What will the world be like when global population goes in decline?

[RVonse]

What will the world be like when global population goes in decline?

This happened in the middle ages right after Europe being decimated by the Black Plague, and this period was called the Renaissance. It was a period of rebirth and great scientific discovery that led to modern civilization.

 

[DBT]

Mathus was right; but things changed, so he isn't right any more. Ehrlich was wrong, but in the early days, he could be forgiven for not knowing he was wrong, because the game had only just changed, and the impact of the change was not yet clear. Nobody who has seriously studied demographics since 1990 has any excuse at all for worrying about overpopulation. And nobody who hasn't seriously studied demographics since 1990 has any excuse for spreading fear and disinformation. But it does get a LOT of money out of the pockets of the gullible, so like all cults, it will be hard to expunge from society.

I disagree. While overpopulation is not a major concern at the world level anymore it still is locally an issue. For example, the Rwandan "genocide" was what Malthus was talking about.

It may not be a concern in the short term, but in the long term even our current population level is unsustainable. When you consider the rate that developed nations currently consume resources, and when developing nations reach our levels of consumption, we are going to need several planets to service our needs. Adding to our long term problems, we have been experiencing relatively benign climate conditions for some time, which is not likely to last in the long term. Conditions that probably will not allow [long term sustainability] a world population of the projected 10 to 12 billion.

 

[TV and credit cards]

I wonder how much technology can slow the use of natural resources. Often, it seems we just exchange the exploitation of one resource for another. Where technology can slow exploitation of natural resources, does this actually happen or does it promote excessive consumerism? I'm sure there are examples to support both sides of an argument regarding resources, and population for that matter. At the end of the day though, it's all about food and water.

 

[DrZoidberg]

What will the world be like when global population goes in decline?

This happened in the middle ages right after Europe being decimated by the Black Plague, and this period was called the Renaissance. It was a period of rebirth and great scientific discovery that led to modern civilization.

But that was only due to society being held back by those in power wanting to keep society stable. We´re not in a similar situation now. Not at all. Now it´s rather the opposite. Those in power today have in reality very little power. So they´re not capable of holding anybody back.

 

[Funkytrip]

This happened in the middle ages right after Europe being decimated by the Black Plague, and this period was called the Renaissance. It was a period of rebirth and great scientific discovery that led to modern civilization.

But that was only due to society being held back by those in power wanting to keep society stable. We´re not in a similar situation now. Not at all. Now it´s rather the opposite. Those in power today have in reality very little power. So they´re not capable of holding anybody back.

Unless Bilderberg/Illuminati tinfoilhatters are correct of course

 

[Axulus]

Not directly related, but here is what the world could be like with less population, due to the Christians being raptured

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9KlMWzKj4s[/youtube]

 

[Clivedurdle]

I came across an interesting comment, that these http://www.christianiabikes.com/en/category-product/everything-else/

are actually two seater open top SUV's.!

So the problems are two fold, numbers, and resources those numbers consume. "Growth" is not actually a helpful concept. Todays news is about strokes caused by sedentary lifestyles. We need to work out ways of being with enough.

 

[Valjean]

I disagree. While overpopulation is not a major concern at the world level anymore it still is locally an issue. For example, the Rwandan "genocide" was what Malthus was talking about.

How is overpopulation not a planetary problem? We're in the middle of a catastrophic mass extinction, for Heaven's sake!
Markets are global and even the poor have a global impact, albeit less than that of a 1st world consumer.

'Sustaining us' is a tiny part of the first-world economy. What proportion of US citizens, for example, are employed in mining or farming?

A sizeable and rapidly growing proportion of human endeavour is spent in the handling of information. You don't use up minerals to make information, and you don't need fields to grow it in; the idea that economic activity is directly proportional to resource usage is even more outdated than the idea of the population crisis.

The resources used by the average American require massive land and water usage, and while we're not miners ourselves, our usage of metals, plastics, &c require a great deal of mining and ecosystem destruction to sustain.
Information? There's a reason the rare earths metals in your cell phone are called rare. They're rarely concentrated into ores like bauxite. A huge amount of Earth must be dug up for me to send this response.

This happened in the middle ages right after Europe being decimated by the Black Plague, and this period was called the Renaissance. It was a period of rebirth and great scientific discovery that led to modern civilization.

But that was only due to society being held back by those in power wanting to keep society stable. We´re not in a similar situation now. Not at all. Now it´s rather the opposite. Those in power today have in reality very little power. So they´re not capable of holding anybody back.

I thought that was due to the increased land availability and cost of labor, and the subsequent collapse of serfdom and the feudal system.
Those in power today -- the bankers, industrialists and the legislatures they control seem to me to have a great deal of power. They're not responsive to the people's will and, in fact, have become social parasites.

 

[DrZoidberg]

This happened in the middle ages right after Europe being decimated by the Black Plague, and this period was called the Renaissance. It was a period of rebirth and great scientific discovery that led to modern civilization.

