Posted on 08/13/2017 9:42:24 PM PDT by grimalkin
The Evil of the Scarcity Meme
In order to avoid misunderstanding, let us make clear from the outset that scarcity is an unavoidable fact of life – it is the very thing that impels economic activity. If all material human wants were satisfied and we were living as immortals in the Land of Cockaigne, there would no longer be a reason to plan for the future, to save and invest, and to weigh the opportunity costs of different choices.
In this hypothetical scenario, people may for a while engage in the pursuit of various pleasures, many would probably indulge in producing art or would pursue philosophy and science, but it is a good bet that most people would soon become severely depressed from sheer ennui. However, we live in the real world, and scarcity is a feature of this real world. Purposeful human action is directed toward relieving this scarcity, a process that has greatly accelerated with the adoption of capitalistic production processes and the associated growth in the division of labor.
Voluntary cooperation between human beings in the framework of the market economy has made it possible for more than seven billion human beings to live on planet Earth, has cut down child mortality to a tiny fraction of what it once was, has more than doubled the lifespan of human beings, has vastly reduced famine, has improved the quality of the environment (contrary to the popular meme, air and water quality have been improving for decades), while global per capita incomes have soared. A few months ago we discussed the misguided analysis of the market of the new left-leaning pope, on which occasion we showed the following chart by Max Roser:
It is no coincidence that both life expectancy and the human population began to soar right after the Industrial Revolution (an event the Left describes routinely as an unmitigated evil!). In other words, free market capitalism has been very successful in relieving scarcity. Who knows what our average lifespan could be today if a completely unhampered free market economy had been in place over the past century? 130? 150? We’ll never know, but we can certainly conclude that the struggle against central economic planning and the ideologies that support it is a worthy and important one.
The chart above was originally shown in an article by Rachelle Peterson at the National Association of Scholars – as a reminder, we reproduce her remarks again below:
“A popular trope has it that we use one and a half earth’s worth of resources every year, destining our descendants to scarce resources. But our “mess of a planet” is actually in the best post-lapsarian shape it’s ever been. Life expectancy is up in every region of the world at all income levels , the global expectancy jumping from 66 in 1990 to 71 in 2013. That’s about 35 billion cumulative years added to the human family. By comparison, global life expectancy in 1900 was about 30 years.
Child mortality is down by half since 1990 alone , quality of life is rising, and happiness is generally ticking skyward . The percentage of the world’s population living on a dollar a dayhas plummeted 80% since 1970 , down from more than a quarter of the globe’s inhabitants to 5.4% as of 2006.
Far from “doing nothing,” we’ve cut pollution and cleaned up the environment. Air pollution has been declining for the past 110 years , and the risk of death from poor air quality has fallen eight-fold. Since 1990, more than 2 billion people have gained access to clean drinking water.”
. . . and Islam.
Great article, thanks for posting. He forgot to mention Julian Simon and his bet with Ehrlich. Simon died before his time. Instead this clown, fraud and bastard named Ehrlich is still around. He has used up his time on this earth perpetuating an evil lie. I encourage everyone to read Simon’s book here:http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
I can remember a long time ago when a “Christian” friend walked around with a fresh copy of Ehrlich’s book as if it was gospel. Nonsense.
Great article. Environmentalists are watermelons whether knowingly or not.
The opposite of scarcity is plenty. When plenty is excessive, there is obesity.
Obesity kills. Excessive plenty will save medicare and social security.
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