Globally, therefore, adoption of American farming techniques could increase agricultural productivity so much that a landmass the size of India could be returned to nature, without compromising the food supply to our apparently “peaking” global population â the world’s population is likely to peak at 8.7 billion in 2055 and then start to decline. Last, but not least, tens of millions of agricultural laborers in Africa and Asia will be freed from back-breaking labor, migrate to the cities and create wealth in other ways.
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 33 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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Actually American farming is in trouble.
Everyone knows about Federal government subsidies distorting farming, but regulations do also.
Government policy always did so – for example giving cattle country to arable homesteaders (hello dustbowl) – but things are different now, not the government seeks to micro manager farming and ranching. For example if water runs (or even collects) on your property – the EPA (Richard Nixon’s gift to the collectivists) will seek to control you.
Yes American farmers and ranchers have many good methods that should be adopted elsewhere.
But I think “New Zealand” not “America” would be a better example.
Third world ditch diggers may very well relocate, but assuming that they will promptly begin creating wealth is quite a stretch. (And I leave aside the erroneous but comical phrase “in other ways”.)
The best practices are not mainstream in America. Silvio-pasture, permaculture, holistic grazing, etc- they are getting popular, but American Ag is still dominated by government subsidies.
I’ve seen both sides of the environmental debate express this idea that it would be good to return land ‘to nature.’ But healthy natural systems often need human management and provide yields. A forest is fundamentally different (and more robust) than a field of corn; and people can live in a forest. Nobody wants to live in a corn field, especially not if it’s sprayed with chemicals.
Paul,
You know the difference between methods of farming and government – you show so yourself there. We all here are presumably opposed to government interference in the market which is what messes up farming (albeit in the area I grew up only government subsidy makes farming generally viable – but since the Lake District landscape is important, no doubt people will find ways to finance maintaining it, which is actually done more easily by cattle than the current sheep farming anyway…).
The original point here stands though, with your proviso added – that using technology we can easily feed the world (if government does not bugger it up).
Until we stop sucking our thumb and collectively decide to do more stuff, I’m wary of creating more labor excess to need. If we are to exert ourselves to change things economically, it should be creating systems that naturally demand more labor so that the market clearing wage rises above the minimum wage and even a living wage. Do more stuff that is innovative and thus hard to automate puts more humans to work driving wages higher and puts more workers on the side of the free market.
You have spectacularly missed the point the article was making. And what would make fomer farmers in, say, India or Nigeria, less able to find a better way to generate wealth than, say, former farmers in industrial revolution era Britain? The Third World is already, by and large, getting richer, as they shift away from inefficient agriculture.
“Last, but not least, tens of millions of agricultural laborers in Africa and Asia will be freed from back-breaking labor, migrate to the cities and create wealth in other ways.”
should read
” . . . create MUCH GREATER PER-CAPITA wealth in other ways.”
Remember, though, that millions of wealthy, well-fed Westerners don’t give a tinker’s damn if millions of brown-skinned people far away are condemned to a subsistence-level life of brutal stoop labour under a tropical sun – their social and political convictions are far-more important than that. Vide the attachment to ‘organic’ foodstuffs, which have that exact effect, and WWFW could care less. This will be no different – the ideas of WWFW about how farming should be a bucolic pastoral nirvana filled with scrubbed-pink piglets and happy talking chickens will trump any possible proofs of efficiency, increased wealth and improved lives.
llater,
llamas
Very true, and their faces need to be rubbed in that at every opportunity. I greatly enjoy myself discussing “racist opposition to airfreighted food” and have actually turned a few people to the light side using that argument.
TMLutas,
As I understand it you are arguing against automation as it will apparently mean people have less to do, and we should therefore keep people working as labourers instead? Regardless of the fact that most people would prefer to work less anyway, I do not see how innovation will do this, as it has failed to do so so far, as witnessed by the fact that I sit in the country with the longest history of modern automation and I still have to work a 40+ hour week…
Bluntly, labour is hardly ever oversupplied – it is other things, particularly investment and opportunity, that are often undersupplied, generally by the involvement of government. The idea that automation will cause unemployment has been proven wrong time after time – hence the lack of Luddite heroes (or the failure of all regimes designed to protect jobs over efficiency).
Bring on the aeroponics and vertical farms!
And what would make fomer farmers in, say, India or Nigeria, less able to find a better way to generate wealth than, say, former farmers in industrial revolution era Britain?
The same things that have kept them thousands of years behind the rest of the world up until now: their culture.
Paul Marks:
Please do not allow your organization to reify government.
You know that “governments” don’t DO anything, motivated humans use governmental mechanisms as means to ends.
