Daniel Gross’s review of Sachs’ Common Wealth was bizarre. Consider this:
Even congenital optimists have good reason to suspect that this time
the prophets of economic doom may be on point, with the advent of
seemingly unstoppable developments like….the explosive growth of China and India.
Huh? What kind of upside down logic makes high growth rates proof of economic doom? Proving this was no idle slip Gross goes on to say:
Things are different today, [Sachs] writes, because of four trends: human
pressure on the earth, a dangerous rise in population, extreme poverty
and a political climate characterized by “cynicism, defeatism and
outdated institutions.” These pressures will increase as the developing
world inexorably catches up to the developed world. (emphasis added)
Silly me, I thought rising life expectancy, increasing wealth, and lower world inequality, which is what it means to say that the developing world inexorably catches up to the developed world, was a good thing. And then there is this:
The combination of climate change and a rapidly growing population
clustering in coastal urban zones will set the stage for many Katrinas,
not to mention “a global epidemic of obesity, cardiovascular disease
and adult-onset diabetes.”
Ok, climate change will create problems but how clueless do you have to be not to understand that a large fraction of the world’s people would love to live long enough to die from obesity and other diseases of wealth?
Don’t misunderstand, I know that growth brings problems. My dispute with Gross is not that he thinks the glass is half-empty and I think it is half-full; my dispute is that Gross thinks the fuller the glass gets the more empty it becomes.
Addendum: Dan Gross writes to say that he was summarizing Sachs’ argument. Point noted.
Gross’s point doesn’t seem to be that the glass is half empty, Alex. He seems to be saying that the glass isn’t big enough to handle all the liquid that is filling it up. To keep with this metaphor, he’s saying that the fuller it becomes, the more it’s going to spill.
Ok maybe the glass metaphor got a little ridiculous just now, but I think it helps illustrate his point.
1. The glass is half full.
2. The glass is half empty.
3. You have twice as much as glass as is needed.
As a third-worlder, reading Gross’s take on the future burns on so many levels it’s hard to know where to start…I guess several larger points must be explored, firstly we have always been on a Malthusian race against poverty, which is a population accelerator. The faster the economic convergence of highly populated, developing countries, the lower the eventual peak human population. Rapid economic growth, besides mass genocide, is the only potential solution. But anyone who can think basically understands this.
I guess what Gross shows is a form of myopic ethno-centrisism, in as much as he is utterly incapable of seeing the tens of millions of potential engineers, scientists, artists, entrepreneurs and creative thinkers, that are locked up in dire poverty in these developing world populations. If 800 million or so Americans, Europeans, Japanese and a smattering of others, can generate all the technologies, political models, cultural creations and various extraordinary accomplishments, that have began our species thrust out of endemic crushing poverty, why would not five or six billion people proffer exponentially greater potential to the species in solving the vary same problem set, but in this case inclusive of a context of finite physical resources. To look at medieval Europe and see what amazing progress eventually sprang from that cesspool, and not look at Africa, or Latin America, and realize the potential therein, is I think the heart of the matter.
Human history is replete with new rising civilizations adapting from established ones and pioneering new modalities. As an African I keep a fifty year scale when looking at the progress of our species, there is so much to be excited about, I cant wait to see how a developed Brazil, Angola and Cambodia approach the challenges of the planets future. I think it will do wonders for the west, after overcoming some the initial rude shocks, when global opinion becomes unavoidable in the latter half of this century. The west having done so much heavy lifting in recent centuries, grow to welcome everyone else pitching in.
Maybe he thinks of the developed world as the mafia stealing from the planet. As long as they are only a few, the mafioso are rich and the rest of the world putters along in misery. When *everyone* is the mafia, then we’re all exploiters, there’s no exploitees and we all die.
I take it the reviewer is looking at economics as a zero-sum game, as many of the illiterates do. If India and China are becoming wealthier, then they’re taking our money, and it’s going to cause us ruin! Oh no!
The great thing about economic output, however, is that it we want a slice of the pie, we don’t have to take somebody else’s… we just bake another pie (and, perhaps, sell what we don’t eat of that).
