Sustainable economy
Planners always use growth curves, just like the ones you show (18 October, p 40), and they are always wrong. No growth is indefinite. In the early 1930s telephony growth was phenomenal. There were published concerns that by the 1950s every female in the UK would have to be a telephonist, just to keep up with the growth.
Declines happen naturally, however. Video-conferencing, for example, will improve to the extent that substantial travel will become unnecessary. We are now building roads and airports that will be redundant in 50 years.
Even population growth is drawing to an end: for the most prosperous countries, the decline is dramatic. If the trend were to continue, within 200 years the number of births per annum would be less than 10 per cent of current levels. Reduced use of carbon-based fuels will follow, and we will be in a better state to survive global warming.
We should not be complacent, but we must be certain that any short-term measures we take, to fight climate change, for example, do not compromise rising living standards, particularly standards in developing countries.
You blame economists for having a growth mentality. Current economic theory strictly applies only to nearly static societies (see additional letters for details). It does not properly deal with time.
The less numerate and more political an economist, the more faith they have that free market trade leads to an “efficient point” at which the welfare of society is maximised. It is easy to show, however, that in fact the redistribution of wealth can benefit society. And economists omit “externalities”: if after a trade someone not trading feels worse, that is ignored. But it was a politician who coined the oxymoron “sustainable growth”.
From Caroline Lucas,
Congratulations on your special issue on the folly of growth, which offered a much-needed antidote to the idea that, as the economic crisis deepens, our priority must be to kick-start the economy back in the direction it was heading before the crash. Tim Jackson asserts, however, that there are no politicians today who dare to acknowledge that mindlessly chasing after ever-increasing economic growth is not compatible with sustainability.
Green Party politicians have been saying exactly that for over 30 years, challenging the received wisdom that the way to achieve well-being is to accumulate ever more “stuff”. Green members of the European Parliament, the London Assembly and local councils continue to advocate alternative indicators of progress, propose ambitious policies to improve the durability and efficiency of products, promote alternatives to “free trade”, and encourage a redistribution of work and incomes.
In the 1930s, President Roosevelt’s New Deal helped the world emerge from economic depression through a massive public works programme. We now urgently need to update that programme, and introduce a Green New Deal 鈥� which would re-regulate the national and international finance systems, encourage fair and green taxation, close down tax havens and generate a transformational economic programme to substantially decarbonise our economy.
As more and more people recognise that the relentless march of free-market capitalism is both environmentally and economically unsustainable, perhaps politicians of other parties will have the courage to say so too.
I was very disappointed with the “graphs” on the opening of your issue on economic growth. A mass of ascending coloured lines with no hint of the scale on the y-axis could have come straight out of How to Lie with Statistics.
鈥� That was an illustration of the pattern of the rise: the exponential growth is important, not the individual scales. The full data and sources are available at www.excess.notlong.com
Fly-by anomalies
Eric Solomon asks whether the anomalies described in Marcus Chown’s article (20 September, p 38) might be explained by approximation errors in iterative calculations (18 October, p 21).
Not only is approximation error unlikely to be the explanation for a discrepancy so consistent that it can now be predicted in advance with a degree of optimism, but the effects of such errors can also be easily detected by adjusting the iteration algorithm.
A more likely explanation is that the Earth’s core is spinning faster than assumed in mission planners’ calculations. This may be testable using some form of Doppler seismology.
The editor writes:
鈥he core spin has been measured using the timing of detection of pairs of earthquakes (3 September 2005, p 15).
Placebo advantage
Feedback revisits the placebo effect (18 October) that you discussed earlier (23 August, p 36). Doctors used to visit patients in their homes: the request to call on a very sick toddler was common enough. Not infrequently one was greeted by a lively toddler and a very relieved if somewhat apologetic mum. Yes, the patient had showed signs of rapid improvement shortly after the phone call was made.
If it could be shown that the ability to believe, however illogically based, was genetically advantageous this would explain all sorts of phenomena 鈥� placebos, religions, flat Earthers, cults and politicians for a start.
鈥� Having recently had an ill toddler at home, we are reminded that they can go from appearing quite ill to very lively and back several times in the course of a day 鈥� nothing to do with placebos at all. But, yes, it seems entirely plausible that gullibility could have a genetic basis 鈥� see for example our special issue on belief (28 January 2006, p 30).
Fears for food
Paul Collins, reviewing Bee Wilson’s excellent book Swindled, concludes that “our Accums will always be busy” (13 September, p 47). As a public analyst I could lay claim to being a present-day Friedrich Accum: my job is to direct the chemical analysis of food to see whether it is safe, is as described and meets the requirements of the law.
The few of us that remain are very busy, but I’m not sure for how much longer. Every year the local authorities that take samples for enforcement purposes spend less on having food analysed. One London borough has a budget of 拢7000, which is 2.1 pence per inhabitant per year. Although the borough doesn’t have many food manufacturers, it has a large number of catering outlets that are capable of supplying food with high levels of artificial colours, or kebabs containing pork and 17 grams of salt per portion.
