Oh, really?

The most obvious indicator of a food shortage is an increase in the price of food -- exactly what we're seeing right now. There are food riots going on in many countries all over the world as we speak. The FAO lists 34 countries as being in crisis and needing external intervention in order to keep the people fed.

Somehow that doesn't look like the rosey picture of plenty that anti-Malthusians would like us to believe.

So what's the real story here? We really are producing enough food, but most of it is being eaten by rich, fat white people? We have enough food, but alas, it's so expensive that poor, skinny brown people can't actually afford very much of it? We're producing enough food, but energy companies can make more money by turning it into fuel than letting people eat it?

All of the above are probably true. It's also true that food production is in no way keeping pace with population growth. Malthus lives.

Erle Frayne Argonza

Nutrition-related issues and problems in the Philippines constitute a long list. Among all the related issues and problems, hunger stands out as the most highlighted today. While there is no question about highlighting hunger and addressing it with determination, over-focusing on this single issue tends to mask the other issues involved.

Among the emerging issues and problems in nutrition, I would handily pinpoint obesity as the most focal. Needless to say, it challenges development stakeholders to highlight the issue as well, and address it on the same level as hunger is being addressed today. Addressing it would mean resorting to public policy tools, strategies and programs at a national level, and creating necessary institutional frames to accelerate the problem’s solution.

While doing the study on fair trade & food security for the KAISAMPALAD in 2005 (this NGO is a national center for fair trade & food security), I stumbled upon both problems of hunger and obesity. At that time, the latest data from the Social Weather Stations regarding hunger indicated a 12% incidence, a figure that I found alarming as anything past the 8.5% index is considered significant. So I included the hunger issue among those food insecurity ailments that must be salved pronto, recommended policy measures, and even recommended the formation of a Hunger Fund as the multi-stakeholder executor of the anti-hunger mission.

The same study made me stumble upon the findings of nutritionists of the state’s Food and Nutrition Research Institute, which indicated a 25% obesity at the turn of the millennium. That average had its expressed distribution among age groups, with varying indices per age bracket. What was alarming at that time was the 25% Phliippine obesity rate was already 5% above the global average of 20% (the USA’s was 66%).

While I was aghast at the obesity incidence, admittedly I wasn’t prepared to tackle it then, and so I remained silent about the matter in the final research report, save for citing indices of over-weight across age brackets. Today the obesity incidence had risen well above the previous 25%, and certain popular media estimates indicate well pass the 30% mark already (we still need some more update nutrition research on the subject).

Obesity is markedly higher than hunger in the Philippines, surpassing the latter by over double the incidence. The problem with hunger studies is that the methodology is often subjective, since they employ surveys (e.g. asking the informant if s/he has been eating sufficiently or not. In contrast, obesity measures are objective and very exact, as calibration entails the use of weighing scales administered by licensed nutritionists.

I admit that I still am relatively unprepared to tackle the issue as of this day, that is as a development issue. I can only think now of the typical lifestyle intervention to address it, such as combining physical regimen with diet program and a total lifestyle change. Being athletic and a health buff (I was formerly Silver Medalist in national powerlifting –middleweight division), I often offer myself as a prototype of an optimally balanced physical-nutritional wellness person, even as I can easily lecture on lifestyle change and personal intervention to address obesity.

I would end this piece by tossing the query to my fellow Filipinos in the country and to friends overseas: will Manila continue to ignore obesity altogether?

[Writ 28 July 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]

The story oft told on Nature TV programs is that animal populations increase when food (and water to drink) is abundant. And the opposite applies generally to most animal populations. They decrease visibly whenever food and water are scarcer.

Human beings are included in the taxonomy of animals but we must be at the very dumb and horny end of that list!

Check this NY Times article out and tell me what you feel or think about the information there!

Reza la campaña del ayuntamiento de Madrid (Gallardonínnn) en anuncios televisivos, marquesinas y carteles por toda la ciudad. Mientras tanto Al Gore pretende que en 2018 (pasado mañana) toda la energía producida en los States proceda de “fuentes renovables” (Ahhh).

Desconozco cuánto está costando la campaña del ayuntamiento. Qué más da, no lo pagan ellos (les compensa con el sueldo y otras cosas), lo pagamos todos. Me hizo gracia porque volviendo de tomarme algo en las terrazas de Olavide, un sitio genial para pasar una noche de verano, contemplé uno de esos carteles dentro de una marquesina luminosa. Claro, tenía que verse, qué sentido tendría que la marquesina, pasadas las 12 de la noche estuviera apagada… vaya con el ahorro!

Nos piden a los ciudadanos, igual que con el dichoso agua, que moderemos el consumo, que “ahorremos” (así, a lo bruto, por el bien común, supongo). Es muy fácil ser la causa del problema y después exigir disciplina a los pobrecitos pacientes de todos los amagos e intentos por dominar el cosmos por parte del Estado.

Ni se me ocurre despilfarrar una botella de Bezolla. Pago 60 céntimos por litro (creo), valoro el servicio que me presta e interiorizo el coste disciplinando mi consumo. Lo mismo sucede con la Coca Cola, ni se me ocurriría dejarme la botella volcada derramando el refresco con total desinterés. Ni mis naranjas, pomelos y limones de cada mañana, ni nada de lo que compro, porque quiero, porque satisface uno de mis fines, me cuesta algo (renuncio a otras cosas para adquirirlos. No se puede tener de todo en la vida) y disciplino mi consumo, mi conducta. No ahorro cuando no dejo derramar la coca cola, ni cuando calculo cuántas naranjas tomo al día y no compro más de la cuenta para que acaben pudriéndose. Simplemente realizo un comportamiento racional, no sacrifico mi consumo de hoy por consumir mañana, sencillamente no dilapido mi patrimonio.

Lo que sucede con el agua es que no es privada, no pagamos el coste real, no sabemos cuánto costaría si entrara en el mercado, y por lo tanto, nos resulta barata, tanto que valoramos bien poco dejarnos el grifo abierto, saltar en bomba a la piscina y demás hábitos propios de individuos que no tienen interiorizado el coste real (el de mercado) del bien consumido.

Con la energía, tras cuartos de lo mismo. Pagamos menos de lo que sería su precio si el Estado no subvencionara parte. Lo pagamos con impuestos o inflación (el impuesto silencioso), pero ese coste se dispersa entre tantas cosas que pagamos con ellos por lo que resulta imposible interiorizar el coste del bien y disciplinar el consumo.

