Does Your Addition See the Future Clearly?

Today 20% of the world's human population consumes about 80% of the world's resources (goods and services) and the remaining 80% of the population consumes the remaining 20%.

Over the next 40 years, the world's population is expected to add 2.5 billion people -- mostly to the large poor group. Due to limits of, and damage to, the environment, everyone is experiencing increased costs of living relative to income. Most are experiencing reductions in the delivery of goods and services.

How will the arrival of the 2.5 billion people change, "Who gets what goods and services?" To answer this question we have to consider several factors.

1) Will the produced goods and services get bigger, remain the same, or get smaller? Certainly, delivery of goods and services will be diminished by:
       exhausting non renewable's,
       using renewable's above their maximum
              productive rate, and
       over using the absorption capabilities of the
              environment.
Deliver of goods and services will increase because
       technology will deliver more with less.
I assume the net effect of these counter processes is that the delivery of goods and services will remain constant. I feel this assumption is optimistic because I believe the current delivery of goods and services (the total human footprint) is near global carrying capacity.

2) Will the rich community increase, hold constant, or decrease their present aid to the poor large community?

I assume the rich community, faced with their own decreases in deliveries ( increases in costs relative to income) will not increase its generosity. Lets assume they hold their contributions to the poor community constant.

3) this means the poor community will have to stretch its 20% of the global bounty over 8 billion people instead of 5.5 billion.

4) Since at least a billion of the poor group is already living close to starvation levels, no food can be shared by them without causing death.

5) The sharing must come from poor people living at least 2 times subsistence. If there are 2.5 billion in this group a sharing strategy could add 5 billion people to the group living just above starvation. That would mean that 6 billion people would be living just one bad harvest from starvation and death.

6) If these numbers fail to show you a future of unwanted conditions, consider that there is an additional demand on global resources. Normal rich people are used to and expect a 2-3% improvement in their wellbeing each year. To fuel this they will need 2-3% more of the world's goods and services. Remember there are no unallocated goods and services.

7) Because each rich person can pay more for goods and services than each poor person, he or she can purchase (in the market) part of the 20% of the goods and services now supporting the poor.

8) This transfer of 2% of global resources from poor to rich, translates to a 10% reduction of the goods and services used to feed the poor group each year. I think this means that the poor population declines, through starvation 10%. (For example,10% of 8 billion or about 800 million people.

9) I think this means that in ten years all the people whose life sustenance was dependent on that 20% of the globe's goods and services have now starved to death.

10) All these deaths were caused by market forces. No one has to take personal responsibility.

11) After this terrible population contraction, with the population of the globe at 1 billion, there is no reason that this mechanism should stop operating. It should continue reducing the wellbeing of weakest member's of the remaining group to subsistence and below.

Adding up the numbers "this way" provides a clear view of where the human experiment (as it is currently designed) is going.

09/12/08

Jack Alpert (Bio)     mail to: Alpert@skil.org     (homepage) www.skil.org      position papers

  (more details)