Re: The Passing of a Mathematician

From: cymelbird (chskiscim_at_earthlink.net)
Date: 10/16/03

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    Date: 16 Oct 2003 09:22:03 -0700

    Mxsmanic <mxsmanic@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<h2ssovoks77lgfguub16s3ubd42mjile13@4ax.com>...
    > Tanu R. writes:
    >
    > > "George Cox" wrote
    > >
    > > > There is no need for more food. People go hungry not because there is
    > > > not enough food, but because they do not have enough money to buy the
    > > > food of which there is plenty.
    It really has nothing to due with money. Famines are caused due to lack
    of the political infrastructure needed to distribute the food. A few
    years ago, a Nobel prize in Economics was awarded for research in this
    area - there has never been a famine in a democratic country, independent
    of monetary considerations.
    > >
    > > Countries like USA keep the price of food high to protect their own
    > > agriculture. If the price of food was lower, the less developed countries
    > > would be able to compete on the market and thus produce more food also for
    > > their own people.
    That's somehwat true. The USA pays more for sugar than any other nation
    owing to our tariffs. Your implication is that developing nations somehow
    need to compete on the agricultural world market. That's less of a concern
    than producing what their nation requires. Keep in mind that the private
    organizations (e.g., CARE) export raw agricultural products to developing
    nations so they can monitize the aid. That is, some country might receive
    tons of soybeans so they can resell it on the open market for hard
    cash.
    >
    > Food does not reach people who need it for logistic reasons, not because
    > of any lack of money or any conspiracy on the part of developed nations.
    > The nations that have the fastest growing populations also tend to have
    > the least advanced agriculture.
    I am unaware of any evidence suggesting that the fastest growing populations
    are the least advanced in terms of agriculture. What are some examples and
    what implications do you intend to draw from this assertion?
    >
    > The solution is not to produce and distribute ever increasing amounts of
    > food; it is to instead reduce overpopulation. The world population
    > cannot increase infinitely, and the larger it gets, the lower the
    > standard of living will be for everyone. It makes more sense to
    > maintain smaller populations with higher standards of living. Developed
    > nations tend naturally in this direction, in most cases. Developing
    > nations tend to have unacceptably natural rates of increase, and so they
    > tend to have periodic famines and very low standards of living.
    You seem to view the world as some finite set of resources ever taxed by
    a growing population. Yet we continue to discover new resources - not
    necessarily agricultural or natural (i.e., oil), but more tailored to the
    present economy. The economic history of the US for example, exhibits an
    increasing standard of living despite its increasing population.

    Can you reasonably say that 100 years ago, the US had a better standard
    of living than we have today? The population was lower after all.

  • Next message: Ernst Lippe: "Re: unprovability of the security of computational cryptography"

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