supported the population of today.  It is the advances in
productivity made possible by capitalism which has allowed the population
to grow as it has.

>Since the primary industry of these developing markets was textiles,
>the question became whether to use the land for food or sheep. No hard
>choice for the aristocrats who had no fear of going hungry - so they
>began to maximize the use of land for sheep to support these emerging
>markets.

Query: do you know what mutton is?

>What happened as a result has to be one of the greatest turning points
>in history.
>
>A series of enclosure acts passed by the English parliament divided
>the land and reduced it to commercial property that could be
>negotiated as real estate. Hundreds of thousands of people were
>displaced from the land first in England then on the continent.
>
>The resulting famines were caused by a lack of understanding that what
>minimal land could feed the people one year, might not the next year,
>or ten years later. That, and the fact that the upper classes liked
>their sheep too much.

An interesting if wholly inaccurate version of the history of the Enclosure
Acts.  Read McCloskey for some education on the subject (Wonder of wonders!
A citation of an economist on sci.econ!)

>Only now there isn't more land. The earth and the biosphere which is
>our environment is finite.  The resources which we consume are finite.

But the ways in which we can organize them for our benefit, are not.

Don Dale






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