As usual, everything else you report is factual.
There are tendencies to encapsulate the term “Agriculture” in the context of “Food Supply” and “Labor Use” as limited to an extractive process.
There have been efforts by major business enterprises to focus attention on the issues of distribution.
The recent taxation supported US redirection of carbohydrate extraction (corn) from food stocks, trickled through the entire global food stocks systems (Palm oil, e.g.).
While there is yet much to be achieved in extractive and production technologies, the principal malfunctions are in distribution (consider EU barriers to African production). Changing extraction and production will not solve the issues that underlie the problems of distribution.
Yet both places (particularly India) are palpably richer than twenty years ago & have shrinking agricultural employment. Nigeria was perhaps an unfortunate example for me to use as it is a ghastly place (I have been there) but even it has improved somewhat (that said, nothing could induce me to return for another visit). India however is a spectacular example of the dynamic at play.
“Iâm wary of creating more labor excess to need. If we are to exert ourselves to change things economically, it should be creating systems that naturally demand more labor”
Utter crap. Who’s this “we“, kemosabe? It’s not my job, and it’s absolutely not any government’s job, to “create systems” (whatever that even means) to absorb excess labor capacity. Wealth comes from devising “systems” that increase efficiency which, as a general rule, results in the need for less labor input, not more. It is the responsibility of the laborer to fit into that system, to find ways in which his labor creates (or enhances) value, not the other way around. And if you can’t find ways to make your labor worth a “living wage” it’s your problem, not mine.
In line with a previous post, above, concerning distribution, consider the changes that have occurred in
India (for example) in the systems of distribution in the various regions of that subcontinent.
It may be that some regions of India were taking tentative steps toward “Open Access” (North, Wallis & Weingast) which involved changes in the previous highly structured systems of relationships in their social orders. Those tentative steps opened changes in regional distribution systems.
Some observers have attributed the changes in those systems to the removal of the broader impositions of a “socialistic” system of distribution in many regions, creating an opening for replacement systems.
The change in internal industrial production and manufacturing appears to have been made possible by virtue of those changes in distribution systems.
Once changes in the distribution system of any part of a large economy, such as internally manufactured goods, occurs, similar changes are likely to follow in the distribution of other consumables, affecting production and consumption of food supplies.
Laird nails it. Remember, in economics, labour is a cost.
JP
But that’s not what Laird said.
He “nailed” it because he cited the “value” determinations made in the exchanges of efforts.
Efforts made to obtain things desired requiring the efforts of others are no doubt “costs” (in the economic context) of attempts to satisfy those desires.
Subsistence labour to provide for oneself is not an “economic” cost. It is simply requisite effort.
All that spare labour will make splendid old fashioned armies.
With enough to spare to make up a good agresive religion.
No, more and more First Worlds armies will be made up increasingly of drones đ
We have yet to really address the labour surplus that has afflicted the first world for fifty years. We just pay non working people to make babies and that’s no long term solution.
And here we are visiting the Luddite Fallacy yet again. As long as some people refuse to learn the economic facts of history, this argument will never go away. And it has several faces, but based on the same fundamental principles. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about replacing “workingclass” i.e. uneducated domestic workers with machines, robots, or whether we’re talking about replacing them with foreign uneducated workers. The truth is, the more productive an act of productivity is, (replacing 20 manual shovelers with a single backhoe and one operator for example), the more that will be produced with less resources and investment needed, which means greater production of wealth and, ceteris paribus, will gain market share.
Granted, those “Luddite” handmade-doily makers will be out of a job, but they’ll be out of a job anyway when the competition uses a machine to make said doilies better and cheaper and faster. No amount of sabotage will keep better and cheaper doilies off the market or keep the less productive employed for any significant period of time. Cultural and economic stagnation and/or protectionism is no fast-track to national economic prosperity either.
And let’s face it, foreign market completion is GOOD. Toyota saved the American car industry by selling to the American consumer in the ’70’s, even with huge tariffs in place, when American car companies refused to produce anything but complete and utter garbage. Market forces forced American car companies to deal with the unions and their choke-holds. The alternative was to simply roll over and die.
Johnathan Pearce said,
“Remember, in economics, labour is a cost.”
In LEGITIMATE economics, labor is both an asset and a liability. The whole point of hiring Bob for $10/hr is that his labors are valued by the company as significantly more than that. No one voluntarily hires Bob in order to take a net loss in profits.
