According to more than one conservatives here ...

[SimpleDon]

... we ditched reality-based economics in the 1980s in favor of libertarian, fantasy-based free market economics because reality-based economics couldn't handle stagflation. Now that fantasy-based, supply-side economics has caused the current stagflation what do we do? Go back to the reality-based economics of Keynes?

I believe that will not be the response. If for no other reason than the current crop of conservative and libertarian thought seems to be totally immune to any charge of hypocrisy. At least in their minds.

Surprise me.

 

[SimpleDon]

Of course, the reality-based economics explanation of why they were replaced by the fantasy-based political economics of the never before seen free-market economy has nothing to do with stagflation and everything to do with conservatives being co-opted by the American oligarchy to convert wages into profits, that being what the evidence of the last forty years or so tells us.

 

[bilby]

I strongly suspect that stagflation is an unavoidable effect of high energy prices, and has little to do with political policy.

A high cost of energy (particularly for transportation) both increases prices across the board, and dampens growth.

Keeping the cost of energy low requires independence on warzones and politically unstable regimes for our energy; And rational energy policies that don’t rely on hope triumphing over engineering and thermodynamic reality. You cannot power a modern civilisation with intermittent power sources, and attempts to do so just increase reliance on Natural Gas, as supplied by the stable and peace-loving Russians.

There is an obvious solution here, but I expect regular board members are as sick of me saying it as I am. If we, as a species, are too dumb to properly implement a perfectly good solution because of a quasi-religious belief that it is evil, then we deserve to suffer the consequences.

 

[Swammerdami]

In the classic Keynesian view an economy is a closed system. When it "overheats," raw materials, unemployed labor, and finished goods all become scarce; and prices rise. The remedy is to raise interest rates and slow down the economy.

But the U.S. economy is NOT a closed system. The prices of petroleum, copper and even wheat are set by a WORLD market.

I strongly suspect that stagflation is an unavoidable effect of high energy prices, and has little to do with political policy.

Yes. Despite U.S.A.'s own high production of petroleum, prices are set in the WORLD market, which is not controlled by U.S. fiscal or monetary policies. The domestic economy is NOT a closed system, so inflation is not easily controlled by domestic policies. As we learned in the 1970's and early 1980's: In 1981, BOTH unemployment AND interest rates were setting record highs, despite that interest hikes are the classic remedy when unemployment is too LOW.

Another confounding factor is asset price bubbles. Asset-price inflation is WELCOMED, explicitly by politicians and implicitly by central bankers, but it has its own drawbacks. The three big recessions of the 21st century (2001, 2009, 2023) have all been provoked by asset price inflation.

A high cost of energy (particularly for transportation) both increases prices across the board, and dampens growth.

Keeping the cost of energy low requires independence on warzones and politically unstable regimes for our energy; And rational energy policies that don’t rely on hope triumphing over engineering and thermodynamic reality. You cannot power a modern civilisation with intermittent power sources, and attempts to do so just increase reliance on Natural Gas, as supplied by the stable and peace-loving Russians.

There is an obvious solution here, but I expect regular board members are as sick of me saying it as I am. If we, as a species, are too dumb to properly implement a perfectly good solution because of a quasi-religious belief that it is evil, then we deserve to suffer the consequences.

I think your obvious solution will take more than a decade to influence U.S. energy prices, but critical economic and political inflection points are looming right now, in the 2020's. I recently read an article asserting that climate change had already passed an inflection point that rendered future behavior chaotic and UNPREDICTABLE. I think economics and politics are similarly entering a chaotic and unpredictable phase.

In an age of "global plenty" why do we see scarcity-induced high prices of oil, other raw materials, fertilizers and certain foods? The answer is obvious to those not blinded by a different quasi-religion than the one of which bilby speaks. I speak of course of the quasi-religious belief that the planet can readily support a population of eight billion humans. This is a misconception promoted by politicians and billion-dollar corporations which profit from growth. There is no easy solution to over-population, but it is a big part of the reason why the future will be perilous, chaotic and unpredictable.

