Saturday, January 5, 2008

Static Fallacy And the Death Culture

Thanks to the Bayesian Heresy, I found out Jared Diamond is peddling both a pseudoscience and a pseudomorality. He uses critically flawed , aggregated consumption rates in order to argue that bringing the developing world up to the first world standard of living isn't possible. This is precisely the sort of problem that happens when we start trying to solve planetary or societal problems- when we, in short, attempt to play God. Too often, we can't even understand the problems on that scale well enough, let alone develop a solution.
The first problem, of course, is the very idea of comparing consumption rates. We consume different things. In the developing world, many people are subsistence farmers, use cooking fires, etc... Meanwhile, in the West we've have continually reduced the amount of agricultural use while increasing the amount of food yield as well. We use electicity or gas for our cooking, which drastically changes the consumption profile. I am not sure how one would go about measure the amount of fuel burnt for amount of food cooked in both systems. I am sure there are far more examples of problems with this consumption number, but I think the two examples are enough to cast doubt on whether or not these consumption numbers actually relate to reality.
Now, I want to hasten to add that I know we do consume more than the developing world. I just think this sort of number immediately introduces error into our choices. The step away from subsistence farming and cooking with fire is of primary importance to the developing world. In addition, I know several people here, in America, who need to consume more, not less. I am sure that the Kenyans need more. If a poor man needs twice as much as what he has to in order to survive, I want him to have it. If he need 32 times as much in order to live healthily to the age of 80, I want him to have it. By bringing it to the individual level, you can remember your charitable duty to your neighbour. Unfortunately, when humans try to think like God, they tend to become misers: humans cannot see what is unseen, and all that is seen is limited. Therefore our bureaucrats think in terms of conserving what they already have, not in terms of creating anything new.
The consumption rate can tell us very little also because it doesn't tell us what anything is being consumed for. If we are consuming everything for with no thought for tomorrow, that is obviously bad. If we are consuming in order to produce, something else, that's usually good. And often, this what we are doing here in the West. In fact, of the two indicators, population and consumption, in Jared Diamond's article, I would say a dwindling population is the most clear sign of a problem. It's a historically obvious reality- fewer children means an unhealthy people who are about to die out. Just ask the Spartans.
Of course, Jared complety ignores individual choice in his article as well. People, even in the first world, do not choose the same things so the overall consumption figure will be different. Since more people are choosing to live in dense urban areas around the world, many will choose not to buy a car. So it doesn't make any sense to envision a world in which 6.5 billion people have a car.
Jared also completely ignores the constant change that goes on in the world. The fastest way to figure out how to consume less is to provide incentives to people to figure out how to provide things for less than it used to cost. This is a function of the free market. If an entrepeneur can provide a product for less than it used to, that represents less consumption that went into that product. Of course, that often we use more. We do, for instance, buy more electronics than we used to. But it's important to understand that there is only so much demand, and consumption drops off as demand is met.
Jared's entire policy argument drops down to the argument of sustainable. So, I will suggest something. Please get rid of the gigantic parasite of big government which increases the cost of practically everything. Please stop supporting the Kyoto protocols which will cost us a lot of money and won't actually do anything to help the environment. Encourage people practice stewardship and conservation on a personal level. Encourage a return to property rights so that people can defend their property in courts against big polluters.

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