Por otro lado la campaña es perversa, malthusiana y de peligroso bagaje conceptual. La energía es un bien económico, es escaso, como cualquier otro. La gente consume lo que quiere, renunciando a otras cosas (coste) por valorar el servicio que le presta algo más que lo que lograría, siempre bajo un juicio subjetivo, lo que deja de consumir. Si el precio de mercado estimado es X y la gente está dispuesta a pagarlo para adquirir el número suficiente de unidades para que sea rentable la actividad, siempre habrá alguien dispuesto a producir dicho bien.

No estamos ante un problema de escasez inerradicable, sino de precios libres y libertad de acceso al mercado así como de recurrir a las fuentes de energía disponibles. Si se pudiera producir energía nuclear sin estar sometido a la moratoria socialista (perpetuada por el PP, quede claro), y los precios fueran libres, la gente sabría lo que cuesta la energía, disciplinaría su consumo pero consumiría lo que quisiera, lo que entendiera necesario, como lo hace de leche, coca cola, naranjas, trigo… son bienes escasos, si, pero siempre están disponibles a un precio X, el mercado ajusta y suministra alimento y capricho a quien valore más el servicio del bien consumido que aquello a lo que renuncia para conseguirlo.

(Estos raperos, hiphoperos o lo que sean, todos ellos, deben ser doctores en Derecho y Economía... eso, o unos ignorantes cargados de arrogancia)

Seguirán los listillos haciendo sus tejemanejes, padeciendo su ignorancia, temiendo la escasez reiterando sofismas y falacias hace tiempo superadas. Qué se le va a hacer?!

Saludos y Libertad!

In the song "A Little Help From My Friends," the Beatles asked the question:

"What would you do if I sang out of tune?                                                                                   Would you stand up and walk out on me?

(Although it's a Beatles tune, it's hard to think of it without hearing Joe Cocker's voice.)

Well, economists have clearly been singing out of tune as our economy crumbles around us. And now the audience is starting to walk out. This article appeared a few days ago and I thought I had lost it until it popped up in one of my Google Alerts. I was thrilled to find it again because it goes to the very heart of what I've been saying - that economists are totally missing the mark. Wolfgang Munchau doesn't come all the way around to a new economic theory as I did, but its significant that others are beginning to ask the same question: "If economists are so smart, why is our economy such a mess? Why is economics the one field where nothing is improving?"

In this Financial Times commentary, Wolfgang Münchau ... questions the very foundation of accepted economic theory and modern central banking.

As the Bank of International Settlements said in its latest annual report, subprime might have been the trigger for this crisis, but not the cause. We do not have a full understanding yet of what happened but the BIS suggested that fast expansion of money and credit must have played a role. I would go further and say this is not primarily a crisis of financial speculation, but one of economic policy. Its principal villains are therefore not bankers, but economists – not in their role as teachers and researchers, but as policy advisers and policymakers...

The problem with economists is that they have strayed too far from the simple math of a balance sheet and tried to turn economics into some far more complicated science or worse, a game played with their latest darling concept, "game theory." They would be much better served by focusing on the balance sheet and asking the question "why" when the numbers don't add up. They would be better off if they would get over their childish anger at Malthus for smearing the reputation of their "science" and start questioning what happens when we try to cram more and more people into the same amount of space. What happens to per capita consumption? What happens when productivity rises but per capita consumption falls? What happens when two nations, grossly disparate in population density, attempt to trade freely with each other? Why is it that their beloved "principle of comparative advantage" seems to failing the U.S. so disastrously? (For answers to these questions, read Five Short Blasts.)

Our next president would be much better served if he chose accountants for his key economic roles instead of these "economists" whose brains have been turned to mush through years of learning a bunch of irrelevant gibberish.

But even Malthus' formidable foresight was not enough to encompass the massive technological advances that then lay ahead or the unprecedented power to wreak havoc on ourselves and our planet that these advances would soon enable.  The dangers of human populations outrunning the food supply seem like child's play (even though we haven't come close to solving them) compared to more "modern" problems associated with overpopulation, such as those arising from humans outrunning the energy supply.

With each passing year, we undertake ever-more-drastic measures to keep our ever-more-crowded boat afloat.  Drilling for oil in our last remaining nature preserves and constructing dozens of new nuclear reactors are the cry of the day.  And we ain't seen nothin' yet.

When will it end?  And how?  Will the solution finally just be forced on us when we literally run out of oil and food?  Or will we invent and implement an effective anthropolicy---a policy for handling humans---before then?

Those are some of the questions we'll be discussing in this blog.  Hold on tight!

"Wolf! Help! Wolf!" cried the boy.

"It serves you right," spoke the wolf, "for you lied before and now will not be believed. So it is that you become my meal while the village sleeps." And the wolf ate boy and his flock. The moral of the tale has been told as follows:

Even when liars tell the truth, they are never believed. The liar will lie once, twice, and then perish when he tells the truth.

And so we find the Malthus' incorrect prediction of global overpopulation remembered whenever anyone claims that natural resources may be overstretched. It's like they're cackling, "Malthus cried wolf before, and there turned out to be none. So there's no wolf today either."

Of course this is totally wrong. The point that needs to be remembered is that the boy and the flock eventually were eaten by the wolf. Likewise with Peak Oil, we hear old timers especially harken back to the Seventies (a very different situation from today's) and claim that the oil market in those times was just a boy crying wolf for amusement. And now the market is crying wolf again, they say, and they've seen it before and there's no reason to worry. But it's not because a previous prediction about something was wrong that a present prediction is also.

This is the problem of induction. You go to a town and the first three cars you see drive down the road are red. Do you conclude that all the cars in the town are red? So when I hear people say, about climate change or oil scarcity or overpopulation, that people incorrectly predicted these problems in the past a few times, so it won't be a problem in the future, I have to stand there in amazement and wonder at their lack of imagination.

I don't mean to sound overly pessimistic. In fact I am decently optimistic about the future. I think we can get past oil troubles, and get beyond oil as a monopoly transport energy source. I look to the likes of Craig Venter's Synthetic Genomics as leading the way. Or at sugarcane ethanol and possibly natural gas liquids as transitional means away from oil. I believe in technology, and in potential for exponential progress.