But that was only due to society being held back by those in power wanting to keep society stable. We´re not in a similar situation now. Not at all. Now it´s rather the opposite. Those in power today have in reality very little power. So they´re not capable of holding anybody back.

I thought that was due to the increased land availability and cost of labor, and the subsequent collapse of serfdom and the feudal system.

The feudal system rested entirely upon nothing ever changing. When the rulers failed in keeping things as they were, their entire basis for government was questioned. Which is what happened. From a situation where nothing was allowed to be questioned, to a situation where everything was questioned.

Those in power today -- the bankers, industrialists and the legislatures they control seem to me to have a great deal of power. They're not responsive to the people's will and, in fact, have become social parasites.

The definition of power is one category of people´s ability to make another category of people do stuff they otherwise wouldn´t or against their will. That second part is critical. In a free market, the agent in power, is the market. Not the banks. It´s the market forces that forces people do stuff they otherwise wouldn´t. The banks are just as much slaves to the market as everybody else. No, they´re not responsive to the will of the people. Not one iota. They´re responsive to the will of the market, and only the market. Claiming that the banks are in power is ignoring reality. Sure, they have relatively slightly more power than people in general. But from that make the leap that they sit on all the power is ludicrous.

I challenge the fact that banks are only parasites. Banks do provide a valuable service to society. Whether they´re paid more than their fair share is another matter. But then again, the market doesn´t care about fairness. The market is just like any force of nature. It just does stuff. If you want to get rich, hang around whatever area the market blows money at.

 

[SimpleDon]

I wonder how much technology can slow the use of natural resources. Often, it seems we just exchange the exploitation of one resource for another. Where technology can slow exploitation of natural resources, does this actually happen or does it promote excessive consumerism? I'm sure there are examples to support both sides of an argument regarding resources, and population for that matter. At the end of the day though, it's all about food and water.

Most of the exploitative natural resource extraction is for energy. Of course, as we have seen technology is very good at reducing the need for energy, more efficient engines for automobiles, for example. Technology is also can reduce the need for coal, oil and natural gas, in fact we need technology to do it because of climate change, by utilizing more solar and wind, for the optimist, and nuclear power, for the more practical.

The purpose of the economy is to produce products for consumption and to distribute those products to all of the members of the society. Human beings have to consume to live. But that doesn't mean that we have to consume in an unsustainable manner. Sustainability is an externality that the economy can adopt in fact, like lower pollution or workers' safety.

 

[bilby]

I wonder how much technology can slow the use of natural resources. Often, it seems we just exchange the exploitation of one resource for another. Where technology can slow exploitation of natural resources, does this actually happen or does it promote excessive consumerism? I'm sure there are examples to support both sides of an argument regarding resources, and population for that matter. At the end of the day though, it's all about food and water.

Most of the exploitative natural resource extraction is for energy. Of course, as we have seen technology is very good at reducing the need for energy, more efficient engines for automobiles, for example. Technology is also can reduce the need for coal, oil and natural gas, in fact we need technology to do it because of climate change, by utilizing more solar and wind, for the optimist, and nuclear power, for the more practical.

The purpose of the economy is to produce products for consumption and to distribute those products to all of the members of the society. Human beings have to consume to live. But that doesn't mean that we have to consume in an unsustainable manner. Sustainability is an externality that the economy can adopt in fact, like lower pollution or workers' safety.

The first law of thermodynamics is on our side; Natural resources get exploited currently because it is easier (cheaper) than recycling. But ultimately anything can be recycled with enough energy; the second law of thermodynamics is against us, but as long as we have a big external energy source to draw on, we can overcome that, and the sun won't stop shining any time soon.

Even the eco-morons at Greenpeace realised this (although they missed the full implications of it) in their slogan "Don't throw anything away; There is no 'away'."

Resources are not used up; they are converted, refined, contaminated, dispersed and in some cases rendered difficult to recover, but the only resources we have 'used up' are those we put into outer space. Even the fossil fuels are still with us as atmospheric carbon dioxide. It needs a LOT of energy to recover from there, and is therefore very expensive; but it is certainly not impossible to do.

 

[arkirk]

Most of the exploitative natural resource extraction is for energy. Of course, as we have seen technology is very good at reducing the need for energy, more efficient engines for automobiles, for example. Technology is also can reduce the need for coal, oil and natural gas, in fact we need technology to do it because of climate change, by utilizing more solar and wind, for the optimist, and nuclear power, for the more practical.

The purpose of the economy is to produce products for consumption and to distribute those products to all of the members of the society. Human beings have to consume to live. But that doesn't mean that we have to consume in an unsustainable manner. Sustainability is an externality that the economy can adopt in fact, like lower pollution or workers' safety.

The first law of thermodynamics is on our side; Natural resources get exploited currently because it is easier (cheaper) than recycling. But ultimately anything can be recycled with enough energy; the second law of thermodynamics is against us, but as long as we have a big external energy source to draw on, we can overcome that, and the sun won't stop shining any time soon.