Silly me, I thought rising life expectancy, increasing wealth, and lower world inequality, which is what it means to say that the developing world inexorably catches up to the developed world, was a good thing
In the context of the original sentence the phase “the developing world inexorably catches up to the developed world” means increased usage of raw materials over triple current amounts.
Dispite his protest, Alex just wants to disparging people the sustainability of the current system just as when he called people who thought it was a bad idea to give loans to people to buy a house 7 times their yearly income elitist credit snobs.
The comment about first world disease is stupid and near-sighted. However, because the argument is poorly made, does not mean there is a glimmer of a decent argument lying underneath. The main point is the question of whether the world, both in terms of climate and pure raw materials can sustain a western European and NOrth American lifestyle for 4 to 5 times the current population and there are perhaps good reasons to suggest that it can’t.
Isn’t one of the cardinal rules of economics that there are finite resources? Economic growth doesn’t change this on the most fundamental level and the question of where China and India are going to get enough water is just one example of some of the limitations we may start bumping up against. Admittedly these problems are far from certain, but they are perhaps worrying enough to be taken seriously rather than ridiculed (see above). GDP growth does not increase the amount of copper or iron in the world. This is not to say that technological improvement won’t get us around some of these problems.
The main point however, is that there IS a limit to the number of people who can live an average American life on this planet regardless of technological advances and it maybe helps to have people thinking about how small this number might be and what should be done about it.
AS, maybe you are right, maybe not. But Gross doesn’t argue that growth will slow down instead he says that the “developing world inexorably catches up to the developed world.”
Many excellent comments on this thread. Especially enjoyed nyongesa and Tom West’s hypothesis.
Gross, like Sachs, is a left-wing nut case.
I suggest you read Julian Simon’s paper on population growth and economic growth. Also, as people become more affluent, population growth stalls. Look at Western Europe. The real danger is they become net consumers instead of net producers as the population gets older.
Thanks for the Gross fisking, Alex. I have enjoyed doing the same to many of his boneheaded Slate pieces over the last several years.
How he maintains his reputation as a leading economics commentator is beyond me.
It seems obvious that:
- Everyone has the right to earn a better life.
- Some resource is always under pressure. Capitalism produces innovation to relieve it.
- If we tried to maintain Western lifestyles using the technology of even one generation ago, we would create an environmental catastrophe. Conversely, we will be able to support better lives for billions more with the technology of the next generation without such a catastrophe.
- While we will never have infinite energy, we may accumulate effectively infinite knowledge and that cannot harm the environment.
Actually Daniel Gross’s review is not that bad. What’s missing from Sachs and Gross is engagement with the argument that feedback from the markets is a better solution to these challenges than a big government plan.
Great post, Alex. I hear Gross a lot on NPR too, and he is usually very smug. He seems to like to have the position of, ‘I know some people are telling you things will be better in the future, but they’re wrong. And don’t you hate rich people?’
I loved this comment from above;
To look at medieval Europe and see what amazing progress eventually sprang from that cesspool, and not look at Africa, or Latin America, and realize the potential therein, is I think the heart of the matter.
Deaths from cardiovascular disease have been decreasing in the US and other developed countries for year. Why would we thus conclude that as developing countries become richer they will somehow have *more* deaths from CVD? I suppose they might live longer, such that now they die too young to get it?
I’m going to jump on the bandwagon and agree that Gross is looking at it all wrong. I also agree that markets, human ingenuity, and so on will solve these apparent resource constraints over time. The one caveat I’d add is that I hope that market signals build up early and quickly enough that these constraints are solved without any overly uncomfortable dislocations in the meantime. While I don’t think the analogy with Easter Island, etc., that Jared Diamond tries to make in Collapse really holds (full disclosure: haven’t read it), I do think it’s a good reminder that market and societal failures can occur at inconvenient times. I’m encouraged by the uptick in investments in renewable energy, mass transit, and so on.
Dear Alex,
Some fellow commenters above basically said it but not as explicitly as it should be said: namely, your objection is just as much to Sachs as to Gross. Remember that some of the key things you criticized in Gross were direct quotes from Sachs. In the 1980s, Jeff Sachs was an idealistic free marketeer who wanted people in Latin America to have more. As Steve McQueen said in one of my favorite lines in one of my favorite movies, The Sand Pebbles, after something begun with good intentions (U.S. imperialism) went horribly wrong, “What happened? What the hell happened?”