I thought about the Boy Who Cried Wolf again yesterday, watching Daniel Yergin of Cambridge Energy Research fame on Charlie Rose's website.

Mr Yergin, a fine writer of oil's history, doesn't believe in any peak oil-type scenario. He thinks we'll have oil forever. Indeed he claims we'll have an infinite supply of oil. Why and how? Because, he says, there have been predictions about running out of oil in the past and they were wrong. But that's the inductive reasoning fallacy par excellence. He uses the "that boy's already cried wolf" shortcut instead of looking at things on their merits.

Now, sometimes, in fact frequently, inductive reasoning is absolutely crucial, especially for approaching the future. But we have to be careful. To use a large statistical sample if possible, and to consider the logic and try to perceive our own biases. For example, it's just possible that I could say that since Daniel Yergin has been consistently wrong on oil prices for the past five years, that he's not a reliable source of foresight and is better left as a historian and journalist. That would be reasonable induction, I believe. But to claim that because he was wrong in the past he will be wrong in the future, that's unreasonable induction, precisely the sort he uses to refute peak oil-like scenarios.

By the way if you watch his previous Charlie Rose segment, when oil was passing $45 Yergin was of a mind that oil would surely fall back to the thirties. I was at that time already very concerned about peak oil, I'd seen enough of peak oil theory that had the smell of a truth which is still denied, the same sense I'd had years earlier when I learned about the crackpot theory of punctuated equilibrium in evolution, or about other developments and predictions which seem very plausible but are not yet accepted. Analysts can have a hard time sitting on the same side as the fringe-type folks who often accompany new discoveries or thoughts and who may actually create resistance against those new thoughts. Climate change is another good example, as more conservative people abhorred the notion of siding with tree hugging pot smoking environmentalists and for that reason more than any other perhaps allowed themselves to be blinded. They didn't want to seem like anti-progress crackpots. They looked at people driving a Prius as self-righteous pretenders, while they drove huge wasteful SUVs that helped US gasoline demand surge. OK, end of rant for now.

Two recent incidents of housing market of the United States and biofuel policy worldwide have some similarities. Both the catastrophes are the consequence of overdose, albeit intention behind the two was different.

The motive behind the first one is the zeal to make swift profit while the second for one, it was over-enthusiasm to save environment. The first one created 18.5 million empty homes in the US. Here the private builders were involved and hence we shrugged off the matter in unison over a cup of tea. The champions of environment were involved in the second one to create a greener future. Growing numbers said it, and the rest possibly started thinking while scanning through reputed dailies and watching with curiosity the countless TV chats in the recent past that switching over to biodiesel will end most of the odds, if not all, related to escalating carbon footprints. And see what have shaped as outcome: the biodiesel policy, if Oxfam report is finally accepted by one and sundry has pushed 30 million people into poverty. And remember, this was done in the name of saving the earth in future.

It is always prudent to analyse the cause and effect relationship. The first one will result in drop in US dwelling prices. Although the ripple of subprime mortgage crisis has arrived in Asia too and discussed much. The second one, done for a noble cause, has already contributed up to 30 per cent to the global rise in food prices. A far more dangerous revelation of biofuels actually changing land use for palm oil and forcing farming to expand into areas of vital carbon sinks, the forests and wetlands, defeat the original agenda of clean environment. Many other studies seem to illustrate that the energy acquired from the biodiesel will be fewer than the energy used to produce it.

Is there enough for everyone? 

"Traveling to Berlin early this month on one of his first trips as president, Medvedev stressed the need for "a new world order." Leaders call for the founding of a new world order only when they are convinced that their nation will dominate it. That was true for George H.W. Bush in 1991, and it is true today for Putin, Medvedev and others in Russia's reformulated leadership."

Robert Kaplan continues to thrive writing short posts on the Atlantic Monthly's Current daily. Here he looks @ Thomas Malthus and his meaning in today's world.

Nevertheless, if Malthus is wrong, then why is it necessary to prove him wrong again and again, every decade and every century? Perhaps because a fear exists that at some fundamental level, Malthus is right. For the great contribution of this estimable man was to bring nature itself into the argument over politics. Indeed, in an era of global warming, Malthus may prove among the most-relevant philosophers of the Enlightenment.

Fareed Zakaria and Thomas PM Barnett both helpfully pour cold water on the heated rhetoric of fear and exaggeration that dominates America's understanding of problems like terrorism and Iran's nuclear program.

Fareed Zakaria

In a sense, the warriors are pessimists. In the old days they were scared that communists would destroy America. Today they rail that Al Qaeda and Iran threaten our way of life. In fact, America is an extremely powerful country, with a unique and extraordinary set of strengths. The only way that position can truly be eroded is by its own actions and overreactions—by unwise and imprudent leadership. A good way to start correcting the errors of the past would be to recognize that we are not at war.

Thomas PM Barnett

As I've said repeatedly, terrorism is, to me, what's left, not what's next—much less what's transcendent.

To me, that's like America in 1875 saying Crazy Horse and threats like him are the future of the United States experiment and we should reshape our entire government and foreign policy and national security establishment to meet this transcendent challenge.

Andrew Sullivan reviews the writings of Bill Kristol, mocking Senator Chuck Hagel in late 2002 for daring to ask what happens after Saddam's regime would fall, and dismissing with maximum ignorance the possibility of sectarian violence in post-Saddam Iraq. The repugnant Kristol has proven time and again he has the same level of reputability as Tim Donaghy, the disgraced NBA referee, yet is a darling of the media and now enjoys a perch at the New York Times as a resident conservative columnist. There are far, far better conservatives to represent our ideas and opinions than him, and I find it a tad insulting the Times misrepresents us so.

En los próximos 50 años habrá que alimentar a 4 billones más de seres humanos... Así, es fácil predecir para dónde irán los precios.

Thomas Malthus postuló a fines del siglo XVIII que la población humana crecería de acuerdo a una progresión geométrica mientras que los recursos disponibles para la subsistencia sólo lo harían de acuerdo a una progresión aritmética. Con ello se llegaría un punto de la historia en que los alimentos simplemente no alcanzarían para todos. Así, la disponibilidad de medios de subsistencia y el tamaño de la población humana encontrarían un nuevo equilibrio, con menor fertilidad y con el consiguiente ajuste del tamaño de la población.