 

[bilby]

In the classic Keynesian view an economy is a closed system. When it "overheats," raw materials, unemployed labor, and finished goods all become scarce; and prices rise. The remedy is to raise interest rates and slow down the economy.

But the U.S. economy is NOT a closed system. The prices of petroleum, copper and even wheat are set by a WORLD market.

I strongly suspect that stagflation is an unavoidable effect of high energy prices, and has little to do with political policy.

Yes. Despite U.S.A.'s own high production of petroleum, prices are set in the WORLD market, which is not controlled by U.S. fiscal or monetary policies. The domestic economy is NOT a closed system, so inflation is not easily controlled by domestic policies. As we learned in the 1970's and early 1980's: In 1981, BOTH unemployment AND interest rates were setting record highs, despite that interest hikes are the classic remedy when unemployment is too LOW.

Another confounding factor is asset price bubbles. Asset-price inflation is WELCOMED, explicitly by politicians and implicitly by central bankers, but it has its own drawbacks. The three big recessions of the 21st century (2001, 2009, 2023) have all been provoked by asset price inflation.

A high cost of energy (particularly for transportation) both increases prices across the board, and dampens growth.

Keeping the cost of energy low requires independence on warzones and politically unstable regimes for our energy; And rational energy policies that don’t rely on hope triumphing over engineering and thermodynamic reality. You cannot power a modern civilisation with intermittent power sources, and attempts to do so just increase reliance on Natural Gas, as supplied by the stable and peace-loving Russians.

There is an obvious solution here, but I expect regular board members are as sick of me saying it as I am. If we, as a species, are too dumb to properly implement a perfectly good solution because of a quasi-religious belief that it is evil, then we deserve to suffer the consequences.

I think your obvious solution will take more than a decade to influence U.S. energy prices, but critical economic and political inflection points are looming right now, in the 2020's. I recently read an article asserting that climate change had already passed an inflection point that rendered future behavior chaotic and UNPREDICTABLE. I think economics and politics are similarly entering a chaotic and unpredictable phase.

In an age of "global plenty" why do we see scarcity-induced high prices of oil, other raw materials, fertilizers and certain foods? The answer is obvious to those not blinded by a different quasi-religion than the one of which bilby speaks. I speak of course of the quasi-religious belief that the planet can readily support a population of eight billion humans. This is a misconception promoted by politicians and billion-dollar corporations which profit from growth. There is no easy solution to over-population, but it is a big part of the reason why the future will be perilous, chaotic and unpredictable.

Population growth is a solved problem.

Your entire response here is biased by short-term thinking; Sure, it might take a decade to implement my preferred solution to our energy problems, but that’s why we need to start now (or better still, thirty years ago). A quicker but utterly ineffective solution isn’t a better solution.

Population growth was a big problem. It’s not any more; But still it will be a couple of decades before population begins to actually decline.

If you want solutions for the next decade, you’re shit out of luck, ‘cos there ain’t none. Big problems that took a century or more to create are not going to be solved in a single presidential or parliamentary term, or even in three or four of them.

 

[Swammerdami]

Population growth is a solved problem.

Your entire response here is biased by short-term thinking; Sure, it might take a decade to implement my preferred solution to our energy problems, but that’s why we need to start now (or better still, thirty years ago). A quicker but utterly ineffective solution isn’t a better solution.

You should know you're "preaching to the converted" about "short-term thinking." Yesterday in another thread I mentioned that I was advocating a carbon tax 40 years ago. Do you disagree that a 2040 solution to energy costs will not prevent the increasingly chaotic conditions of the 2020's?

As for your quasi-religious claim that "Population growth is a solved problem," repeating a mantra doesn't make it true. Every Sunday millions of Americans recite their belief in "one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible." Does the repetition bring Jehovah into existence?

While I find much to agree with in many of your posts, there are some matters on which we will have to agree to disagree, bilby.

