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Re: Ecological Economics and Entropy



On 20 Nov 96 12:35:55 +0000, "Don Dale" <dale@princeton.edu> wrote:

>Jason McGinnis wrote,

>>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. 

And how long do you have to live to become 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.

Are we supporting the population of today?

As the world stage proves, all population needs to grow is food and
members of the opposite sex. In fact, social change in richer
countries is the main influence affecting _less_ population growth. 

Unfortunately, the increasing consumption of these richer countries
has more impact than increasing population.

>>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?

If the hungry people were near the sheep, and could overcome the fear
of losing their head for eating them, I'm sure they would have. 

The whole point of this was that people no longer had the option of
'living off the land'. The hunger was experienced in places, (i.e.
cities, towns),  where the people depended on supply from exterior
sources, and these sources were producing sheep - for textiles - and
not enough food.

>>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!)

Wholly inaccurate? I don't think so. 
Less glossed over than most economic historians? Probably.

>>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.

I guess that means they're infinite then. Give me a break. 

We can't even manage what we do have for the benefit of all. Not even
within our own supposedly successful and morally advanced societies.


Jason McGinnis


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