Los postulados maltusianos no se cumplieron. La mecanización del agro, la ingeniería genética, los fertilizantes sintéticos, los proyectos de irrigación y la incorporación de tierras a la actividad agrícola, entre otros, crearon gran abundancia de productos agrícolas. La disponibilidad de alimentos creció más rápido que la población, aunque no para todos. Aún hay muchas familias bajo la línea de pobreza, las que no tienen ingresos suficientes para adquirir una canasta básica de alimentos.

La fuerte alza experimentada por los commodities en los últimos meses y su eventual permanencia en el tiempo en estos nuevos niveles rememoran el pesimismo maltusiano. Se estima que sólo desde octubre pasado los alimentos han experimentado un alza de 41%. La FAO ha identificado 36 países en crisis por este concepto, de los cuales 21 están en Africa. El consenso de los expertos parece creer que los altos valores de los productos agrícolas han llegado para quedarse.

Se mencionan algunos factores transitorios que están afectando negativamente la disponibilidad de alimentos: por ejemplo, los programas de incentivo gubernamental a los biocombustibles y la sequía en Australia. Sin embargo, existe una fuerza subyacente que está empujando al aumento de la demanda y que no tiene que ver con distorsiones, subsidios o efectos climáticos. El crecimiento de China e India y la incorporación de millones de personas al consumo son una fuerza nueva que ciertamente seguirá influyendo en la escasez de commodities. Si a ello se suma que en los próximos 50 años habrá que alimentar a 4 billones más de seres humanos, es fácil predecir para dónde irán los precios.

Paul Roberts, autor del libro The end of food, da una serie de datos que ilustran el punto: un nuevo habitante en los EE.UU. le quita a la agricultura una hectárea de suelo que termina transformándose en urbano y el 40% de las calorías producidas actualmente proviene de fertilizantes sintéticos, los que a su vez requieren de gas natural para su producción. Ello correlaciona el precio del petróleo directamente con el costo de producir alimentos. Por otra parte, una tonelada de granos requiere de mil toneladas de agua, con lo que los recursos hídricos también son críticos.

La lucha contra la pobreza se centra en levantar sus niveles de ingresos a los más necesitados. Una inflación desmedida de los alimentos esteriliza estos esfuerzos. Es por ello que políticas destinadas a mitigar la escasez relativa de productos agrícolas es fundamental. Investigaciones en ciencias agrarias que permitan seguir aumentando los rendimientos, como asimismo proyectos para el uso más eficiente de los recursos hídricos contribuirán a resolver la escasez. Adicionalmente, la eliminación de distorsiones a los sistemas de precios de los productos agrícolas de algunos programas de subsidios de gobiernos debiera ser parte de la solución.

In today's NZ Herald there is a very interesting report on a study by two Wellington economists which casts some serious doubt on the widely-held notion that new immigrants to NZ are to some degree responsible for the current unaffordable level of house prices.

The study's authors say that

Our overall results raise doubts about whether the strong positive correlation that exists between immigration and house price appreciation over the time at the national level is in fact causal...

Indeed the only "immigrant" group which appears to exert any upwards pressure on house prices are  returning NZ expatriates:

We find that neighbourhoods which experience relatively high population growth from returning New Zealanders have greater house price increases than the rest of their labour market area and neighbourhoods with relatively larger inflows of foreign-born immigrants experience slower house price growth relative to the labour market area in general.

So much for this particular immigration myth.  But what about the other arguments that are often made by advocates of tighter immigration controls?

Below is the text of a talk I presented as part of a debate with Workers Charter activist Brian van Dam at the recent Marxism 2008 conference in Auckland, which debunks some of these other misconceptions and sets out why I believe it is in the interests of workers to oppose all immigration controls:

The Case for Open Borders

We are continually told by media pundits and academic commentators that we live in an age of "globalisation", an age in which borders and nation states are becoming increasingly irrelevant faced with the onslaught of giant transnational corporations as well as supranational bodies such as the IMF, WTO and United Nations.

To some this age of globalisation in which we are supposedly living holds the promise of a rosy capitalist utopia - to others though it portends nothing but misery and deprivation for the mass of working people.

But when people talk about globalisation what do they really mean?  Is it really the case that in the 21st century the nation state is no longer essential to the functioning of the capitalist system?

Today I'm going to argue that beneath all of this superficial rhetoric about globalisation the nation state is still in fact every bit as crucial to the maintenance of the capitalist system as it was in the nineteenth century.

But before I do so I want to provide a quick historical overview of the origins of the nation state particularly in the New Zealand context.

The establishment of capitalism in Aotearoa

The establishment of capitalism in New Zealand was inextricably bound up with the construction of the nation state.  The acquisition of a construction of the New Zealand state required the brutal displacement and dispossession of a wide variety of pre-capitalist national identities - in the form of Maori tribal and sub-tribal groups - and their forcible incorporation into a national capitalist economy producing for the domestic and world market.

In order to give the newly emerging New Zealand capitalist class (transplanted largely from other parts of the British empire) total control over their own domestic market and to build support for their modest imperialist forays into the Pacific, however, a strong national identity based around a common language and a common set of values or myths was also required.

These national values or myths were arbitrary and imposed from on high by the capitalist class. The main architects of New Zealand nationalism were the first Liberal Government, who coming to power in the 1890s at a time when the first signs of class conflict were beginning to emerge in the form of growing industrial unrest, implemented a series of major land reforms to try to encourage the formation of a "sturdy yeomanry" i.e. small landholders.

In fact, the idea of creating a nation of small landholders actually owed much to the original colonising scheme of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who was keen to create in New Zealand a society in which class consciousness would be kept from interfering with the process of capital accumulation.

The extent to which the authorities went to discourage the formation of urban proletarian class consciousness can be seen in the fact that the first state housing schemes created under the Liberal government deliberately shunned tower blocks in favour of cottages on quarter-acre sections in which working class tenants could become in their own way small independent producers.  The maintenance of Maori tribal reservations in areas such as Northland and the East Cape performed a similar ideological function, in that Maori were not fully integrated into the working class but instead remained part of the permanent reserve army of labour.

For similar reasons, the Liberals under Richard Seddon acted to make all trade unions dependent on the state through the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act, with workers giving up the right to strike in return for the promise of regular orders for wage rises.  Meanwhile the introduction of a "White New Zealand" policy aimed to reinforce the idea that workers had more in common with their capitalist masters than with the international working class.

