Evanomics

The BBC economics correspondent has an interesting blog and he is brave enough to voice what most economists always think but never do, which is over the short run nothing is completely clear, in fact on occasions they have no idea what will happen.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/evandavis/

Then when something surprising happens they all say well with hindsight it was obvious, no it wasn't it never is. In something as complex as the economy with so many factors involved humans and computers are not yet capable of assessing all the variables and outcomes and correctly predicting with 90% certainty what will happen. In hindsight we can see what were the most important variables, but only in hindsight.

Interestingly though, he voices what all economists do... boring, boring, with the rise of China we are all going to get richer, heard it so many times...... now let’s cut to the chase and talk about something really interesting.........

Capitalism is based on always more, we will get richer because they will have more money to consume products which will drive industry...... got it... easy... now the question is do we have enough raw materials from food to oil, to metal to support such a high level of consumption and this isn't even talking about global warming. That is the key question.

Moving on... in a book I am reading at the moment it discusses the great mystery which is why man moved to agriculture. Hunter gatherers actually didn't work as hard and were better nourished than the first farmers. The debate seems to hinge on whether there was a food shortage due to climatic changes or perhaps population pressure. The key point is though during a pivotal point in the history of man we actually adopted a practice that was harder and made us poorer for perhaps several hundred if not a few thousand years.....

What will population pressure and resource pressure do to us over the next few hundred years, perhaps it will unleash a wave of creativity or perhaps we will actually get poorer over the short as we adopt practices to overcome this pressure.