And the final irony:A curious omission in Gates's speech is a theory of why so many people are desperately poor. When he says that "diseases like malaria that kill over a million people a year get far less attention than drugs to help with baldness," he does not pause to inquire why that is so. It is so, first of all, because people in wealthy countries do not suffer from malaria, and, second, because cheap but highly effective methods of combating malaria, such as mosquito netting and indoor spraying of DDT (which would have few negative environmental effects, unlike outdoor spraying), are somehow not provided, but for reasons political and cultural rather than financial. We know that a nation doesn't have to be rich in natural resources to be prosperous. The essential ingredient of economic growth is human capital, and it depends primarily on the existence of a political system that prevents violence, enforces property rights, provides a minimum level of public goods, and minimizes governmental interference in the economy. Without such institutions, economic growth will be stunted; altruistic capitalists will not cure their absence.
And if creative capitalism does succeed in lifting billions of people out of poverty, the problem of global warming will become even graver than it is because the world demand for fossil fuels will soar.
Nonsense on stilts, on two counts:
ReplyDelete1) The old canard about Rachel Carson, DDT and malaria is an urban legend. DDT use was never banned for malaria eradication in the Third World, and ceased because it was ineffective in the face of mosquito resistance and the poisoning of their natural enemies.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/ddt/
2) The claim that economic growth will increase the demand for fossil fuels assumes a constant ratio of energy inputs to unit of economic output. But if state-subsidized energy and transportation consumption artificially promote energy- and transportation-intensive forms of production, then the present economy is a Rube Goldberg device for producing consumer goods with unnecessary inputs.
Transportation subsidies give an artificial competitive advantage to firms most reliant on long-distant distribution, and promote artificially large firm size and market areas.
In an economy without such market-distorting government subsidies, people would likely live in mixed-use communities, close to where they work and shop. And the economy would likely be much more decentralized, with small-scale production for local markets.
You failed to realize that one of those Nobel laureates (Becker) argues in support of Gates' concept.
ReplyDelete