White New Zealand Policy

The White New Zealand policy was mainly directed against the Chinese, who were demonised by bosses and trade union leaders alike as a "yellow peril", threatening to undermine the so-called "New Zealand way of life" with their insistence on living all crowded together, practicing in their own beliefs and customs and speaking an alien language.

Ironically, at the same time that the colonial government in New Zealand was levying a poll tax on Chinese they were encouraging mass immigration from Europe and Australia.  Thus the origins of New Zealand's immigration policy were grounded entirely in simple racist prejudice.  What was important to the architects of the White New Zealand policy was not so much that the Chinese were kept out (since capitalist employers could always find a use for their labour) but rather that they be only allowed in as temporary "sojourners" (forerunners of the Pacific Island workers who were brought here in the 60s and early 70s) and that the European Pakeha workers remained bound by ties of nationalist patriotism to the state.

Meanwhile all sorts of excuses were manufactured by the trade union leaders about Asiatics coming to steal "our jobs".  The fact that throughout this period of mass wages in fact continued to rise despite mass immigration by workers from all parts of the British Empire was conveniently overlooked, or if it was acknowledged, dismissed with the racist assertion that "Asiatics" were somehow different as they accustomed to working for lower wages.

Economic Protectionism

So much for immigration controls being guided by progressive ideology, but what about import controls?

Here the record is no different.  In 1895 and again in 1903, the Liberal Government legislated tariffs on all overseas goods except those originating in Britain as a measure designed to protect the emerging class of New Zealand manufacturers.  To some people it might seem strange that back then New Zealand capitalists should be against unfettered free trade, when their present day counterparts are its most enthusiastic proponents.  But as Karl Marx wrote in 1848

"....the Protective system is nothing but a means of establishing manufacture upon a large scale in any given country, that is to say, of making it dependent upon the market of the world: and from the moment that dependence upon the market of the world is established, there is more or less dependence upon Free Trade too. Besides this, the Protective system helps to develop free competition within a nation. Hence we see that in countries where the bourgeoisie is beginning to make itself felt as a class, in Germany for example, it makes great efforts to obtain Protective duties. They serve the bourgeoisie as weapons against feudalism and absolute monarchy, as a means for the concentration of its own powers for the realization of Free Trade within the country."

Historically in New Zealand we can see that whatever trade policy successive governments have pursued, the underlying goal has always been what will best serve the interests of capital.

Thus today New Zealand, together with the rest of the club of advanced capitalist nations who control such bodies as the IMF and WTO, looks to aggressively impose free trade upon countries in the developing world, because NZ capitalists have now outgrown the stage of primitive accumulation behind protectionist trade barriers and are now looking for new outlets for investment.

The Case for Open Borders Today

Does this mean though that as some trade unionists such as (NDU national president) Robert Reid have recently suggested, the left should make common cause with the struggling small NZ manufacturers who are opposed to the free trade policy currently pursued by their larger capitalist brethren?

A return to protectionism after all might help to alleviate the decline in manufacturing jobs which have recently been disappearing in their thousands from cities and towns around New Zealand.

But the cost of economic nationalism is that it encourages workers to identify not as part of an international working class but first and foremost as members of their own nation state.  That's why although a policy of tariffs and export subsidies may be fine for reformists or for revolutionary leftists in neo-colonial countries such as Venezuela, in imperialist nations such as New Zealand open borders - not protectionism - is the only viable option.

Being in favour of open borders does not mean however that we think job losses brought on by capitalist firms closing down or relocating to low-wage countries should simply be accepted.  Rather we as revolutionaries would argue that instead of calling on the state to subsidise these local capitalists to keep jobs in New Zealand that the businesses should be taken over and run by workers themselves.

The case for open borders with respect to immigration is even more straightforward, as the arguments against it unlike those of free trade have absolutely no empirical basis.

The idea that there are only a finite number of jobs and a finite amount of variable capital which is locked up in a special "wage fund" is an old myth which Karl Marx himself demolished in his polemic against Ferdinand Lassalle, the founder of German state socialism.  Marx explained that Lassalle's so-called "iron law of wages" was based on the incorrect assumption that the level of national production always remained constant, and that the ratio of wages to profits, or as we Marxists like to say between wages and surplus value, also did not change.

It should be fairly clear to even the most unstudied observer that variables such as migration, investment in plant equipment and machinery and education would all act to change the magnitude of national production.

Moreover, the actual ratio according to which this national production in its moneterised form is divided between workers and capitalist is dependent on three things - the cost of reproducing labour power (the cost of providing the worker with all the basic necessities of life), the size of the reserve army of labour (the unemployed), and the level of class struggle.

As I've just explained, it cannot be assumed that an increase in immigration will simply lead to growth of the unemployed since production is never constant.  Unfortunately this doesn't seem to stop ostensibly progressive people from buying into the argument that there "simply aren't enough jobs to go around".

Even the sainted Michael Joseph Savage during a 1920 parliamentary debate on immigration publicly worried that not only living standards but "the very law of life itself" was threatened by immigration, particularly from Asia he thought since "we are living practically within a stone's throw of teeming millions, who continue to increase by millions annually and (in Australia and New Zealand) there are millions of acres of uninhabited territory."

In the present day opponents of open borders are perhaps less crude in terms of expressing racial bias, however despite the fact that since the 1980s New Zealand has stopped using race as a criteria for immigrants entering the country the fact remains that our immigration policy is still heavily racist, as the current set of primarily economic criteria are far more likely to be used to exclude people who are from the largely non-white imperialist neo-colonies of the Third World.

In summary, socialists should support open borders because to do otherwise buys into the myth - heavily propagated by capitalist apologists since the time of Malthus - that the causes of poverty and hunger are caused by material scarcity instead of a failure of capitalism to ensure proper distribution (although even if this were the case, it would seem rather coincidental that those people who were deemed "surplus population" should invariably happen to live in Third World countries and not Western ones like New Zealand).

Even worse, in buying into the capitalist rationing argument we are in effect saying that workers are too weak and powerless to defend their own interests, and require the benevolent intervention of bourgeois governments to defend their jobs.

As Matt McCarten pointed out in his talk here yesterday, ultimately calls by union officials and leftists for the government to protect unionised jobs via legislation over the last 9 years of this Labour-led administration have really only served to atomise and demobilise workers - to make them less free and less capable of independent agency, not more so.