Then there’s the downside of hiring people. People get hurt, people bring lawsuits, people require training, time off and benefits. One must also pay an exorbitant amount of taxes which comes out of labor costs. That’s a cost to both the employee and employer. Employers are not required to pay FICA taxes on robots…yet.
staghounds, calling the unemployed “labor surplus” is like calling bald a hair color, or calling abortion a ‘reproductive right’ or unowned land “property”, or a display of anger, “temper”.
đ
One would think that “labor” would involve labor.
8-P
TMLutas: we want the “living wage” to come down, in fact, because of more efficient production.
Paul Marks & Watchman: my suspicion is that technology making us richer is *just* out-pacing government making us poorer. It’s the reason Paul’s predicted collapse of civilisation hasn’t happened yet. If it wasn’t for government interference I’d be thinking this comment via my brain interface. From Mars. Never mind self-driving tractors.
As for spare labour, that’s one thing Suzanne Collins might be right about: “They have constant parties with much pageantry and impressive technology (e.g., their food dispensers and showers have hundreds of buttons, etc.). At their parties, when they become full, they [use some technology], so that they can enjoy more of the fine food that is available to them. Most do not produce anything and those who do âworkâ perform jobs like âTV hostâ or âfashion designerâ â mainly for their own amusement.”
Watchman – You mistake my approach. Not adopting automation when economically called for (benefits exceed costs) is just a recipe for making us poorer. That’s no solution. I’m talking more along the lines of Elon Musk laying out a large chunk of his personal wealth to take practical steps to profitably get to Mars when nobody else was doing it earlier. That actually creates labor demand instead of the reducing automation implementation route which merely does not reduce labor demand. Here’s a lower tech example. If Mr Major’s government had applied some labor hours to determining the bottom priorities of the government, when Mr. Soros attacked the pound, Mr Major could have cut that least effective spending on an emergency basis to the point where the UK would temporarily exit the credit markets, crushing Soros’ highly leveraged attempt at currency manipulation because faced with a government that would not supply more debt, Soros’ bets would have failed, bankrupting him. To this day small armies of clerks are not doing this and governments remain vulnerable to speculative attacks of this nature. The limit of human imagination is the limit to how much labor demand can be called forth. Some of these projects can be done today (this very note is my break time from doing one of these).
If it makes you feel better, I’d be happy to flip the coin and speak in your preferred way of talking as the undersupply of capital, and overregulation of initiative. They’re the same thing. But you’re already on the small government side, aren’t you? I was speaking in a way designed to appeal to those who are currently more inclined to vote for the statists. If more small government types spoke how freedom could address working class interests, we all would be better off. The case is there to be made but it so rarely is packaged properly.
Laird – If you want to laze about and not be entrepreneurial, that is your prerogative. I don’t judge, much. The role of government in all of this is mostly in “do no harm” stuff and then the usual standard setting and even handed refereeing of the inevitable disputes that come with any new innovations. Wealth comes from both the efficiency measures you are talking about, grinding down unit costs of production of an established good or service but also in doing something completely new, what Peter Thiel calls going from zero to one. It’s the latter where the really big gains usually come from. I was (merely) saying that we’re not doing enough of that latter process and, where possible, we should seek to support that kind of innovation as a society. Doing innovation support through government is a pretty poor method of accomplishing that aim. It is one which should be deprecated and obsoleted as soon as practical.
Jonathan Pearce – You’re making the same myopic error Laird did. Doing anything new and worthwhile will involve the use of at least some labor even if it’s only the labor of the capitalist. It’s one of those necessary things you have to have in order to get anything done. Creating things that have not existed before, providing services that have not been done before, the value created will generally dwarf the extra cost in labor (otherwise why do them at all?) and so raising labor demand in a world where there is so much labor going to waste seems very much a no brainer if you’ve got the conditions to create these new goods and services.
Expatnik – There is too little difference between Boko Haram and MS-13. Criminal gangs will always be willing to supply the personal touch.
Thailover – There is a good sort of monopoly, where you’re the only one who can do something of value in the world. Without government subsidy or regulatory failure, you have figured out how to provide a good or service that nobody else has and that’s the least objectionable monopoly possible. Concentrating on automation and efficiency is what businesses do after they lose that sort of monopoly. Innovative invention shops that keep churning out new monopolies have unusually fat margins and drive up labor demand significantly even as they either sell off or introduce efficiency measures on their more established lines.
There is no need to appeal to Mr. Ludd at all. That’s something I prefer as he’s an ass.
On a separate note, there is a good chunk of labor surplus that is simply not in the workforce and therefore is not counted as unemployed. I don’t know what hair color that would make it but the unemployed are a subcategory of what I was talking about.