Even the eco-morons at Greenpeace realised this (although they missed the full implications of it) in their slogan "Don't throw anything away; There is no 'away'."

Resources are not used up; they are converted, refined, contaminated, dispersed and in some cases rendered difficult to recover, but the only resources we have 'used up' are those we put into outer space. Even the fossil fuels are still with us as atmospheric carbon dioxide. It needs a LOT of energy to recover from there, and is therefore very expensive; but it is certainly not impossible to do.

You are missing the point that your environment is a system that spent most of its existence without the pollution of man's attempted dominance. You are also missing the fact that there are elements in our environment today which had not existed on this earth before man made them. Many of them are toxic. Many of them actually cannot be made harmless by our current technology. The human population runs into all sorts of problems with everything from forgotten minefields, to forgotten waste piles to extreme natural reactions to our actions. There are not enough people at some point to do all this reprocessing you blithely tell us can be done. Also, we have barely begun our task on the easier ones to deal with. Our baseline rad counts continue to climb. Our daily bodily fraction of industrial chemicals in our blood is always on the rise. Our memory seems to get shorter and shorter in a world full of extraneous isms.

Greenpeace has it right. There is no away. Also there is no reason to assume you know enough to keep out of trouble in an environment full of various forms of dangerous pollution. Why must our species always learn every lesson THE HARD WAY? In my youth, it seemed there was some chance we could learn. It hurts me at this point in my life that we have chosen to be so adversarial on every front we have no energy left to learn anything.

 

[bilby]

The first law of thermodynamics is on our side; Natural resources get exploited currently because it is easier (cheaper) than recycling. But ultimately anything can be recycled with enough energy; the second law of thermodynamics is against us, but as long as we have a big external energy source to draw on, we can overcome that, and the sun won't stop shining any time soon.

Even the eco-morons at Greenpeace realised this (although they missed the full implications of it) in their slogan "Don't throw anything away; There is no 'away'."

Resources are not used up; they are converted, refined, contaminated, dispersed and in some cases rendered difficult to recover, but the only resources we have 'used up' are those we put into outer space. Even the fossil fuels are still with us as atmospheric carbon dioxide. It needs a LOT of energy to recover from there, and is therefore very expensive; but it is certainly not impossible to do.

You are missing the point that your environment is a system that spent most of its existence without the pollution of man's attempted dominance.

WTF is "the pollution of man's attempted dominance" even supposed to mean, other than "arkirk doesn't like people because they make a mess"?

You are also missing the fact that there are elements in our environment today which had not existed on this earth before man made them. Many of them are toxic.

You would be surprised how little I am 'missing'. I know that Technetium and the trans-Uranic elements exist, and I am very glad of it. Many of them are toxic, but so what? Many naturally occurring elements are toxic. Lots of stuff is toxic, because life is fragile. That's no reason to stop doing anything.

Many of them actually cannot be made harmless by our current technology.

Don't be so silly. Any definition of 'harmless' either leads to this being true of EVERYTHING, or untrue of artificial elements. You can equivocate between meanings for the word 'harmless' if you like, but don't imagine you are fooling anyone. Plutonium is harmless when contained. Water is deadly - but completely natural. Harmlessness is not what defines whether something is or is not desirable.

The human population runs into all sorts of problems with everything from forgotten minefields, to forgotten waste piles to extreme natural reactions to our actions.

Lions, tigers, bears, snakes, sharks, cliff edges, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, landslides, drowning, lightning strikes - it's a dangerous world. Human activity and technology has made it dramatically safer in the past couple of centuries, and that trend is ongoing. If technology was harmful, we would see falling life expectancies since the Industrial Revolution. We see the exact opposite; therefore your implied hypothesis - that net harm, due to the use of technology, is increasing- is simply wrong.

There are not enough people at some point to do all this reprocessing you blithely tell us can be done.

Why do you think doing things requires a lot of people? This isn't the Middle Ages. We don't need more people to do more work. one man today, can do from his chair more work than a thousand men could achieve with hard labour as little as a century ago.

Also, we have barely begun our task on the easier ones to deal with.

Really? Compare pollution levels today with those of the 1950s. The clean-up has been remarkable.

Our baseline rad counts continue to climb.

Really? I think you will find that since the end of atmospheric nuclear testing in the 1950s they have been falling. From 'negligible' to 'even more negligible'.

Our daily bodily fraction of industrial chemicals in our blood is always on the rise.

Citation needed.

Our memory seems to get shorter and shorter in a world full of extraneous isms.

Perhaps yours does.

Greenpeace has it right. There is no away. Also there is no reason to assume you know enough to keep out of trouble in an environment full of various forms of dangerous pollution. Why must our species always learn every lesson THE HARD WAY? In my youth, it seemed there was some chance we could learn. It hurts me at this point in my life that we have chosen to be so adversarial on every front we have no energy left to learn anything.