Instead of import tariffs and immigration quotas we as revolutionary socialists call for the expropriation under workers control of all businesses threatened with closure or mass redundancies, and a concerted campaign to organise all migrant workers on union pay and conditions.

While such a course of action may not seem "realistic" or in accordance with bourgeois notions of "common sense", it is in fact only by pushing for this strategy of open borders that the working class can achieve its own sense of agency and autonomy and thus be said to be truly free.

The above chart is dismal. Consider the following:
Adjusted for inflation, gas prices from 1990 to 1999 were cut in half. In the past 8 years they have quadrupled.

Food prices are skyrocketing, causing starvation, disease, and hindering any chance the middle class American, much less the developing world has of breaking through this weak economy.

Malthus was on to something a few centuries ago. The world is already starting to outgrow its resources. in 40 years, the world population is due to increase by 50%; resources will at that point be effectively stripped bare.

What happens then? I can only see a clash of civilizations much worse than any ideological clash Huntington foresees. I can imagine nations warring not over ideals, but over simple access to basic necessities.

We look at the instability in Africa right now and think they are crazy for killing each other over food, but when it comes down to it, life at it rawest is a zero sum game. What your neighbor is eating is food you will never feed your family with. What he wears, you cannot wear. In a land too distraught with poverty to concern itself with public goods, it is hard to imagine we might be in the same position half a century from now.

Green Ventures and African Enterprise are crucial to solving this problem. If we do not want to become Africa, we must help Africa untie its knot of impoverishment and sustained destitution. In order to do this though, we must look at green solutions to fix these problems. The answer is not only to reduce poverty in this area; rather it is to grow wealth.

In order to do this, solutions must sustain themselves beyond the utilization of our most precious resources. If we can create an environment of sustainable growth through the use of green technology and independent energy sources, then we can begin to grow the wealth of a place in need.

By growing wealth in such regions of the world, families will feel less need to war over their property, as they will have the security to know they can survive on what they have. Further, more wealth means less need for labor intensive work - in other words, there will be less demand for large family households to run the house - instead, service sector economies can begin to develop, alleviating the strain of the family, and alleviating the population growth strain on the world.

Such actions are beneficial to us all, as the development of Africa will bring the development of the world in order - allowing our clashes to remain a matter of ideological differences rather than one of necessity.

FAZ.NET - Manuela Lenzen

Nietzsche hatte es klar erkannt: Fernstenliebe wollte er die Menschen lehren, denn: "Eure Nächstenliebe ist eure schlechte Liebe zu euch selber. Die Ferneren sind es, welche eure Liebe zum Nächsten bezahlen." Der amerikanische Biologe und Autor Lee Alan Dugatkin erklärt in seinem neuen Buch, warum die Nächstenliebe schon schwierig genug, die Fernstenliebe dagegen evolutionär gar nicht vorgesehen ist.

Güte ist ein poetisches Wort für ein Phänomen, das Wissenschaftler Altruismus nennen und das schon Darwin "fast verrückt" machte. Wenn der Sinn des Lebens aus evolutionsbiologischer Sicht darin besteht, sich fortzupflanzen, wie können dann die unfruchtbaren Arbeiterkasten der Bienen, Wespen oder Ameisen entstehen?

Darwin fand keine gute Lösung auf diese Frage, ging aber mit der Vermutung, die "natürliche Zuchtwahl" sei auch auf die Familie, nicht nur auf das Individuum anwendbar, in die richtige Richtung. Blutsverwandtschaft lautet heute das Zauberwort: Wer Familienangehörigen hilft, sich zu reproduzieren, sorgt auch für die eigenen Gene. Bevor dies klar war, tobte ein ebenso weltanschaulich wie wissenschaftlich motivierter Streit um die Güte: Gibt es einen Selektionsdruck, nicht nur innerhalb der eigenen Familie, sondern auch Fremden gegenüber freundlich und großzügig zu sein?

Dugatkin verfolgt die Debatte um Nächsten- und Fernstenliebe in den Arbeiten und Biographien der Evolutionsforscher von Huxley bis Hamilton. In faszinierenden Porträts macht er deutlich, wie eng bei dieser Frage Biographie und Forschung zusammenhängen. Als Fachmann spart er aber auch nicht an subtilen Details, die die komplexen Altruismus-Modelle erst verständlich machen.

Die Welt, in der Thomas Henry Huxley aufwächst, ist durch eine starke Wirtschaftskrise geprägt. Elend bestimmt das Straßenbild, der Kampf ums Dasein den Alltag. Altruismus erlebt Huxley nur zu Hause. Ganz anders Pjotr Kropotkin: Überbevölkerung, Konkurrenzkampf und Malthus' Bevölkerungsgesetz erscheinen in der leeren russischen Weite absurd. In Sibirien findet Kropotkin überall gegenseitige Hilfe: Tiere drängen sich zusammen, um sich zu wärmen, Bauern leben in kleinen autarken Gruppen. Gegenseitige Hilfe, so schließt er, ist ein entscheidender Faktor für die Erhaltung des Lebens einer jeden Spezies, auch des Menschen - und zwar jenseits der Blutsverwandtschaft. Und wenn sich schon Tiere, Wilde und Barbaren gegenseitig helfen, dann können auch zivilisierte Gesellschaften ohne Regierung in Frieden leben.

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The newspapers have been running articles about changing consumer habits since the price of gas started to reach $4 a gallon. These are either puff pieces about the benefits of public transportation (this one is about public transit in Europe), or articles lamenting the woes of people who are stuck in suburbia, unable anymore to afford the dream of The City of Tomorrow.

Since 2006 when the total population of Earth tipped from 51% rural to 51% urban, making the planet an "urban planet" for the first time, it has become increasingly clear that cities will once again become the laboratories for the next phase of human development. What might this mean for New York City?

Two immediate scenarios are getting play in the popular press, both of them rooted in classical economics, both of them hinted at in John Tierney's NY Times blog entry, "Malthus v. the Singluarity". On one hand eighteenth century British economist Thomas Malthus warned that resource shortages would lead to economic, social and cultural collapse. (Malthus inspired Carlyle to call economics "the dismal science.") On the other hand, Adam Smith and his tradition argues that the invisible hand of the market will prompt individuals to find creative ways to increase wealth and consequently promote growth. These two distinct narratives are tragedy and comedy respectively. The tragedians tell us that because oil production may have peaked and there are no infrastructure alternatives to gasoline powered automobiles we are headed toward a cataclysm if public policy isn't brought into line. This is the tone of Paul Krugman's editorial in the NY Times. Steven Levitt's opinion in his NY TImes blog is comedy because it posits a happy ending: high gas prices will spur private innovation and growth. Which is more likely?