To check a sample for pesticide residues may cost 拢150; to quantify an undeclared genetically modified component 拢250. With the discovery of melamine in chocolate following hot on the heels of the dyes Sudan I and Para Red being detected in spices, and of organised criminals selling industrial alcohol as vodka, the agencies responsible for this vital service need to secure its future, not allow it to disappear through neglect.
Nobel endeavour
I was stunned by your recent article announcing that 61 Nobel laureates endorsed Barack Obama for president (11 October, p 50).
If 61 such august people could get together for something as meaningless as a presidential election, I would hope their efforts would yield something more beneficial than just an endorsement for someone else to spend their money for them.
The problem with politics is not the person in office. The problem is the office.
Creating a vast pool of money and assigning someone 鈥� or even a congress of 535 鈥� to spend it, creates so many variables and improbabilities that it is unreasonable to expect anything good to come of it. It is a concept that has been tested for thousands of years and that has never yielded satisfactory results.
Spending part of your money on community interests is not only noble, it is an essential social responsibility. Deciding how much you spend and how, however, is the sovereign responsibility of each individual.
If 61 Nobel laureates actually assembled for the purpose of making a difference in the world, I would guess they would design a web-accessible global database through which each contribution to church and state could be earmarked for the specific purpose designated by the person who made the contribution.
That one concept would not only eliminate tithes and taxes, I predict it would obviate war and entitlement.
Sacred sound spaces
It was intriguing to read Michael Brooks’s interpretation of how people may have been affected by visiting a temple in pre-Columbian South America (6 September, p 37). He describes being led through a dark, confusing building, where limited light illuminates distorted images, while being bombarded with unearthly music that seems to come from everywhere.
As a regular church-goer and a history graduate who specialised in the study of church architecture, that does not sound much different to a visit to a church.
In medieval western Europe churches and cathedrals were packed with brightly gilded statues (often of martyrs being tortured). Their walls were elaborately painted and their windows filled with stained glass, impairing visibility. A choir chanted, possibly accompanied by an organ, performing music composed so that each note echoed and reverberated around the building. Much of that medieval decoration has been lost, but it survives in Orthodox churches. It also strikes me that the ancient Greeks’ sacred rituals the Eleusinian mysteries were performed in underground caves.
Monkey see鈥�
If tools maketh the monkey, by extending the self and thus creating an awareness of self (11 October, p 42), then surely by extension the same would be true of clothing and self-adornment, another crucial phase in human development. Could this be the next stage in Atsushi Iriki’s investigation: macaques in lipstick?
For the record
鈥� We mistakenly reported that all 59 people who received a new treatment for their inoperable brain cancer had died (4 October, p 16). We are pleased to report that several patients in the trial by of Cambridge, Massachusetts, are still alive.
鈥� We said “marine organisms use dissolved CO2 in the ocean to build external skeletons and calcium carbonate shells. After death, these sink to the seabed and over time form new carbon-rich rock. The rate of this process increases if atmospheric CO2 rises, causing an increased drawdown of CO2 into the ocean” (27 September, p 34). In fact, the formation of calcium carbonate releases CO2 into seawater. Only the formation of sediments containing organic matter removes CO2.
鈥� We apologise for misspelling the name of Habibollah Razmi of the University of Qom, Iran. (1 November, p 16).
Sustainable economy
Many thanks for your refreshingly candid review of the madnesses of the current economic system (18 October, p 40). I am left, however, asking whether the necessary transition can ever be made under a representational democracy. While many people are concerned and may be prepared to make some short-term sacrifices for long-term goals, will the majority not prefer a bird in the hand?
Choosing social managers (politicians) on the basis of who appeals to the populace is therefore not the way to get people with the necessary expertise into decision-making and executive positions. This system fosters ideological, rather than rational thinking because this simplifies complex issues to soundbite level.
If we could as a population agree on a number of long-term goals, such as sustainability, equality and peaceful conflict resolution, could we then set up a management structure with the task of getting us there, in which positions are filled on the basis of aptitude rather than popularity?
From Julius Wroblewski
The whole exercise is a chilling paean to green Stalinism. Starting from the impossible claim of knowing exactly what the world’s woes and needs are, and proceeding to a “nanny knows best” totalitarian fine-print set of marching orders for the human race, you lot are hell-bent on repeating the great folly of the fatal conceit that doomed Marxism and all its kin. The exact nature of any global problems we might face, and the solutions for them, are not know by anyone in exquisite detail and it is foolish to think that any one group of savants possesses such knowledge. Given the record of history, you’d better be prepared for the likely event that all your grand schemata and prescriptions will look quaint and wrongheaded in less time than you may imagine.
It would be better to be open-minded and flexible in one’s approach to such things, and never succumb to the comforting delusion that one can map out the future in confident detail. And take note, too, that most of your promising solutions will likely arise from the fringe of the collective wisdom, not at the conventional and fashionable centre. God save us from green commissars!
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
From Chris Bourke
I think that a better analogy from nature for an entity that is beset with constant growth is cancer. Not only is it in constant growth, but it also sucks the available nutrients from its host and toxifies its environment in order to spread to richer sites, eventually bringing the life of its host to an end. In this analogy, the tumours can be seen as the corporate conglomerates that have so much influence on our financial lives, and inevitably our social structure.