In your youth, the world was a far worse and more unpleasant place than it is today. Your rose-coloured glasses are blinding you to that fact, but the information is there if you want to look.
http://demog.berkeley.edu/~andrew/1918/figure2.html

Life expectancy at birth for men in the USA:

Year	Life Expectancy
1900	46.3
1910	48.4
1920	53.6
1930	58.1
1940	60.8
1950	65.6
1960	66.6
1970	67.1
1980	70.0
1990	71.8

In your youth, there was less chance to learn, because you were likely going to die sooner than people today.

There were almost a million fewer deaths in the USA in 1990 than there would have been if technology was still at 1930 levels.

Your nostalgia, coupled with your fear, is bringing you to a conclusion that is the exact opposite of reality.

 

[SimpleDon]

This happened in the middle ages right after Europe being decimated by the Black Plague, and this period was called the Renaissance. It was a period of rebirth and great scientific discovery that led to modern civilization.

But that was only due to society being held back by those in power wanting to keep society stable. We´re not in a similar situation now. Not at all. Now it´s rather the opposite. Those in power today have in reality very little power. So they´re not capable of holding anybody back.

I thought that was due to the increased land availability and cost of labor, and the subsequent collapse of serfdom and the feudal system.

The feudal system rested entirely upon nothing ever changing. When the rulers failed in keeping things as they were, their entire basis for government was questioned. Which is what happened. From a situation where nothing was allowed to be questioned, to a situation where everything was questioned.

Those in power today -- the bankers, industrialists and the legislatures they control seem to me to have a great deal of power. They're not responsive to the people's will and, in fact, have become social parasites.

The definition of power is one category of people´s ability to make another category of people do stuff they otherwise wouldn´t or against their will. That second part is critical. In a free market, the agent in power, is the market. Not the banks. It´s the market forces that forces people do stuff they otherwise wouldn´t. The banks are just as much slaves to the market as everybody else. No, they´re not responsive to the will of the people. Not one iota. They´re responsive to the will of the market, and only the market. Claiming that the banks are in power is ignoring reality. Sure, they have relatively slightly more power than people in general. But from that make the leap that they sit on all the power is ludicrous.

I challenge the fact that banks are only parasites. Banks do provide a valuable service to society. Whether they´re paid more than their fair share is another matter. But then again, the market doesn´t care about fairness. The market is just like any force of nature. It just does stuff. If you want to get rich, hang around whatever area the market blows money at.

It is unfortunately true however, that the free market has never existed and can never exist, any more than a society can exist without criminal laws, courts, etc. And there is no reason to believe that could the free market be somehow capable of existing that it would in anyway be desirable. All of the indications that we have seen whenever we have tried to institute so-called free market principles, the failure to regulate and the deregulation of the financial markets resulting in the financial crisis of 2008 for example, are that it would not be desirable.

The free market's only touted advantage is that it would be free of government intervention, EtEC™. Even this is of questionable advantage, no one has ever explain to me why it would be an advantage, most free market enthusiasts seem to accept that it would be without ever questioning the assumption. In fact, the main qualification for being a free market enthusiast seems to be a mistrust and a misunderstanding of the role of government in the economy.

Banks are easy to understand. The government permits the banks to produce money out of thin air. This is necessary and desirable. Basically someone has to do it. The banks create money out of thin air when they make loans to qualified borrowers, loans that basically build the nation. If you don't know how this is done google "Fractional Reserve Banking" for an explanation.

The market does determine the amount of loans that are placed and therefore the amount of money that is created by the demand for the loans. People have to want to buy homes, cars, appliances etc. in order to take out a loan. Businesses have to want to build and to expand before they take out loans. The market demand for these things determines how much is loaned out and how much money is created.

There are a couple of problems with the banks right now. One, as you said, they are charging way to much for what they do. Banks charge about twice as much for their services as they did in JP Morgan's day. This is counter to the massive productivity gains that we have seen in every other industry. Banking has gotten less productive, in spite of all of the computers and the other technology gains.

And two, as noted above we have deregulated the banks, permitting them to mix banking with other financial services, most dangerously with speculation. It is not hard to see that it is not an especially good idea to let the people who can create money out of thin air speculate with that money, is it? The sole reason for the financial markets is to allow knowledgeable people who are called investors to collectively decide the winners and the losers among the businesses in the economy. To let the people who can create money out of thin air to invest that money kind of takes the risk out of investing and corrupts their role in the economy, don't you think? Deregulation also permitted a few national banks to grow so large that a sizable portion of the business would be disrupted if one of them failed. I think that something like six banks do 70% of the banking business in the US now. It kind of doubles down on the risk letting them speculate with the money that they can create out of thin air, doesn't it?

And yes, the free market doesn't care about fairness. Another item in a long list of why the free market isn't a desirable way to run a society. Governments can care about fairness.