Probably the truth is somewhere in between. Contrary to Levitt's optimism, it seems unlikely that the investment necessary to retool our infrastructure will come solely from the mythical "free market". Markets are not sentient, though freemarketeers and mainstream economists often like to describe them that way, and though they may produce innovative short term solutions, they also may produce insoluble long term headaches -- like the traffic jam that happens every year when all "rational actors" decide to drive their cars to the mall on Christmas Eve to do some last minute shopping. What kind of plausible economic decisions might people make in the immediate future?

As CNN is reporting, many people may move into the city. This makes perfect economic sense. Cities generally and New York particularly already have public transit infrastructure in place that is remarkably less expensive than automobile transportation. Think about the costs: an unlimited Metrocard in New York costs $81 a month. By contrast, filling up a ten gallon tank for a car that gets twenty miles to the gallon for thirty miles a day of driving (a conservative estimate that assumes you only drive to work and that work is no more than fifteen miles from your house) is $42 a week, or $168 a month. Add insurance payments, repairs/service/maintenance, and the capital investment in the car reflected in monthly payments, and you can easily spend $400 a month or more. If you already commute into a city (rather than to an office park) it makes sense to give up your sprawling McMansion and downsize to a more efficient and cost effective dwelling.

Here's the other side of the coin. Suburban apologists argue that real estate prices in New York City are quite high, even with the prospect that a recession might deflate real estate prices, and so you get more living space for your buck in the 'burbs. This is certainly true. A piece in the New York Times Real Estate section last Sunday titled, "They Love the (New) Brooklyn" featured The Mynt, an upscale building on the corner of Nostrand and Myrtle (across from the Marcy housing projects), which is typical of development in the last ten years. Starting in the late 90s young whites pushed the frontiers of gentrification beyond the borders of Manhattan and into Brooklyn. Real estate speculators weren't far behind, and soon in neighborhoods like Williamsburg they began constructing high rise apartment buildings that were almost as expensive as in Manhattan. A two bedroom in The Mynt goes for $2,550 a month, quite a bit more expensive than existing housing in the neighborhood. And at the moment the amenities that people want when they pay that much in rent are lacking in Bed-Stuy, which was one of the poorest places in America fifteen years ago. But will high prices deter immigration from the heart land?

Probably not. Ultimately high gas prices will be a more palpable and urgent motivator than more expensive square footage in the city. But the character of development won't be the same as it was during the go-go years of the last decade.

Though it may be the case that a depressed financial industry means apartments in Manhattan could slip below the $1.4 million average, it seems more likely that people moving to the city to escape the technology trap created in the sub- and ex-urbs by high gas prices will offset slackening demand. Moreover, real estate agents who see their country brethren losing their jobs are not going to be happy about lowering prices so that ex-suburbanites can maintain their standard of living. It is more likely that real estate owners will rent rather than sell, and subdivide rather than rent at a discount. Ghettoization in the 21st century may or may not be as racially motivated as it was during the Great Depression, but it will involve the inability of immigrants to the city to get mortgages, which in turn will lead to subdividing apartments in the new luxury buildings that sprang up in the last ten years, diverting them from luxury use to, you guessed it, new ghettos.

But the upside -- at least from the perspective of NYC residents -- will be pressure on Albany to approve more of Mayor Mike's green initiatives and urbanist policies that will soften the impact of extra population. Why? Because the 21st century immigrants who will be escaping the countryside with its prohibitively high cost of living, are people who already feel enfranchised and will be less likely to accept ghettoization as the price of citizenship. Congestion pricing, beefed up MTA service, and further expansion of bike friendly policies are important first steps to making city life more affordable, leaving residents more access to work and more money in their pockets. The next step will be to coordinate city planning and reign in the worst excesses of developers who are only interested in building high rises for Wall Street elites. Moreover, 21st century urbanist policy (policy necessarily comes from government) can encourage current residents of underdeveloped and neglected neighborhoods like Bed-Stuy, Brownsville and East New York to buy property to develop in an organic and market-friendly way.

A new synthesis in economics is in the air, one that accepts the fundamental tenets of Smith but understands how to coordinate individual economic decisions with government policy to promote a vibrant public sphere. Already real estate blogs disseminate vastly more information about market level opportunities to individuals than every before. The next step will be to organize citizens as a political community to make sure that growth is mutually beneficial and organic. Smith will once again triumph over Malthus if the city is allowed to develop into the logical alternative to the automobile era.

UPDATE!!!:

It looks like the NY Times is reading my blog. In this article Times reporter Peter Goodman reports that phase one of my prediction is coming to pass. He writes, "Juanita Johnson and her husband, both retired Denver schoolteachers, moved here last August, after three decades in the city and a few years in the mountains. They bought a four-bedroom house for $415,000. Last winter, they spent $3,000 on propane for heat, she said. Suddenly, this seemed like a place to flee." High fuel prices are the catalyst for moving people back to urban centers. (Ironically, it's not just the cost of commuting from the ex-urbs either. McMansions built for speed and not for durance cost more to heat, it seems, because they were built on the assumption of low heating fuel prices -- perhaps even in disdain for economic considerations like good insulation. Taken together, American's mid-twentieth century environmental carelessness is going to cause a lot of structural economic pain.) The really interesting part of the story is how deeply ingrained this kind of expensive living is in the popular imagination. Again, Goodman reports: "Megan Werner, 39, a mother of three, moved here five years ago from a dense suburb closer to Denver. She and her husband bought a home set on a 1.5-acre lot in the Deer Creek Farm subdivision. The space justified her husband’s 40-minute commute. 'We wanted more than a postage stamp,' she said, as her 5-year-old daughter walked barefoot across the driveway. It used to cost her about $30 to fill her Honda minivan with gas. Now, it is more like $50, and she coordinates her trips — shopping in town, combined with dance lessons for her children. But she has no thoughts of leaving. 'I can open up my door and my kids can play,' Ms. Werner said." I'll discuss this more in my next post.