 

[bilby]

Population growth is a solved problem.

Your entire response here is biased by short-term thinking; Sure, it might take a decade to implement my preferred solution to our energy problems, but that’s why we need to start now (or better still, thirty years ago). A quicker but utterly ineffective solution isn’t a better solution.

You should know you're "preaching to the converted" about "short-term thinking." Yesterday in another thread I mentioned that I was advocating a carbon tax 40 years ago. Do you disagree that a 2040 solution to energy costs will not prevent the increasingly chaotic conditions of the 2020's?

As for your quasi-religious claim that "Population growth is a solved problem," repeating a mantra doesn't make it true. Every Sunday millions of Americans recite their belief in "one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible." Does the repetition bring Jehovah into existence?

While I find much to agree with in many of your posts, there are some matters on which we will have to agree to disagree, bilby.

It’s not true because I repeat it; I repeat it because it’s true. The numbers speak for themselves. Birth rates have collapsed since the mid C20th, and continue to fall.

Refusing to look at the figures because you believe something that they don’t say is a quasi-religious position. Reiterating a point borne out by observation of reality is the antithesis of a religious position.

We don’t have to agree to disagree, unless you are unprepared to change your mind on the basis of evidence. If you are right, you can easily persuade me of it by producing evidence; Only if I am right, but you won’t change your mind on that same basis, would we need to agree to disagree.

 

[Hermit]

As for your quasi-religious claim that "Population growth is a solved problem," repeating a mantra doesn't make it true. Every Sunday millions of Americans recite their belief in "one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible." Does the repetition bring Jehovah into existence?

While I find much to agree with in many of your posts, there are some matters on which we will have to agree to disagree, bilby.

The statistics support his view Bilby's view on the matter of population growth. Perhaps you should have a look at them yourself.

Global fertility rates have dropped from 5.03 in 1964 to 2.44 in 2020. The break-even point is 2.1.

Fertility rates do vary from region to region. They are between 1 and 2 in all of North America, Europe, Australia, Russia and China, while they are still well above that elsewhere, chiefly in Africa. But even in Africa we see a decrease. Fertility rates on that continent dropped from 7.1 in 1966 to 4.3 in 2020.

The fly in the ointment is that the global population will not start decreasing until after it has maxed out at about 11 billion. Hans Rosling explains why.

 

[Swammerdami]

We've tried to discuss this over and over again. The point is NOT that 11 billion is not too many. The point is that 8 billion is ALREADY too many.

Plastics are degrading ocean ecology. Is it your claim that if there were only 1 billion people on the planet, each person would be generating 8 times as much plastic?

Regardless of your wishful thinking, humans are emitting CO2 into the atmosphere. With only 1 billion would there still be as much CO2 generated? Before you answer, recall that the current hydroelectric dams would generate EIGHT times as much power per capita if the planet had only 1 billion people.

Et cetera. Et cetera. Et cetera.

We've played ring-a-round-the-rosy on this topic, and I'm getting tired of it. What I just explained is elementary common-sense. Your "rebuttal" will be that there is no humane way to reduce the population. (Even if that were true) So what? I never said there was. Problems do NOT disappear just because they're insolvable.

 

[Hermit]

We've tried to discuss this over and over again. The point is NOT that 11 billion is not too many. The point is that 8 billion is ALREADY too many.

5 billion would be too many if every individual attained the level of consumerism the denizens of the USA have reached, but not only will global population reach a maximum, it will also decrease. I am also hopeful that the resource wastage and pollution will be reduced once people wake up to the fact that laissez faire capitalism cannot create a sustainable environment.

We've played ring-a-round-the-rosy on this topic, and I'm getting tired of it. What I just explained is elementary common-sense. Your "rebuttal" will be that there is no humane way to reduce the population. (Even if that were true) So what? I never said there was. Problems do NOT disappear just because they're insolvable.