 

[ApostateAbe]

I think human population growth will plateau only with Malthusian barriers to growth: lack of fresh water, lack of energy, lack of food, epidemics, natural disasters, wars, and so on. The established estimates that assume populations will decrease their growths and plateau as they become richer assume racial egalitarianism, where equatorial populations are assumed to be genetically the same in their sexual behavior as northern populations. But, it is a hypothesis that has seemingly failed when examining the descendants of Mexican immigrants to the USA: third-generation descendants of Mexican immigrants have about the same or higher fertility rate as their parents and grandparents, even while being richer and more highly educated (i.e. “Mexican-Origin Fertility: New Patterns and Interpretations,” 2000). As fertility rate among populations seems to be largely a function of ancestral distance from the equator, I favor J. Philippe Rushton's theory that a higher fertility rate was a means for a gene's survival in a dangerous chaotic environment with plentiful resources--many children would die but the genes would live on--whereas northern populations adapted to their cold scarce consistent environments through parental investment of fewer children and greater intelligence. As the equatorial environments have industrialized and become safer, this means the equatorial populations will continue their high fertility rates but without the high death rate, and they will out-populate the northern populations, even while they become richer, until they hit those deathly Malthusian barriers. The world population will eventually plateau, but it will not be by choice and it will not be pleasant. Global warming will exacerbate the problems, as the killer heat waves, storms and droughts will affect equatorial climates the most, and cold northern climates will only become warmer and more human-friendly.

While you do sometimes have posts that are interesting and thought provoking, this has got to be one of the silliest things I have seen you try to argue/defend.

The argument pertained to Mexican immigrants to the USA and their descendants, not Mexico itself, but I am having second thoughts about it because the fertility rate seems to be variable and ambiguous.

 

[DrZoidberg]

This happened in the middle ages right after Europe being decimated by the Black Plague, and this period was called the Renaissance. It was a period of rebirth and great scientific discovery that led to modern civilization.

But that was only due to society being held back by those in power wanting to keep society stable. We´re not in a similar situation now. Not at all. Now it´s rather the opposite. Those in power today have in reality very little power. So they´re not capable of holding anybody back.

I thought that was due to the increased land availability and cost of labor, and the subsequent collapse of serfdom and the feudal system.

The feudal system rested entirely upon nothing ever changing. When the rulers failed in keeping things as they were, their entire basis for government was questioned. Which is what happened. From a situation where nothing was allowed to be questioned, to a situation where everything was questioned.

Those in power today -- the bankers, industrialists and the legislatures they control seem to me to have a great deal of power. They're not responsive to the people's will and, in fact, have become social parasites.

The definition of power is one category of people´s ability to make another category of people do stuff they otherwise wouldn´t or against their will. That second part is critical. In a free market, the agent in power, is the market. Not the banks. It´s the market forces that forces people do stuff they otherwise wouldn´t. The banks are just as much slaves to the market as everybody else. No, they´re not responsive to the will of the people. Not one iota. They´re responsive to the will of the market, and only the market. Claiming that the banks are in power is ignoring reality. Sure, they have relatively slightly more power than people in general. But from that make the leap that they sit on all the power is ludicrous.

I challenge the fact that banks are only parasites. Banks do provide a valuable service to society. Whether they´re paid more than their fair share is another matter. But then again, the market doesn´t care about fairness. The market is just like any force of nature. It just does stuff. If you want to get rich, hang around whatever area the market blows money at.

It is unfortunately true however, that the free market has never existed and can never exist, any more than a society can exist without criminal laws, courts, etc. And there is no reason to believe that could the free market be somehow capable of existing that it would in anyway be desirable. All of the indications that we have seen whenever we have tried to institute so-called free market principles, the failure to regulate and the deregulation of the financial markets resulting in the financial crisis of 2008 for example, are that it would not be desirable.

The free market's only touted advantage is that it would be free of government intervention, EtEC™. Even this is of questionable advantage, no one has ever explain to me why it would be an advantage, most free market enthusiasts seem to accept that it would be without ever questioning the assumption. In fact, the main qualification for being a free market enthusiast seems to be a mistrust and a misunderstanding of the role of government in the economy.

Banks are easy to understand. The government permits the banks to produce money out of thin air. This is necessary and desirable. Basically someone has to do it. The banks create money out of thin air when they make loans to qualified borrowers, loans that basically build the nation. If you don't know how this is done google "Fractional Reserve Banking" for an explanation.

The market does determine the amount of loans that are placed and therefore the amount of money that is created by the demand for the loans. People have to want to buy homes, cars, appliances etc. in order to take out a loan. Businesses have to want to build and to expand before they take out loans. The market demand for these things determines how much is loaned out and how much money is created.

There are a couple of problems with the banks right now. One, as you said, they are charging way to much for what they do. Banks charge about twice as much for their services as they did in JP Morgan's day. This is counter to the massive productivity gains that we have seen in every other industry. Banking has gotten less productive, in spite of all of the computers and the other technology gains.