Back in March, I posed the question of whether the growth of a new middle class in the developing world was going to stress the world's capacity to provide food and fuel. At that time Light crude (above) was selling for $85 a barrel and there were no food riots in Egypt, Pakistan, India, Thailand and Sudan. Yesterday, The New York Times weighed in on this question. They presented a balanced view on both sides of the story, concentrating more on the food issue than the fuel.

The whole world has never come close to outpacing its ability to produce food. Right now, there is enough grain grown on earth to feed 10 billion vegetarians, said Joel E. Cohen, professor of populations at Rockefeller University and the author of “How Many People Can the Earth Support?” But much of it is being fed to cattle, the S.U.V.’s of the protein world, which are in turn guzzled by the world’s wealthy.

This is all very comforting, but are we all going to turn into vegetarians? So they try another angle, which sounds more resonable: plant more land.

Anyone who has ever flown across the United States can see how that’s possible: there’s a lot of empty land down there. The world’s entire population, with 1,000 square feet of living space each, could fit into Texas. Pile people atop each other like Manhattanites, and they get even more elbow room.

Water? When it hits $150 a barrel, it will be worth building pipes from the melting polar icecaps, or desalinating the sea as the Saudis do.

On the other side of the issue are agronomists like Dr. Harriet Friedman who say our industrial food system is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Dr. Friedmann argues that there is a Malthusian unsustainability to the way big agriculture is practiced, that it degrades genetic diversity and the environment so much that it will eventually reach a tipping point and hunger will spread.

There are three part of the U.S. food business, I think we really need to look at. First we have to stop subsidizing our agriculture. By pouring billions into the pockets of Cargill and Archer Daniels, we distort the world price of Wheat, Corn, Soy, Rice and Cotton and we make it impossible for farmers in the developing world to compete or grow more than subsistence crops. Second, as the cost of oil rises, big industrial farming that needs lots of oil inputs not only for machinery but for fertilizers, will have less of an advantage over smaller scale organic farming, especially in the fruits and vegetables categories. Where I live, the local farmers markets, three times a week are very popular and clearly the value for what you pay is outstanding.

Finally, I think we really do need to look at the role commodity speculation is playing in price distortion. We have known of the developing world's need for more food and fuel for years. Why did the chart above develop the hockey stick only in the last six months? Because as the stock market fell, there were $trillions looking for a new rising market and that market was commodities. The defenders of speculation say the huge new capital flows into the commodity markets are making them more liquid and therefore it is a plus for the airline that needs to hedge fuel prices or the farmer who needs to hedge corn prices. The problem is that as the dollar falls, most of this new money is flowing into the "buy-side" contracts of which there is a limited supply. Like any Econ 101 student, we know what happens in that situation. I think the solution is that if you are not willing to take possession of a commodity, you shouldn't be able to play in the futures market.

Ultimately this whole issue is one of the most vexing ones we will face in the next half century. We clearly have a lot more land that could be planted to feed the world. As to oil, I think the Peak Oil theorists are right. For Americans, we are going to have to live a more frugal and less wasteful lifestyle. We have to raise the urgency of moving to alternative fuel sources like wind, solar, and even nuclear if we are to avoid a Malthusian doomsday scenario.

La grande carnevalata della Fao si è chiusa il 6 giugno (dopo avere intasato Roma per tre giorni) con la risibile e irresponsabile promessa di vincere la fame nel mondo entro il 2050. Speriamo che prima venga chiusa la Fao. Perché i discorsi seri si fanno altrove: tra poco, il 16 e 17 giugno, al convegno indetto dalla fondazione Aurelio Peccei per celebrare il 40˚anniversario del Club di Roma. Siccome risulta che moltissimi italiani non sanno nemmeno che cosa festeggiano il 2 Giugno, ricorderò che Peccei fu il primo «profeta » della impossibilità di una crescita illimitata del pianeta Terra, così come due secoli fa il bravo abate Malthus fu il primo a intravedere la «bomba demografica ». Oggi Malthus viene molto irriso da chi non lo ha letto. Eppure in principio aveva ragione. Calcolò che mentre la popolazione poteva crescere in progressione geometrica (1, 2, 4, 8), la produzione agricola può solo crescere in progressione aritmetica (1, 2, 3, 4). Ma Malthus non riteneva che questa crescita geometrica della popolazione sarebbe mai avvenuta: lo impediva, appunto, la fame. D'altra parte il suo Saggio sul principio di popolazione usciva nel 1798, prima della rivoluzione industriale. Ed è l'agricoltura meccanizzata, che Malthus non poteva prevedere, che ha rinviato di due secoli la resa dei conti. Ma ora ci siamo.

La preoccupazione di Peccei e del Club di Roma fu diversa: segnalava l'imminente venir meno delle risorse naturali, e segnatamente del petrolio. Si capisce, consumiamo troppo perché siamo in troppi. Ma nel 1972, quando uscì il primo rapporto, I limiti dello sviluppo, la popolazione mondiale era di 3 miliardi e 850 milioni. Vi rendete conto? In meno di quaranta anni si è quasi raddoppiata. Così oggi la preoccupazione primaria diventa quella del riscaldamento della Terra e dell'impazzimento del clima. Riscaldamento perché? Anche se è vero che la Terra ha sempre avuto cicli di glaciazione seguiti da riscaldamenti, una stragrande maggioranza di esperti ritiene che nessun ciclo astronomico possa spiegare la velocità, intensità e frequenza delle nostre variazioni climatiche; e dunque ritiene che il disastro ecologico che ci aspetta sia causato dall'uomo e dal sovraffollamento del nostro pianeta. Non occorre una intelligenza straordinaria per capire che tutti i suddetti fattori — popolazione, esaurimento delle materie prime (e dell'acqua), sconquasso del clima — afferiscono al problema della fame. Ma gli intelligentoni delle Nazioni Unite, della Fao, e anche dei media, preferiscono scoprire, invece, che la colpa è dei biocarburanti che tolgono terreno alla agricoltura alimentare. Ma se senza mangiare si muore, anche senza petrolio si muore. L'agricoltura è meccanizzata, e cioè va a nafta; e così i pescherecci e le navi che trasportano il cibo. Alla fin fine nel nostro mondo tutto richiede energia largamente generata dal petrolio. Scrivevo poco fa che oramai viviamo su una coperta troppo corta che se tirata da una parte lascia scoperta un'altra parte. Con questo giochino non si risolve nulla e si aggravano i problemi.