Now they are sucking our tax dollars to rescue them from their own toxic mess to preserve their cancer-like growth 鈥� for the good of us all. How do we deal with such life-threatening tumours?
We use hard-hitting therapies such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy to quell the rampant growth. In this case we need just as aggressive an approach: regulations to stop the incessant growth and simultaneously the development of a new, healthy, system, to ensure we do all we can to return the organism, in this case the planet, to a better state of health that can return it to its rightful owners 鈥� we the people who inhabit and rely on it for our well-being, so we can stop being the tokens in the corporate monopoly game.
Croydon, Victoria, Australia
From Peter Wicks
The comment that I’ve seen so far that comes nearest to pinpointing the economic reality of the credit crunch/economic meltdown was by in the UK, who referred to perpetual motion machines.
I have yet to see any economic theory, or commentator, acknowledge that economics and finance always in the end encounters physical reality and so are beholden to the laws of thermodynamics 鈥� especially “you can’t get owt for nowt”.
Has anyone come up with a theory that keeps to these fundamental laws, and also addresses the elimination of poverty?
Salisbury Wiltshire, UK
From Bill Johns
鈥� This is the full version of the letter that appears in print.
Planners always use growth curves just as you show (18 October, p 40), and they are always wrong. No growth is indefinite. In the early 1930s telephone growth was phenomenal. There were published concerns that by the 1950s every UK female would be a telephonist, just to keep up with the growth.
There is no need for us to take dramatic action; these declines happen naturally. Video-conferencing will improve to the extent that substantial travel will become unnecessary. We are now building roads and airports that will be redundant in 50 years.
Even population growth is coming to an end: for the most prosperous countries, the decline is dramatic. If the trend were to continue, within 200 years births per annum would be less than 10 per cent of current levels. Reduced use of carbon-based fuels follows, and we will be in a better state to survive global warming.
We should not be complacent, but we must be certain that any short-term measures that we take do not compromise rising living standards, particularly standards in developing countries.
You blame economists for a growth mentality: but current economic theory strictly applies only to nearly static societies. It is built on a number of axioms first proposed by Alfredo Pareto.
One axiom is that in a free market, two people will choose to trade only if both feel that they will benefit. Thus, the “welfare” of both will increase and it follows that the welfare of society as a whole will increase. Economists omit “externalities”, if after our trade both you and I feel better, but someone else not involved in the trade feels worse, that is ignored 鈥� even if we dumped poison in his back yard.
At each successive trade, two people feel better, and the welfare of society as a whole is improved. Eventually, we reach a point at which no further trade is possible without at least one person feeling worse.
We could reach many such points (depending on the path that we took). Joining such points generates a curve known as an “efficient envelope”. No trade that would take us outside the envelope will, by assumption, occur. Within the envelope, we can always employ free trade to move us closer to the envelope and hence improve the welfare of society. Many economists look on any point on the envelope as an efficient point.
The less numerate and more political an economist, the more faith that they have that free market trade leads to an efficient point. It is easy to show, however, that making a few people poorer can considerably improve the welfare of society.
Thus, even in this simplified model, redistribution of wealth can benefit society. And it is also easily shown that, once you are near the efficient envelope (as is the case in most developed economies) free trade has only a marginal effect of the welfare of society.
This economic theory has a major fault: it ignores time. It is formulated using algebraic equations, not differential equations in time.
In practice, there is a transaction cost to every trade. The cost is more for very rapid trade and eventually overwhelms the gains. With very slow trade, the benefits do not accrue as quickly as they could. Thus, there is an optimum rate of trade and an optimum sequence of trade.
There is a tool (the “variational calculus”, which Newton is reputed to have developed) that handles this optimisation. If you want to make the maximum gain (or minimum loss) over 50 years, you need to model your transactions as differential equations in time and apply the variational calculus.
The calculus proves that you cannot make the maximum long-term gain by maximising short-term gains. A growing economy is an unsteady economy and time must be an integral part of the trading model. All the basic axioms of economics ignore time. Thus, economics has nothing to say about growing economies. It applies only to pseudo steady-state economies.
If we cannot blame economists, who can we blame? It was a politician who coined the oxymoron “sustainable growth”. It is politicians that encourage immigration and larger families to pay for our pensions when we get old. A company run in a way that requires continuing recruitment of new participants to make a return for earlier participants is “pyramid scheme” and it is an offence to run one.
The highest priority should be given to raising standards of living in poorer countries. Once they are raised, population will fall naturally, and with it all the pressures that we put on the planet will also fall.
Reading, UK
Steam car safety
I read with interest Roger Waller’s ideas for steam powered cars (4 October, p 37). However, given that he is talking about tanks holding steam at a temperature of 400掳C and 120 atmospheres pressure, I am surprised he made no mention of safety issues. At first thought there seems to be quite a bit of potential for serious injury if an accident should rupture the tank even a little bit. An airbag isn’t going to matter much if you are being doused in 400掳C steam.