And two, as noted above we have deregulated the banks, permitting them to mix banking with other financial services, most dangerously with speculation. It is not hard to see that it is not an especially good idea to let the people who can create money out of thin air speculate with that money, is it? The sole reason for the financial markets is to allow knowledgeable people who are called investors to collectively decide the winners and the losers among the businesses in the economy. To let the people who can create money out of thin air to invest that money kind of takes the risk out of investing and corrupts their role in the economy, don't you think? Deregulation also permitted a few national banks to grow so large that a sizable portion of the business would be disrupted if one of them failed. I think that something like six banks do 70% of the banking business in the US now. It kind of doubles down on the risk letting them speculate with the money that they can create out of thin air, doesn't it?

And yes, the free market doesn't care about fairness. Another item in a long list of why the free market isn't a desirable way to run a society. Governments can care about fairness.

Whether or not we have a free market is a matter of definition. IMHO whenever anybody takes the phrase "free market" in their mouth, whatever follows is bullshit. No matter what "side" they´re on. It´s a hopelessly abused term by all political players, to the point that its meaningless.

Banks are hard to regulate because financial instruments are so complex today that nobody can do the maths. That was the only and entire reason for the 2008 bank collapse. Nobody saw that coming. But nobody could have seen that coming. There´s no point in regulating if there isn´t a clear desirable result and we have a way of measuring how well we´re doing.

I´m personally all for regulation where it´s applicable. I´m a lefty. But I dislike regulations that merely shift unfairness to another part of the market. Regulations have a way of creating unforseen consequences. Basically... the market is smarter than all of humanity put together.

Also... banks don´t create money out of thin air. That´s the central bank in each country. While technically a bank. I think it´s unfair to say that "banks" in general do it. They don´t. Although the market can create value out of thin air. If banana farmer Jim and shoemaker Bob trade ply their trade and trade bananas for shoes, they´re both better off than if they´d tried doing both activities separately. That is creating value out of thin air (which we can after the fact monetise). By trading money, banks are actually doing the same thing, which is a good thing. They are in fact making everybody richer, and also themselves.

 

[DBT]

Nevertheless, both Jim and Bob are using natural resources in order to produce their respective products, animal hides, plastics, fabrics, etc, for making shoes, arable land, fertilizers, water, chemicals, vehicles, pipes, etc, for growing bananas....

 

[Deepak]

Also... banks don´t create money out of thin air. That´s the central bank in each country. While technically a bank. I think it´s unfair to say that "banks" in general do it. They don´t. Although the market can create value out of thin air. If banana farmer Jim and shoemaker Bob trade ply their trade and trade bananas for shoes, they´re both better off than if they´d tried doing both activities separately. That is creating value out of thin air (which we can after the fact monetise). By trading money, banks are actually doing the same thing, which is a good thing. They are in fact making everybody richer, and also themselves.

This isn't true actually. The central bank only indirectly controls the money supply in a fractional reserve system by setting the monetary base and some controls like the reserve ratio. Otherwise the commercial banks are free to create money if they want to lend, or destroy money if they choose not to.

Moreover, the math for financial instruments wasn't actually all that hard. I didn't work in Wall Street, but I was in nestled in the supply chain during the run-up to the crash and it was patently obvious that the whole thing was sitting on quicksand. While there were some important regulations that were rolled back, I don't think it was so much a failure to legislate regulation as much as the people whose job it was to provide oversight were asleep at the switch.

With that said, the primary consumers of the financial instruments were pretty insulated from the nitty gritty (as well as the suppliers) but isn't that a failure of the market? Free market economics' primary failure in my mind is the assumption that all parties have sufficient information to make rational choices, which rarely happens. I see a lot of good tech companies fail, not because they're not making good technology, but because the VCs don't have the chops to effectively understand the value. And at the same time, companies like they guys who made the 'Yo' app end up buying red Ferraris.

 

[arkirk]

You are missing the point that your environment is a system that spent most of its existence without the pollution of man's attempted dominance.

WTF is "the pollution of man's attempted dominance" even supposed to mean, other than "arkirk doesn't like people because they make a mess"?

You are also missing the fact that there are elements in our environment today which had not existed on this earth before man made them. Many of them are toxic.

You would be surprised how little I am 'missing'. I know that Technetium and the trans-Uranic elements exist, and I am very glad of it. Many of them are toxic, but so what? Many naturally occurring elements are toxic. Lots of stuff is toxic, because life is fragile. That's no reason to stop doing anything.

Many of them actually cannot be made harmless by our current technology.

Don't be so silly. Any definition of 'harmless' either leads to this being true of EVERYTHING, or untrue of artificial elements. You can equivocate between meanings for the word 'harmless' if you like, but don't imagine you are fooling anyone. Plutonium is harmless when contained. Water is deadly - but completely natural. Harmlessness is not what defines whether something is or is not desirable.