TMLutas,
Small government makes lots of people wealthier because it lets them have their own money. Large government makes a few people wealthier because it gives them other peoples’ money. Easy way of expressing benefit of small government for any class.
I am happy to accept your view is less Luddite than I was thinking. I do have a slightly communist view mind you that there should be a very large labour surplus (and I have to insist that labour has three vowels – there is no long vowel marker in labor, which is just wrong…) supported by the work of as few people as possible, because this is called leisure time and is a good objective. I can’t put my finger on it but you seem to have a different view which comes across to me as assuming labour surplus should be working.
Thailover- “labour surplus” sounds nicer than “useless eaters”, but there are more people in any western European or North American city than there are economically productive jobs they can/will do. Our practice has been to support them with bad checks and the extorted earnings of the productive.
Just because George Orwell made Emanuel Goldstein talk about the lack of work to do doesn’t mean it’s not true.
From a number of the comments, it is interesting to note how many reflect the emphasis Marx gave to the relationship of “Labour” to “Production” in the essential linkages of his Capital.
TMLutas, the remarks directed to me in your post at 2:40 PM are far different that those in your earlier comment to which I took such strong exception. I basically agree with you there. As I read them, your original remarks clearly implied (or, at the least, permitted a natural inference) that you were calling for government to, somehow, “create systems that naturally demand more labor.”* You seem to have backed off from that position, and are now merely calling for a “night watchman” type of minimalist state, which I applaud. And as best I can understand it, what you’re saying now is that innovation creates new job opportunities, with which I think we can all agree. But I still don’t understand what you meant with the remark that “we should seek to support that kind of innovation as a society.” What should “we” (?) be doing that we aren’t doing already? That still sounds suspiciously like a call for some sort of governmental action, but that would be contradictory to the previous sentences. So I remain somewhat confused as to your position.
* In deference to Watchman, I think I’ll start spelling it “laiboure”. Obviously, more vowels are better! And perhaps add a double “L” at the beginning as a nod to the Welsh.
“Employers are not required to pay FICA taxes on robotsâŠyet.”
We’re already hearing rumblings about states considering imposing ‘mileage taxes’ to make up revenue shortfalls due to improved gas mileages and alternative fuels causing drops in fuel purchases. I can definitely see future users of robotic production machinery having an excise tax of some sort imposed to offset declines in payroll taxes. Gotta keep SocSec and the dole solvent, don’tcha know?
Watchman – It’s an interesting question and completely separate from issues of small/big government whether humans are inherently happier if they work. I think that working at something does provide satisfaction, dignity, and an important sense of buy in to society as a general rule. One should have an occupation. Leisure is something that is nice to have as an option but not as something that you’re forced into because nobody’s thought of new things to do and the state has cut off the option of you making something new under the sun yourself.
staghounds – Until government in the first world is properly overseen (it isn’t), your statement “there are more people in any western European or North American city than there are economically productive jobs they can/will do” is simply not correct. Here’s a simple example. The 2017 NYC budget has a $791M typo in it that was introduced in April and made it through all the internal reviews through final passage in June this year.
http://iquantny.tumblr.com/post/147446103684/open-data-reveals-791-million-error-in-newly
This error is relatively benign. There are billions in errors that have greater negative consequences.
Laird – I assure you I was trying for strict neutrality in presentation as a sort of bridge formulation so that as few people as possible would go ballistic. Obviously that didn’t work out entirely. It’s a work in progress that I trot out on a semi-regular basis to try and pull in more of the working class to the small state cause without setting off the long-time adherents to that same cause.
I assure you that the inferences you were making were not actually in the text. They were in your head. I have been small government since I was in third grade and my father explained what end-stage statism was really like. I am unlikely to shift out of that opinion at this late stage.
As to societal support, all societies make heroes and villains. Villifying job creators is not entirely an unknown cultural phenomenon in the west and we should stop it. The state occasionally subsidizes that sort of vilification of job creators and that should be defunded immediately. But there are other issues besides cultural. Job creation by the poor is often stymied by the high cost of registering property so it may be recognized and protected and the high cost of applying for justice in the courts so that thieves and thugs don’t steal their few bits of capital. There’s much good work to be done to shrink down the informal economic sector in a good way by making the formal sector more attractive to the poor and more effective at meeting their needs. Government necessarily lags private productivity growth (otherwise the Soviets would have won). That doesn’t mean that in the areas where we haven’t figured out how to do without it yet, we can’t insist on government improving.
“to try and pull in more of the working class to the small state cause”
I try this occasionally, too. It rarely works out. Let me know if you succeed. I do think small state people could learn a lot from the way the left manage to make people think that *they* are the nice people.