Small percents matter

There is only a two percent difference between us and our nearest relative the chimpanzee, yet over 5 million years the differences between the two creatures are simply astounding. If there is a two percent difference between us and a chimp then the difference between you and a genius, a criminal and the most stupid person on planet earth is even smaller.

So now the great leaders of the world gather, the press like rabid packs of dogs feast on any piece of news, the public turn their worries from larger issues to the simpler ones in life, the economy, the extension of the can I feed my family which has now become can I provide them with what we expect from life.

Economists and journalists write narrowly on interest rates, the influence of Marx the rise of China and how we can avoid the great depression and as a consequence a great war. The tectonic plates are shifting, economic power is shifting but will any of it really matter?

We have an economy based on ever more, we have an expanding population who want ever more and we have a stressed planet. Are we heading to Armageddon? People have written about it for centuries and they say it never happens well it does happen, and it happens repeatedly. In ad 100 Population plummeted as our bodies struggled to fight the bacteria and diseases which were jumping from animals to humans and spread around a loosely globalized Eurasia. This decline in population lasted for around 300\400 years.

The world doesn't end but the world as you know it and the norms that you expected can be radically transformed. Armageddon happened for the dinosaurs after a meteor struck planet earth leading to the rise of the mammals.

The Mongols riding from the East butchered and wrecked the agriculture of present day Iraq the consequences they still live with and of course the black death struck Europe in the 1340s laying waste to our populations. Much later isolated populations came into contact with those disease hardened Eurasians and if the guns didn't kill them the germs more often than not did as Europeans swept through the new world.

So yes Armageddon does happen, radical changes do.

The world isn't currently effected by small percents over long time frames it is suffering large percent changes over extremely short time frames, something it will find extremely difficult to react to. World population is still increasing and has about trebled since 1950. These are massive increases and can only end one way which is huge increases in global tension.

So idiots worry about the falling Russian population, there can be nothing better for the stability of the world now than to see a naturally falling population, except it means lower economic growth, if lower economic growth allows your grandchildren to avoid global war, conflict and Armageddon then perhaps it is no bad thing.

People continually talk about the potential for human ingenuity and innovation to save us. God if another idiot talks about innovation as if it can solve every problem on planet I think I will eat my right hand, but they always forget we operate with in constraints, and there is a pace of innovation and there are always problems which are not solved for generations. We cannot hope to solve every problem and every situation unless we deal with fundamentals. We need to learn to accept lower growth, have smaller families and try to live more harmoniously with the planet. If we do these simple things then perhaps innovation will truly help us without it innovation doesn't have a hope.

So small percents can make a huge difference over time, but sudden shocks and changes do happen and as the politicians fret over a changed world and small percentage drops in growth, rises in unemployment are they missing the bigger picture and will democracy be able to deal with the challenges we are likely to face?

Could I be wrong, well of course as prediction is notoriously difficult perhaps we will truly innovate our way out of our conundrum or perhaps it will simply happen later. Malthus will always have his day again it is just a question of judging when and where and on what scale.

Paul Kennedy\ Black Swan

Nassim Taleb annoys me, he has adopted sound bites appropriate for the modern world in his recent contributed to the FT. I actually broadly agree with his statements, but I find his style annoying and arrogant. He fails to challenge himself, to admit where he has doubt, to show some kind of uncertainty, he has become what he criticezes.

A sign of true intellect is balancing one's argument and showing doubt. That is the difference between a politician and an academic or between a wise politician and someone like Tony Blair. Tony Blair the cleverest idiot on planet earth, a man with no life experience and no wisdom. He is a clever man searching for a cause yet he doesn't have the wisdom of life experience to find a worthy cause. His life will be one of personal failure however rich he may become.

Now here is a brain a man to listen to Mr Paul Kennedy. His book, 'The Rise and Fall of Great Powers' is an insightful modern classic and as a man that makes his living working in the US it is refreshing to hear him discussing what can be learnt from Marx. Karl Marx was a great thinker about problems he should have shied away from solutions.

http://dev.www.tmsfeatures.com/columns/political/international/paul-kennedy/25561319.html?articleURL=http://rss.tmsfeatures.com/websvc-bin/rss_story_read.cgi?resid=200903311159TMS_____PKENNEDY_ctnpk-a_20090331

The tectonic plates are moving the great power shift is happening in our time, however, will it mean anything if this planet decides to evict us.

There was a dog that was swept overboard in Australia:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7986816.stm

It quickly reverted to surviving and then back to being a well trained house dog. Would we be able to make the switch so easily if the planet decides to exact her punishment. There are no free tickets in life and these beautiful constructed arguments from Taleb, Marx and Kennedy will mean nout if this planet decides that there are too many people and the eco system begins to collapse.

Where will their years of study leave us?

As Jared Diamond notes in his study of the Greenland Danish, who starved to death, the rich were the last to starve but starve they still did and their wealth offered little protection. I would add to that our elite academics with their beautiful theories, their books for consolation will not be the first to starve, but starve they will.

I wish great brains would step outside the human focus of their arguments, theories and look more holistically at the planet and how we can exist and function with a productive economy a stable population in balance with the planet.

Fundamentally the only economics that works involves wreaking havoc on the planet and environment. In the West that cost is much more carefully hidden. The most powerful countries are largely the most polluting and those with the largest populations. Until this paradigm is broken:
more people= more wealth=more growth = power and strength so i can tell you what to do we have a severe problem.

If we don't find a solution to this then the planet will. As James Lovelock notes, the earth has survived greater challenges, but have we?