The human population runs into all sorts of problems with everything from forgotten minefields, to forgotten waste piles to extreme natural reactions to our actions.

Lions, tigers, bears, snakes, sharks, cliff edges, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, landslides, drowning, lightning strikes - it's a dangerous world. Human activity and technology has made it dramatically safer in the past couple of centuries, and that trend is ongoing. If technology was harmful, we would see falling life expectancies since the Industrial Revolution. We see the exact opposite; therefore your implied hypothesis - that net harm, due to the use of technology, is increasing- is simply wrong.

There are not enough people at some point to do all this reprocessing you blithely tell us can be done.

Why do you think doing things requires a lot of people? This isn't the Middle Ages. We don't need more people to do more work. one man today, can do from his chair more work than a thousand men could achieve with hard labour as little as a century ago.

Also, we have barely begun our task on the easier ones to deal with.

Really? Compare pollution levels today with those of the 1950s. The clean-up has been remarkable.

Our baseline rad counts continue to climb.

Really? I think you will find that since the end of atmospheric nuclear testing in the 1950s they have been falling. From 'negligible' to 'even more negligible'.

Our daily bodily fraction of industrial chemicals in our blood is always on the rise.

Citation needed.

Our memory seems to get shorter and shorter in a world full of extraneous isms.

Perhaps yours does.

Greenpeace has it right. There is no away. Also there is no reason to assume you know enough to keep out of trouble in an environment full of various forms of dangerous pollution. Why must our species always learn every lesson THE HARD WAY? In my youth, it seemed there was some chance we could learn. It hurts me at this point in my life that we have chosen to be so adversarial on every front we have no energy left to learn anything.

In your youth, the world was a far worse and more unpleasant place than it is today. Your rose-coloured glasses are blinding you to that fact, but the information is there if you want to look.
http://demog.berkeley.edu/~andrew/1918/figure2.html

Life expectancy at birth for men in the USA:

Year	Life Expectancy
1900	46.3
1910	48.4
1920	53.6
1930	58.1
1940	60.8
1950	65.6
1960	66.6
1970	67.1
1980	70.0
1990	71.8

In your youth, there was less chance to learn, because you were likely going to die sooner than people today.

There were almost a million fewer deaths in the USA in 1990 than there would have been if technology was still at 1930 levels.

Your nostalgia, coupled with your fear, is bringing you to a conclusion that is the exact opposite of reality.

Does your rosy picture extend to Congo, to Somalia, to Ethiopia, to Syria, to Pakistan, India, China, Mexico, Guatamala, Haiti, Iraq? Your stats are based on conditions at the center of your universe...the center of empires that parasitize huge chunks of the world and take their resources, exploit their cheap (desperate) labor force, and indiscriminately dump their wastes on them. Conditions are not so rosy in most of the world and we are PART OF THE REASON. It would pay for you to understand it is not wise to tell people like me they are full of fear. I have no nostalgia. Your assumptions are just so much bullshit to me. You have no understanding of history or me or you would say what you are saying. When a person doesn't understand or know too much about history as is the case with you, it is hard to recognize recurrent patterns of human pathos. It is hard to recognize political structures forming that are dangerous to society. I don't blame you. I do feel sorry there are so many who so arrogantly proffer their positions.

 

[arkirk]

This happened in the middle ages right after Europe being decimated by the Black Plague, and this period was called the Renaissance. It was a period of rebirth and great scientific discovery that led to modern civilization.

But that was only due to society being held back by those in power wanting to keep society stable. We´re not in a similar situation now. Not at all. Now it´s rather the opposite. Those in power today have in reality very little power. So they´re not capable of holding anybody back.

I thought that was due to the increased land availability and cost of labor, and the subsequent collapse of serfdom and the feudal system.

The feudal system rested entirely upon nothing ever changing. When the rulers failed in keeping things as they were, their entire basis for government was questioned. Which is what happened. From a situation where nothing was allowed to be questioned, to a situation where everything was questioned.

Those in power today -- the bankers, industrialists and the legislatures they control seem to me to have a great deal of power. They're not responsive to the people's will and, in fact, have become social parasites.

The definition of power is one category of people´s ability to make another category of people do stuff they otherwise wouldn´t or against their will. That second part is critical. In a free market, the agent in power, is the market. Not the banks. It´s the market forces that forces people do stuff they otherwise wouldn´t. The banks are just as much slaves to the market as everybody else. No, they´re not responsive to the will of the people. Not one iota. They´re responsive to the will of the market, and only the market. Claiming that the banks are in power is ignoring reality. Sure, they have relatively slightly more power than people in general. But from that make the leap that they sit on all the power is ludicrous.

I challenge the fact that banks are only parasites. Banks do provide a valuable service to society. Whether they´re paid more than their fair share is another matter. But then again, the market doesn´t care about fairness. The market is just like any force of nature. It just does stuff. If you want to get rich, hang around whatever area the market blows money at.