Your frustration is understandable, but problems are not insolvable even if they appear to be so. I don't know if or how we will be able to do enough in time to head off the impending environmental catastrophe. What do you suggest? A brutal culling of the human population?

 

[Harry Bosch]

We've tried to discuss this over and over again. The point is NOT that 11 billion is not too many. The point is that 8 billion is ALREADY too many.

5 billion would be too many if every individual attained the level of consumerism the denizens of the USA have reached, but not only will global population reach a maximum, it will also decrease. I am also hopeful that the resource wastage and pollution will be reduced once people wake up to the fact that laissez faire capitalism cannot create a sustainable environment.

We've played ring-a-round-the-rosy on this topic, and I'm getting tired of it. What I just explained is elementary common-sense. Your "rebuttal" will be that there is no humane way to reduce the population. (Even if that were true) So what? I never said there was. Problems do NOT disappear just because they're insolvable.

Your frustration is understandable, but problems are not insolvable even if they appear to be so. I don't know if or how we will be able to do enough in time to head off the impending environmental catastrophe. What do you suggest? A brutal culling of the human population?

Call me a radical, but I think that there is a way to "cull" the population. Encourage consumerism! Encourage women's rights. Encourage liberalism and access to markets. Encourage school and economic development. The US isn't the problem. Yes, we consume too much. But our natural birth rate is one of the lowest in the world (along with Europe and Canada). In areas where girls have fewer options, birth rates are three or four times higher than in the west. Anecdotally, I have three daughters with college in sight. They and all of their friends discuss college, where they want to live, where they want to work, types of houses they want, opportunities they want to pursue, places they want to travel to. They understand that success requires hard work and grit that will be far more difficult if one has three or four kids to raise. Give girls freedom and choices: and the population will go down.

 

[Hermit]

Call me a radical, but I think that there is a way to "cull" the population. Encourage consumerism! Encourage women's rights. Encourage liberalism and access to markets. Encourage school and economic development. The US isn't the problem. Yes, we consume too much. But our natural birth rate is one of the lowest in the world (along with Europe and Canada).

 

[Harry Bosch]

Call me a radical, but I think that there is a way to "cull" the population. Encourage consumerism! Encourage women's rights. Encourage liberalism and access to markets. Encourage school and economic development. The US isn't the problem. Yes, we consume too much. But our natural birth rate is one of the lowest in the world (along with Europe and Canada).

My bad. I didn't support my assertion. The US birth rate is 10.9 per 1,000. Among the lowest in the world.

World Bank Open Data

Free and open access to global development data

data.worldbank.org

As a comparison, Chad in Africa has a birth rate of 41.9. Not many options for girls in that country.

 

[Hermit]

Call me a radical, but I think that there is a way to "cull" the population. Encourage consumerism! Encourage women's rights. Encourage liberalism and access to markets. Encourage school and economic development. The US isn't the problem. Yes, we consume too much. But our natural birth rate is one of the lowest in the world (along with Europe and Canada).

My bad. I didn't support my assertion. The US birth rate is 10.9 per 1,000. Among the lowest in the world.

World Bank Open Data

Free and open access to global development data

data.worldbank.org

As a comparison, Chad in Africa has a birth rate of 41.9. Not many options for girls in that country.

That was not the assertion I laughed about.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Call me a radical, but I think that there is a way to "cull" the population. Encourage consumerism! Encourage women's rights. Encourage liberalism and access to markets. Encourage school and economic development. The US isn't the problem. Yes, we consume too much. But our natural birth rate is one of the lowest in the world (along with Europe and Canada).

My bad. I didn't support my assertion. The US birth rate is 10.9 per 1,000. Among the lowest in the world.

World Bank Open Data

Free and open access to global development data

data.worldbank.org

As a comparison, Chad in Africa has a birth rate of 41.9. Not many options for girls in that country.

That was not the assertion I laughed about.

Dang! If you thought that was funny, I have a huge portfolio of Dad jokes that I could tell you. I'll post them to the humor thread for you!

