Have you ever been to a real "ghost town"? If you have did you ever think that the same thing could apply to a whole country? That is the idea behind this blog.
Most ghost towns that I have visited were originally mining towns. In their hay day these towns were so very rich and it was demonstrated by the lavish life style of their inhabitants. One exception is the small Easter island. When the first immigrants showed up, the island was totally vacant. There was plenty of food just for the gathering. The median family income was very high in the beginning, but started going down as the breeding accelerated. Eventually the population started starving until the population declined to the "steady state" capacity of the island. In the case of some of the ghost towns the ore got so poor that only a small percentage of the original miners could survive. I think you see the pattern. Oklahoma had a similar situation due to the depression and the dust bowl. Their solution was to immigrate "out" of Oklahoma.
Notice that most of our Economists only stress "growth" similar to what happened with the ghost towns in the early part of their lives. I have to ask, "Why don't Economists ever consider "steady state" economic models"? Japan looks like a perfect model of what I am talking about. If the basic goal of any economic system is to maximize the median family income, you end up with some thing like Japan in the end. What is wrong with that? Are you starting to see that "more" may not be better if it is at the expense of the median family income?
Does anyone really want their town or city to be bigger or more cars on the road? I don't think so. I like hunting and trout fishing and have found it more and more difficult to enjoy these over time. That is because we have a bigger economy created by "more" workers, not by a significant growth in the productivity or efficiency of the same number of workers. I blogged before about exploitation of natural resources and I repeat it here. What do you think has been the impact of "frac'ing" has been? The USA is now the largest producer of oil and is oil independant for the first time. The number of acres of land being farmed in the USA is actually going down. The production per acre has gone up, but do you really think that it can keep going up in the future that it has gone up in the past? There are limits, just like our life expectancy has it limits. Are you starting to see that we just might have the "wrong" objective?
I know that it is not very sexy to be against more growth, but it might be the best objective. Think about the USA with its 335 million people. If we had the same population that we had back in about 1950 which was about 125 million, what would the median family income look like. I think that it might be "twice" what it is now. What is wrong with that? You know that we have about 10% of the farmers that we had back in 1950 and they produce "more". It is the same for drilling oil wells and pumping out the oil. Is San Jose, Ca a better city to live in today than it was back in 1950 when it was about 50,000 and now it has almost two million? In 1950 you could buy a house there on a 1/4 acre lot of $20,000 and now that same home will cost you a $750,000. Is blind growth "good"? Think about it.
You might say that Argentina is now a ghost country compared to the richness that it once had. Back in the 1940's they had plenty of grass to grow beef and ship that beef to all over the world. The money from those sales was divided between very few people. They were rich. Then they started letting in more immigrants from Europe as maids and butlers to wait on them. They played polo and formed golf country clubs. They went to France for vacations and fine dinning. Money was no object. Now, they don't produce any more beef, but what they do produce has to be divided between many times more people making them "poor". A gold mine can only feed so many mouths and Argentina has come face to face with the realization of "ghost town economics".
Most ghost towns that I have visited were originally mining towns. In their hay day these towns were so very rich and it was demonstrated by the lavish life style of their inhabitants. One exception is the small Easter island. When the first immigrants showed up, the island was totally vacant. There was plenty of food just for the gathering. The median family income was very high in the beginning, but started going down as the breeding accelerated. Eventually the population started starving until the population declined to the "steady state" capacity of the island. In the case of some of the ghost towns the ore got so poor that only a small percentage of the original miners could survive. I think you see the pattern. Oklahoma had a similar situation due to the depression and the dust bowl. Their solution was to immigrate "out" of Oklahoma.
Notice that most of our Economists only stress "growth" similar to what happened with the ghost towns in the early part of their lives. I have to ask, "Why don't Economists ever consider "steady state" economic models"? Japan looks like a perfect model of what I am talking about. If the basic goal of any economic system is to maximize the median family income, you end up with some thing like Japan in the end. What is wrong with that? Are you starting to see that "more" may not be better if it is at the expense of the median family income?
Does anyone really want their town or city to be bigger or more cars on the road? I don't think so. I like hunting and trout fishing and have found it more and more difficult to enjoy these over time. That is because we have a bigger economy created by "more" workers, not by a significant growth in the productivity or efficiency of the same number of workers. I blogged before about exploitation of natural resources and I repeat it here. What do you think has been the impact of "frac'ing" has been? The USA is now the largest producer of oil and is oil independant for the first time. The number of acres of land being farmed in the USA is actually going down. The production per acre has gone up, but do you really think that it can keep going up in the future that it has gone up in the past? There are limits, just like our life expectancy has it limits. Are you starting to see that we just might have the "wrong" objective?
I know that it is not very sexy to be against more growth, but it might be the best objective. Think about the USA with its 335 million people. If we had the same population that we had back in about 1950 which was about 125 million, what would the median family income look like. I think that it might be "twice" what it is now. What is wrong with that? You know that we have about 10% of the farmers that we had back in 1950 and they produce "more". It is the same for drilling oil wells and pumping out the oil. Is San Jose, Ca a better city to live in today than it was back in 1950 when it was about 50,000 and now it has almost two million? In 1950 you could buy a house there on a 1/4 acre lot of $20,000 and now that same home will cost you a $750,000. Is blind growth "good"? Think about it.
You might say that Argentina is now a ghost country compared to the richness that it once had. Back in the 1940's they had plenty of grass to grow beef and ship that beef to all over the world. The money from those sales was divided between very few people. They were rich. Then they started letting in more immigrants from Europe as maids and butlers to wait on them. They played polo and formed golf country clubs. They went to France for vacations and fine dinning. Money was no object. Now, they don't produce any more beef, but what they do produce has to be divided between many times more people making them "poor". A gold mine can only feed so many mouths and Argentina has come face to face with the realization of "ghost town economics".