It is unfortunately true however, that the free market has never existed and can never exist, any more than a society can exist without criminal laws, courts, etc. And there is no reason to believe that could the free market be somehow capable of existing that it would in anyway be desirable. All of the indications that we have seen whenever we have tried to institute so-called free market principles, the failure to regulate and the deregulation of the financial markets resulting in the financial crisis of 2008 for example, are that it would not be desirable.

The free market's only touted advantage is that it would be free of government intervention, EtEC™. Even this is of questionable advantage, no one has ever explain to me why it would be an advantage, most free market enthusiasts seem to accept that it would be without ever questioning the assumption. In fact, the main qualification for being a free market enthusiast seems to be a mistrust and a misunderstanding of the role of government in the economy.

Banks are easy to understand. The government permits the banks to produce money out of thin air. This is necessary and desirable. Basically someone has to do it. The banks create money out of thin air when they make loans to qualified borrowers, loans that basically build the nation. If you don't know how this is done google "Fractional Reserve Banking" for an explanation.

The market does determine the amount of loans that are placed and therefore the amount of money that is created by the demand for the loans. People have to want to buy homes, cars, appliances etc. in order to take out a loan. Businesses have to want to build and to expand before they take out loans. The market demand for these things determines how much is loaned out and how much money is created.

There are a couple of problems with the banks right now. One, as you said, they are charging way to much for what they do. Banks charge about twice as much for their services as they did in JP Morgan's day. This is counter to the massive productivity gains that we have seen in every other industry. Banking has gotten less productive, in spite of all of the computers and the other technology gains.

And two, as noted above we have deregulated the banks, permitting them to mix banking with other financial services, most dangerously with speculation. It is not hard to see that it is not an especially good idea to let the people who can create money out of thin air speculate with that money, is it? The sole reason for the financial markets is to allow knowledgeable people who are called investors to collectively decide the winners and the losers among the businesses in the economy. To let the people who can create money out of thin air to invest that money kind of takes the risk out of investing and corrupts their role in the economy, don't you think? Deregulation also permitted a few national banks to grow so large that a sizable portion of the business would be disrupted if one of them failed. I think that something like six banks do 70% of the banking business in the US now. It kind of doubles down on the risk letting them speculate with the money that they can create out of thin air, doesn't it?

And yes, the free market doesn't care about fairness. Another item in a long list of why the free market isn't a desirable way to run a society. Governments can care about fairness.

Whether or not we have a free market is a matter of definition. IMHO whenever anybody takes the phrase "free market" in their mouth, whatever follows is bullshit. No matter what "side" they´re on. It´s a hopelessly abused term by all political players, to the point that its meaningless.

Banks are hard to regulate because financial instruments are so complex today that nobody can do the maths. That was the only and entire reason for the 2008 bank collapse. Nobody saw that coming. But nobody could have seen that coming. There´s no point in regulating if there isn´t a clear desirable result and we have a way of measuring how well we´re doing.

I´m personally all for regulation where it´s applicable. I´m a lefty. But I dislike regulations that merely shift unfairness to another part of the market. Regulations have a way of creating unforseen consequences. Basically... the market is smarter than all of humanity put together.

Also... banks don´t create money out of thin air. That´s the central bank in each country. While technically a bank. I think it´s unfair to say that "banks" in general do it. They don´t. Although the market can create value out of thin air. If banana farmer Jim and shoemaker Bob trade ply their trade and trade bananas for shoes, they´re both better off than if they´d tried doing both activities separately. That is creating value out of thin air (which we can after the fact monetise). By trading money, banks are actually doing the same thing, which is a good thing. They are in fact making everybody richer, and also themselves.

I generally usually get a kick out of your posts but I have to take exception with this one (above). The market is nothing but a collection of grasping traders who periodically panic and create problems for everybody....NOT SMART AT ALL.

It is NOT difficult to regulate what a bank ought to do. It is simply difficult to get a bank to do it under the current system. These "complex instruments" have been allowed to become complex because bankers through the medium of politics control the legislative bodies that should be controlling them. It is called "regulatory capture." Congress does what the bankers want...and screw the people. Elizabeth Warren came up with some ideas that could to some degree protect those who bank and invest. The bankers were so scared of her regulation and enforcement, they exerted great pressure on Obama and the Senate to not place her in charge of the agency she conceptualized. The complexity of all these alleged instruments is not necessary and in fact needs to be made illegal.

If you believe in democracy, you should not accept this so called legal system that allows the abuses we are seeing in corporate (banking in particular) actions.
In order to de-complicate things, there would be losers, and those losers would be those who have lobbied and pressured their way to extreme wealth. Most of their wealth they indeed created out of nothing...but shrewd and deceptive trading. This current system is not making everybody richer.
Our current system with all its "complexity" is little more than a nest of inordinately rich crooks.