 

[Rhea]

Call me a radical, but I think that there is a way to "cull" the population. Encourage consumerism! Encourage women's rights. Encourage liberalism and access to markets. Encourage school and economic development. The US isn't the problem. Yes, we consume too much. But our natural birth rate is one of the lowest in the world (along with Europe and Canada).

My bad. I didn't support my assertion. The US birth rate is 10.9 per 1,000. Among the lowest in the world.

World Bank Open Data

Free and open access to global development data

data.worldbank.org

As a comparison, Chad in Africa has a birth rate of 41.9. Not many options for girls in that country.

That was not the assertion I laughed about.

Instead of just laughing, can you present a counter-view?

I thought it was well established that promoting women’s rights and social old-age pensions resulted in lower birthrates almost immediately. And that this relates to “I want things in life” (consumerism) as an impetus for taking actions that tend to reduce childbearing.

 

[SimpleDon]

I strongly suspect that stagflation is an unavoidable effect of high energy prices, and has little to do with political policy.

A high cost of energy (particularly for transportation) both increases prices across the board, and dampens growth.

Keeping the cost of energy low requires independence on warzones and politically unstable regimes for our energy; And rational energy policies that don’t rely on hope triumphing over engineering and thermodynamic reality. You cannot power a modern civilisation with intermittent power sources, and attempts to do so just increase reliance on Natural Gas, as supplied by the stable and peace-loving Russians.

There is an obvious solution here, but I expect regular board members are as sick of me saying it as I am. If we, as a species, are too dumb to properly implement a perfectly good solution because of a quasi-religious belief that it is evil, then we deserve to suffer the consequences.

Your mistake above is that you are applying logic and facts to the matter. The stagflation in the 1970s and 1980s was due to high energy prices, too. This fact didn't save reality-based political economics from conversion to fantasy-based political economics, i.e., the libertarian economics that is as devoid of any basis in fact. It is the 1980s version of the big lie.

Conservatism itself is based on the lie that you can have a dynamic growing economy without changes to your social order. You simply can't. Yet you see this lie repeated in every thread on this discussion board. It is the basis of Trumpism, a thinly veiled strongman form of government that easily dispenses with any pretense of democracy as we saw on the 6th of January 2021. It is at the heart of the Austrian/Libertarian economics, the free market and free trade, the escapism of the unwashed that is repeated by the unknowing here. The economics that purposely obscured the reality of the economy in order to increase the incomes of the already rich in the US.

I saw your post right away. And I wrote most of the above then didn't post it. Put it down to a senior moment.

 

[Swammerdami]

We've tried to discuss this over and over again. The point is NOT that 11 billion is not too many. The point is that 8 billion is ALREADY too many.

5 billion would be too many if every individual attained the level of consumerism the denizens of the USA have reached, but not only will global population reach a maximum, it will also decrease. I am also hopeful that the resource wastage and pollution will be reduced once people wake up to the fact that laissez faire capitalism cannot create a sustainable environment.

You speak of overpopulation as if it were a possible FUTURE problem. Species are ALREADY going extinct. Climate change has ALREADY acquired a momentum that cannot be reversed for centuries. Important ecological niches are ALREADY destroyed. Rivers and aquifers are ALREADY drying up. The Amazon forest — important to global ecology — may have ALREADY reached a rainfall-cycle tipping-point. The prices of scarce materials are ALREADY skyrocketing. And the too-high human population is causing a variety of other problems as well.

Environmental degradation threatens vast numbers of flying insects, as well as the vertebrates that prey on them. Environmental degradation has ALREADY changed the ocean ecology so much that the biomass of jellies ALREADY outweighs the total biomass of fish. (I'm sure you Pollyannas will answer that we need MORE billions of humans to increase the likelihood of a genius chef who will turn jellyfish into a delicious human food!)

