Scarcity Myth
In this section, I will attempt to show how the planets resources could never be fully consumed by the human race thus eliminated the 18th century Adam Smith concept of scarcity. In basic economics, it is believe that people have unlimited wants with limited resources to fulfill those wants. A logical and fundamentely true concept. However, what I will attempt to show is that the absoluteness of this statement is false and creating havoc in our lives.
First I must define resources. One will argue, for example, that oil is a scarce resource. True. However, it is what we primarily use oil for that is not. If oil is used for energy, it’s the energy I call as a resource, not oil itself. Thus I breakdown resources into these categories: Food, Water, Energy, and Raw Materials. These are the building blocks of society and, I believe, we can not move forward as a species without abundance and availability in all areas.
Raw Materials
I began to wonder how much raw resource DO we actually have available. So I gathered information on crust elements, the percentage in the crust, average crust density and amount of world wide production for each element. Then I took a section of the earth, 50Km X 50Km X 3Km deep, and calculated the amount of elements available. This is of-course hypothetical, but the numbers are staggering. If we take an incredibly small area, middle of Nevada, and dug a hole to this size, here are the amounts of material available in years of production. (more to come)
|
Element |
%-Crust |
Area^3 |
Density in ton/km3 |
Elements in tons |
Usage/year in ton |
Years left |
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Aluminum (1) |
8.0000% |
7500 |
2,200,000,000 |
1,320,000,000,000 |
31,000,000 |
42,581 |
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Iron (2) |
6.3000% |
7500 |
2,200,000,000 |
1,039,500,000,000 |
1,500,000,000 |
693 |
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Magnesium (3) |
2.0000% |
7500 |
2,200,000,000 |
330,000,000,000 |
689,000 |
478,955 |
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Titanium (4) |
0.6700% |
7500 |
2,200,000,000 |
110,550,000,000 |
2,000,000 |
55,275 |
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Nickle (5) |
0.0190% |
7500 |
2,200,000,000 |
3,135,000,000 |
1,300,000 |
2,412 |
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Gold (6) |
0.0000% |
7500 |
2,200,000,000 |
51,150 |
2.5 |
20,460 |
|
Silver (7) |
0.0000% |
7500 |
2,200,000,000 |
1,303,500 |
0.019 |
68,605,263 |
|
Platinum |
0.0000% |
7500 |
2,200,000,000 |
610,500 |
0.2 |
2,654,348 |
|
Palladium |
0.0000% |
7500 |
2,200,000,000 |
103,950 |
0.2 |
587,288 |
|
iridium |
0.0004% |
7500 |
2,200,000,000 |
66,000,000 |
3.0 |
22,000,000 |
|
Copper |
0.0068% |
7500 |
2,200,000,001 |
1,122,000,001 |
17,000,000.0 |
66 |
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1 |
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2 |
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3 |
http://www.indexmundi.com/en/commodities/minerals/magnesium/magnesium_t8.html |
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4 |
http://www.indexmundi.com/en/commodities/minerals/titanium/titanium_table15.html |
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5 |
http://www.chemlink.com.au/nickel.htm |
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6 |
http://www.dani2989.com/gold/prod707gb.htm |
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7 |
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_08/thomes051308.html |
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http://www.periodictable.com/Properties/A/CrustAbundance.html |
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In this partial list one can see, with the exception of copper, we have MORE THAN ENOUGH materials at our disposal. The argument is that these materials are found usually in crust deposits aka mines, are true, but these number do not lie. A small amount of crust yields more then we will ever use. These figures do not include recycling.
Food
I was a bit surprised at the numbers I discovered concerning food production. As one can tell from the chart, it would appear we would have not issue with supplying staples to the world’s population. I was a bit surprised that we even produce enough meat for world consumption. Just to note, United State consumption is about 2X the world. (There may be minor rounding errors, due to conversion factors.)
|
Food Item |
bushels/year |
Weight / bushel |
Total production (lbs) |
lbs/year |
People can feed |
Base Country |
|
Wheat (1) |
21,000,000,000 |
60 |
1,260,000,000,000 |
134 |
9,402,985,075 |
USA |
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Meats (7) |
N/A |
N/A |
568,000,000,000 |
91 |
6,224,657,534 |
World Average |
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Corn (2) |
19,000,000,000 |
70 |
1,330,000,000,000 |
248 |
5,362,903,226 |
USA |
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Rice (3) |
N/A |
N/A |
1,430,424,600,000 |
273 |
5,239,650,549 |
China |
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eggs (4,5) |
N/A |
N/A |
128,000,000,000 |
32 |
4,000,000,000 |
USA |
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Oats (6) |
145,000,000 |
32 |
4,640,000,000 |
8 |
602,597,403 |
USA |
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1 |
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/AgOutlook/AOTables/ |
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2 |
(Non feed/ethanol, consumption only including sugars) |
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http://beta.irri.org/solutions/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=250 |
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http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/AgOutlook/AOTables/ |
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5 |
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5469 |
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6 |
http://www.functionalingredientsmag.com/fimag/articleDisplay.asp?strArticleId=345&strSite=FFNSite |
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7 |
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html |
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Water
Do I need a list? Yes, fresh water supplies are shrinking, however water is absurdly abundant. My plan is to calculate what 2% of ocean water would yield in fresh water and how long that would last giving American based usage. (More to come)
Energy
With solar, wind, wave, Sterling engine technology, and geothermal energies at our disposals, we can begin to eliminate the need for hydrocarbons. In fact, MIT published a document recently indicating, with some advancement in technology, there is enough geothermal energy available today to supply the world with today usage for a thousand years. These power sources can be harnessed and used for converting other materials into energy supplies for automobiles (such as hydrogen). (more to come)
As one can see, the scarcity myth is false, for the most part. I problem is creating an economic system which can mine, grow, convert and harness these resources for use. With an infinite money supply and the use of the multiplier effect, these industries would thrive in my system. With fixed low product cost, the resources would also be abundant and available to all citizens. So where would the commodities market go? In the way of the dinosaurs I hope.