Best,
David
AS: “GDP growth does not increase the amount of copper or iron in the world. This is not to say that technological improvement won’t get us around some of these problems.”
No kidding! That’s exactly what has been happening for a few centuries, AS. GDP growth did not increase the amount of whale oil, but technology did develop substitutes from other sources. GDP growth did not increase the amount of land along navigable waterways, but technology did render river travel unnecessary. GDP growth did not increase the land mass of the planet, but technology did increase the portion of it that is potentially arable and technology increased the crop yields of that portion which is currently arable. Why are you so convinced technological advancement will suddenly stop working?
AS: “there IS a limit to the number of people who can live an average American life on this planet regardless of technological advances and it maybe helps to have people thinking about how small this number might be and what should be done about it.”
Does putting a verb in caps make a statement a fact?
So-called intelligent men have been predicting such a limit for technological advancement for at least 200 years, and yet somehow the standard of living of the planet’s population has continued to soar over that same period. The collective ego of each succeeding generation must somehow believe that a catastrophe is imminent simply because that generation has arrived (“I’m important, so if anything really big is going to happen, it must happen in my lifetime.”)
nyongesa: “If 800 million or so Americans, Europeans, Japanese and a smattering of others, can generate all the technologies, political models, cultural creations and various extraordinary accomplishments, that have began our species thrust out of endemic crushing poverty, why would not five or six billion people proffer exponentially greater potential to the species in solving the vary same problem set, but in this case inclusive of a context of finite physical resources. “
Thank you so much for this intelligent insight. This sentence alone made worthwhile my decision to read this blog today. I would have overlooked your comment had Alex not pointed out your post downthread.
One question that I don’t often see mentioned is what would happen if people really expected innovation to stop?
To answer that, look at resources which are truly finite. Gold, for example, does not really have many substitutes (largely I think because people desire it for silly reasons, but thats off-topic). As a result, nearly all the gold ever mined is still in circulation. To a lesser extent, the same is true for copper.
If people really expected other resources such as iron, aluminum, silicon, or petroleum to be irreplaceable by future innovation, that would be reflected in their price. The market would respond, I think in similar ways to how it has responded to the scarcity of gold and copper.
brian explains that Gross is saying that the glass is going to overflow. Maybe that’s what Gross is saying, but it’s a gross misunderstanding of economics. Economies can grow FOREVER, because growth is related to value, and value is related to human perception. Here’s a very simple example: I bought a new taillight for my bicycle last week. Cost me $8. That transaction grew the economy, because I valued the taillight more than the $8, and the storekeeper valued the $8 more than the taillight. The only thing that changed about those two items was the ownership, and yet the economy grew.
That, in a nutshell, is why Gross is a nut.
Andrew: “I don’t think we need to fear the lack of a miracle technology to save the day. What we need to fear is a lack of flexibility to adjust to system shocks.”
Perhaps, but I mostly fear the foolish doomsayers who would revert to central planning for solving problems of scarcity. Arguments that economic growth is not sustainable lead to the disproven concepts of “directed” technology development, non-price rationing, five-year plans, and public-private sector “partnerships”. I just hope the fools don’t gain total control before my remaining years on the planet are over. The collapse of the Soviet economy was not a theoretical exercise. The poverty and suffering to be inflicted on us by the sustainable growth “geniuses” will soon become all too real.
Aaron,
Really? These are blog comments, not a problem set. I’m fairly sure a combination of time scarcity, lack of certainty that solving your problem really leads to any insight, and doubts about your assumptions will prevent anyone from doing what you ask. Or are you just joking? Maybe you can just give us the “answer?”
Many people now use the Internet to do business, after receiving the business should be the best as far as possible, to allow customer satisfaction. But some Internet companies, not to start on your money to begin with, so on and then close the first half, resulting in Juankuan flee. Not only did not complete 租車the project, customers would also like to once again spend money and time to decoration. Dear Customer: This is no guarantee as the company not to find the.
Comments on this entry are closed.