Re: [pf] living within the nation's means - "rich" or "poor"

At 20:00 30/1/2001 -0800, I wrote to the Positive Futures list:
>· ... the USA has 5.5 ha/cap (= 13.6 acres per person) of biologically
productive area. That's more than almost all others, and compares with
Ireland and Argentina. /I/ call those _rich_ countries, as seen from the
rest of the world.
>· And very easy to live a very comfortable life in. ...
>

· I'm still not sure whether I've made my point clearly. I regard nations
as _rich_, that have /both/ a biological capacity equaling the world
average (2.2 ha/cap) or more, /and/ a
population_times_material-standard-of-living designed to live within their
nation's means.
  So the USA, Argentina, Canada, Sweden, Brazil, Germany, Ireland and a
number of others would be truly rich, _provided_ they don't prey on their
neighbours.

· In my table (bits of it below), I put the _X_X_X_X_X_ to separate those
nations which aren't preying on their neighbours, below the line, from
those that are. There's noticeable inaccuracy in the ecological-footprint
and biological-capacity figures, both in the basic Wackernagel-&-Rees
concept itself and in the generalisations that are part of the
calculations. You _add_ these errors when you subtract the eco-footprint
from the biological capacity. Those nations near my _X_X_X_X_ are in the
grey area, neither "good guys" nor "bad guys". But there's /no/ doubt,
towards the top and bottom of the table.

(More, on "The Market", below the table excerpt.)

              eco-footprint  existing   ecological
     population            biological   deficit      total        total
     (millions)             capacity   (if neg.)  footprint  bio-capacity

       (1996)    [ha/cap]   [ha/cap]    [ha/cap]       [km2]       [km2]

 USA    269.4     12.2         5.5    -6.7 {-8.4}  33,006,000  14,899,000
Schweiz   7.2      6.6         2.3    -4.3 {-5.2}     472,000     163,000
Germany  81.9      6.2         2.4    -3.8 {-4.7}   5,112,000   1,998,000
Ireland   3.6      9.5         6.6    -2.9 {-4.2}     345,000     239,000
 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
WORLD 5,744.9      2.9         2.2    -0.7 {-1.1} 163,809,000 125,404,000
                         (^ = 5.4 acres)
 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 ...
 India  950.0      1.1         0.7    -0.3 {-0.5}   9,991,000   6,979,000
 Vietnam 75.2      0.9         0.6    -0.3 {-0.4}     713,000     488,000
 Uruguay  3.2      4.8         5.1     0.2 {-0.4}     156,000     164,000
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 
_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_

 Malaysia 20.5     3.7         4.0     0.3 {-0.2}     754,000     818,000
 Finland   5.1     8.4         9.8     1.3 { 0.2}     432,000     500,000
 Tanzania 30.7     1.0         1.3     0.3 { 0.2}     311,000     413,000
Guatemala 10.2     1.4         1.8     0.4 { 0.2}     142,000     183,000
Argentina 35.2     3.7         5.1     1.3 { 0.8}   1,314,000   1,779,000

                        - - - - - - - - - - - -
· Economics has supplied the concept of "comparative advantage". A company
or town that excels in providing a particular good cheaply should
specialise in producing that good, and trade with other companies or towns
which are specialising in /their/ cheaply-produced goods, to ensure that
all its needs are filled. I have grave doubts about even the validity, but
certainly the usefulness of using such simple concepts, as the main guide
on how to run nations. Yes, there is a place for trade; it's highly
valuable in many ways. For example, since New Zealand produces no computers
(though it could) and certainly no chips, it /has to/ export enough to earn
the money required to import these highly desirable things.

· But these imported items should be a quite minor part of the nation's
business, at least for those rich nations as defined above. The reason is
that what is exported is produced by exploiting resources beyond what that
nation needs for itself, and if they are living or mineral resources, IMO
that should exceed the need by only a limited amount (perhaps 5% to 15% for
most "rich" nations), in order to ensure that they remain sustainably
produced (living resources) or are not run down too fast (for the
non-renewables). Such a limitation doesn't apply to intellectual resources.
This sort of consideration wasn't a part of the mental landscape of the
developers of classical economics, like Adam Smith, because populations
were perhaps a tenth of today's, and the material standard of living was
quite modest. Together these meant that world resources seemed limitless. I
am truly amazed that such over-simplified economics is accepted as still
valid today.
                        - - - - - - - - - - - -

· The reason I've included this side-bar on economics is that people who
believe money and trade (with human ingenuity), can solve virtually all
problems, are being terribly myopic. My view, that nations should live
within their own resources when they're "rich" would be seen as irrelevant
by such people, since globalization, free trade, would solve any problems.
I say myopic since they're like buggy-whip makers at the beginning of the
transition to cars and trucks. Vaguely aware that something new to their
world-view is on their distant horizon, but focussed on what they know how
to do. 
  _Simply_ because living is complex (and human life even more so),
economics as understood but the large majority _cannot_ deal with more than
its own small segment of it.

· I've gone on to long; I'll just say that there /is/ an unanswered
question about "poor" nations, on this biological-capacity scale, such as
desert countries and those that have been desertified, like Tadjikistan in
central Asia. I'm guessing that emigration is the main answer, together
with export of solar energy and the products of the remainder's
intellectual resources, but that's only a rough guess. Switzerland has been
doing a lot of this for over a century, so it's an obvious choice.

David.
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz 
http://www.geocities.com/davdd.geo/index.html#top
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