If Africa and South Asia enjoyed a Western life-style, would the situation be even more dire than it ALREADY is? Obviously, but it's amusing that you think that wins you the debate.

And, as predicted, you fall back on a non-sequitur "rebuttal": (If someone has a loved one dying of terminal cancer, would it be appropriate to say "THAT's not a problem ... because it's incurable.")

What do you suggest? A brutal culling of the human population?

Why don't you just call me Hitler and close the thread?

 

[bilby]

We've tried to discuss this over and over again. The point is NOT that 11 billion is not too many. The point is that 8 billion is ALREADY too many.

5 billion would be too many if every individual attained the level of consumerism the denizens of the USA have reached, but not only will global population reach a maximum, it will also decrease. I am also hopeful that the resource wastage and pollution will be reduced once people wake up to the fact that laissez faire capitalism cannot create a sustainable environment.

You speak of overpopulation as if it were a possible FUTURE problem. Species are ALREADY going extinct. Climate change has ALREADY acquired a momentum that cannot be reversed for centuries. Important ecological niches are ALREADY destroyed. Rivers and aquifers are ALREADY drying up. The Amazon forest — important to global ecology — may have ALREADY reached a rainfall-cycle tipping-point. The prices of scarce materials are ALREADY skyrocketing. And the too-high human population is causing a variety of other problems as well.

Environmental degradation threatens vast numbers of flying insects, as well as the vertebrates that prey on them. Environmental degradation has ALREADY changed the ocean ecology so much that the biomass of jellies ALREADY outweighs the total biomass of fish. (I'm sure you Pollyannas will answer that we need MORE billions of humans to increase the likelihood of a genius chef who will turn jellyfish into a delicious human food!)

If Africa and South Asia enjoyed a Western life-style, would the situation be even more dire than it ALREADY is? Obviously, but it's amusing that you think that wins you the debate.

And, as predicted, you fall back on a non-sequitur "rebuttal": (If someone has a loved one dying of terminal cancer, would it be appropriate to say "THAT's not a problem ... because it's incurable.")

What do you suggest? A brutal culling of the human population?

Why don't you just call me Hitler and close the thread?

Environmental degradation is definitely happening.

The problem for your position is that it is the result of rich people doing lots of stuff, and not (as far as I can tell) the result of merely having a lot of people.

Environmental degradation by humans was a problem when there were only a few hundred million humans.

The degree of environmental degradation due to human activity is not even correlated with absolute population, much less demonstrated to be specifically caused by absolute population.

Four billion people burning oil and coal until all that’s accessible has been burned will cause the exact same climate changes as eight billion people doing the same. There’s not even a particular reason to imagine that a bigger population would do it faster - most of our fossil fuel (and other resources) use is the responsibility of the richest billion people, so whether there are another three billion whose contribution is relatively minuscule, or another seven billion, is pretty unimportant.

Overpopulation is an article of faith for people raised in the sixties and seventies. But like most articles of faith, it’s not a real thing.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

I strongly suspect that stagflation is an unavoidable effect of high energy prices, and has little to do with political policy.

A high cost of energy (particularly for transportation) both increases prices across the board, and dampens growth.

Keeping the cost of energy low requires independence on warzones and politically unstable regimes for our energy; And rational energy policies that don’t rely on hope triumphing over engineering and thermodynamic reality. You cannot power a modern civilisation with intermittent power sources, and attempts to do so just increase reliance on Natural Gas, as supplied by the stable and peace-loving Russians.

There is an obvious solution here, but I expect regular board members are as sick of me saying it as I am. If we, as a species, are too dumb to properly implement a perfectly good solution because of a quasi-religious belief that it is evil, then we deserve to suffer the consequences.

Did you see the Katie Porter clip of her questioning oil executives? The are sitting on millions of acres of oil leases which the are not drillling in. Now why is there an oil and gas shortage? Iam down here in Houston, and the refineries keep having fires and outages resulting from that. I have not checked to see if. U.S. refineries are not crippled by large numbers of outages.