Gyroscopic Investing

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I have come full circle on Tom Friedman.  I used to really like him and thought he was smart and insightful (I read "The Lexxus and the Olive Tree" several years ago and enjoyed it).  Over time, though, I began to feel that there was a basic shallowness to his thinking that allows him to see many issues clearly without seeming to be able to connect the dots to the obvious conclusions that his initial observations should lead to.

Part of this realization was the result of the literary beat-down that Friedman received in the book "Empire of Debt", which was quite unexpected, but when some of the weaknesses in Friedman's thinking were pointed out they became hard to ignore and now I see them in almost everything he says and writes.

As an example, the piece that is linked to above talks about revolutionary change being in our future as a result of environmental damage and natural resource constraints, but he seems not to even suspect that the most obvious consequence of the issues he is citing is a significant reduction in the number of humans on the planet earth.  (Population reduction is almost always what follows stressing an eco-system beyond its carrying capacity, and this rule has historically held true for human populations just as it has for reindeer and rabbits.)

If Friedman had investigated the topic in any detail he would have discovered a fascinating body of work discussing the long term effects of "overshoot" in terms of stressing an eco-system beyond its capabilities and the effects that non-renewable resources have on any organism that comes to rely on them, and most dangerously where the organism comes to believe that the non-renewable resources are, in fact, renewable resources--which is exactly what we have done with fossil fuels in the last 100 years without even realizing it.  Now that's a column I would have liked to read.  Instead, one comes away from the piece Friedman has written imagining a world more or less like the one we live in today, but with perhaps a few more windmills and hybrid cars.

Couldn't agree more, MT. The beautiful ending made for a nice NYT letter, but the probability of this is about as low as the executive and legislative branches of our government resolving to reign in entitlements, balance the budget, reform the tax code, and define a rational energy policy, all while holding hands and collectively singing Kum ba yah.

BearBones wrote: Couldn't agree more, MT. The beautiful ending made for a nice NYT letter, but the probability of this is about as low as the executive and legislative branches of our government resolving to reign in entitlements, balance the budget, reform the tax code, and define a rational energy policy, all while holding hands and collectively singing Kum ba yah.

Yeah, it's like a flow chart for changing the world with 937 steps and sub-processes, and when one looks closely at the workplan under step 623(a)(i)(B), the following instruction appears: "Change human nature."

MediumTex wrote:

BearBones wrote: Couldn't agree more, MT. The beautiful ending made for a nice NYT letter, but the probability of this is about as low as the executive and legislative branches of our government resolving to reign in entitlements, balance the budget, reform the tax code, and define a rational energy policy, all while holding hands and collectively singing Kum ba yah.

Yeah, it's like a flow chart for changing the world with 937 steps and sub-processes, and when one looks closely at the workplan under step 623(a)(i)(B), the following instruction appears: "Change human nature."

Wow.  Just... wow.

I mean that in a good way.

I think he makes a few good points, that are pretty obvious to be honest.  At some point in the near future we will have stretched global resources to the breaking point.  I'm fairly optimistic that the free market will come up with solutions.  For example, when oil is $200 a barrel in the next few years, all sorts of alternative energy becomes cost effective.

I also agree with MT that there will be population collapse, but I think it will be a combination of these two: population collapse in 3rd world countries, especially those close to the equator which will suffer the most extreme effects of global warming - drought and crop loss, as well as technological advances brought about by market forces.

I also think the earth is a fairly controlled ecosystem and has ways of dealing with overpopulation.  I'm not saying I believe in "mother earth" or any of that hippie nonsense, but when overpopulation happens in animal communities the evolutionary qualities of viruses have ways of controlling those animal populations quite effectively.  All it would take is one bad flu epidemic or something similar to kill off 1-2 billion worldwide and things would be much different.

What is pretty absurd to me, however, is that a lot of the poor people worldwide that are having too many children actually don't want to have as many, but they have no access to birth control.  For the price of air-dropping a few million condoms, we could probably prevent much starvation, misery, and suffering in the third world.  I think as humanity becomes more principled we will become more like Gates and Buffett and realize that it's not only inhumane to let the 3rd world suffer when we could prevent it with cheap birth control, but it's also a financial drag on the rest of the planet, and cost effective (in the free market sense) to do so.

Storm,

When it comes to condoms and birth control, write me off as a socialist.  They should be free in vending machines on every corner of every street.

Exaggeration, but this is one area where I think "ends justify the means" applies.

There's just a big "oops" factor to having children.  There are so many being had that aren't wanted... which is kind of an odd market/social phenominon, where most unwanted things are pretty well avoided by people as a natural extension of their self-interest.  Kids aren't like that.

Combine that with most peoples' view that babies and kids are the most precious form of life, and you have 1) an irresponsible mother's will to keep a child she cannot care for, and 2) society's will to redistribute wealth to ensure those children are given an opportunity to succeed... thereby making it mentally easier for that mother to justify keeping her kid or maybe even "oopsing" into another one.

It really is a tragedy to me when I see a "market failure," as I'd love for there to be simple, free solutions to social problems.  One could say that the eventual natural solutions is coming... but I prefer these things to happen faster and softer, and not in the form of 1,000,000 African kids dying in a drought.

Overpopulation on the whole is one thing... but the idea that the least equipt of us are having more kids, and younger, than the most equipt of us.... and the self-reinforcing nature of that type of trend... are very scary thoughts.

Moda, I agree.  If people in poor countries were allowed to actually plan families instead of "whoops, I'm pregnant again" a lot of starvation and resource depletion could be avoided.

I'm not so sure the high birthrate isn't a result of culture + lack of education.  We can't even get our own teens to use condoms.

I think you're right Coffee.

I'm hoping for the effect of them being so easy/cheap to get to maybe prevent ??% of pregnancies due to just dumb luck and convenience by the kids...

I'm not so nieve to think these are otherwise wholesome kids who searched high and low for contraception with none cheaply available.

I'd be interested in statistics on this issue.... as I'm relying purely on hearsay and instinct on this.