Epilogue to my Notes on Malthusian Ideas

                                                                                           IG, San Francisco, April 2020

Epilogue to my Notes on Malthusian Ideas

(on the US road from idealistic American liberal democracy to populist misery)

Productivity improvements, introduced by the application of some elements of the Industrial Revolution, e.g. improved tools, into agriculture during the Second Agricultural Revolution in Northwestern Europe, significantly reduced the number of people who were needed there to produce food. Subsequently, these advances then spread eastward and southward in Europe, and eventually to other continents too. By the end of the 19th century, new industrial societies became established and replaced agrarian societies in regions now commonly referred to as the developed world, in Europe, North America, Japan, and Australia. The labor released from agriculture was employed in the growing manufacturing industry. In the developed world, this evolutionary process of moving large numbers of people from farms to factories started in the second half of the 18th century. Much of the rest of the world achieved high agricultural productivity and moved the majority of its population into manufacturing industries during and after the Third Agricultural Revolution, during the second half of the 20th century.

Clearly there was a bidirectional exchange between industrialization and agriculture. Increasing agricultural productivity allowed people to move into new industries Industrial advances were applied to agriculture, and this, in turn, further reduced the labor required to produce food; people released from agriculture, could move into industry. Obviously, there was a positive feedback process between a growing new industry and modernizing agriculture.

In the 20th century, significant industrial productivity improvements were achieved. People then moved into the newly emerging service Industries. Furthermore, some of the achievements of the service Industries were of direct benefit to further improve industrial productivity.  While early Industrial Automation was principally simple mechanization, the later phases are principally software-driven. Here again, we observe positive feedback between the emerging service industry and the earlier and productivity-improving manufacturing Industries.

The costs of all man-made goods can be broken down into three fundamental components:  materials, labor, capital. Productivity improvements are driven by automation. Automation involves machinery, to build and install the machinery requires capital. As productivity improves, less labor and more capital are needed. To make things in a fully automated factory, only machines and no labor is required. (A further benefit of automation is that automated factories produce fewer defects than manual production lines do, which results in lower materials consumption; thus capital’s share, depreciation, of the cost of goods produced is thereby also increased.)

In bygone eras capital once was thought of as money owned by rich people who invested it into goods and property. In our time we recognize a new capital. Some name this version of capital intellectual capital. Good education and good ideas can be converted into real money and ideas can also be purchased with real money. The forming of Amazon primarily did not involve the acquisition of goods or machinery, it simply grew out of a good idea, which then, in turn, generated the biggest individual fortune in the world. Even though Amazon delivers physical goods, its core activity and value generator is the software that allows placement of orders for billions of items from practically anywhere on earth, secures all payment without any cash exchange, and manages the deliveries of the ordered goods virtually without any error. Likewise, Google grew out of an idea and so did Facebook. In all of these cases, an idea was born which then was expanded on with the support of investors. Even though the companies that grew out of the ideas may now own real estate and other property, the fundamental business is still dealing with ideas and abstractions; while  Amazon handles physical goods, Google and Facebook only handle thoughts, ideas, and feelings. - - In contrast, earlier entrepreneurs who made major fortunes had ideas that resulted either in new hardware or new mining explorations; Rockefeller, Hewlett and Packard, Watkins & Johnson all created enterprises that sold physical goods. (A possible exception may have been William Hearst, who created newspapers filled with news.) The new tech-entrepreneurs all invent, promote, and sell new ideas, not physical goods. ( Elon Musk and his Tesla electric car may serve as a counterexample, but Musk did not invent the electric car; it was invented more than a hundred years ago by Edison and Ford. Most of what is new in Tesla, what couldn't have been done 100 years ago, is the software residing on silicon chips.) 

The next phase of labor-saving activity involves artificial intelligence, AI, which is likely to completely redo the service Industries, and as a result of this redoing, AI is likely to remove many people from the current payrolls of the service Industries. (For example, Amazon today is a major US employer. It employs 750 thousand people in the US, many in their warehouses and in the delivery to homes of purchased items. Warehouse automation continues relentlessly, and delivery by autonomous vehicles and drones is anticipated within a decade.) This change may present a major question. In the past, as technology improved and productivity increased, labor from one area of the economy could be employed elsewhere. All of the freed-up labor from one industry was immediately employed in a new industry. From agriculture people moved into factories, from factories they moved into services, But now we face a quandary. Where will the people no longer needed in the service industry move; where are they going to find new employment and earn good middle-class wages?  This unanswered question at this time, together with another issue to be discussed below, income and wealth inequality, will need soon to be addressed at all levels of government and society.

Not only earthshaking major ideas that result in billion-dollar enterprises imply intellectual capital, but education also does. In the USA post-high-school education is expensive, but the returns are significant. Graduating from college pays, getting graduate degrees pays even better, especially so in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics).  Typical engineering graduates with bachelor's degrees receive starting salaries that put them comfortably into the upper half of all US earners. Master's degree holders earn even more, and engineering PhDs start out earning at levels in the upper 15% of the US individual income distribution. Unemployment is virtually unknown for STEM degree holders. Many engineering PhDs,  without entrepreneurial success, make it into the upper 5% income bracket. Decades of earning a good salary combined with wise investments can convert educated Americans’ intellectual property, i.e., their education, into substantial physical capital.

The distribution of wealth in the USA is very uneven. The upper 10% holds about a 70% share of the total net worth of all households, while the lower half, 50% of the population, holds only 1.2% of the total. Income and wealth inequality is a major and growing political and social problem in the USA. The rise achieved and the support enjoyed by populist politicians on the right (Trump) and the left (Sanders) are clearly expressions of social discontent. While the core supporters on the extremes of the two groups blame different enemies as the cause of their anger, they all feel left out; they are all unhappy with things as they are now, and they all want change.

The social pressure is very likely going to intensify shortly. A major economic uncertainty resulted from the COVID19 pandemic. Currently, the country is under shut-down. Unemployment is rising to levels not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. During the shut-down, the GDP is at a virtual standstill; the GDP in 2020 is likely to contract. We don’t know when the pandemic will end and how: protracted, slowly drawn out, or sudden, the recovery will be. Even less do we know how the economy will recover as normal life resumes. Will there be a sudden step-like rise and return to the pre-pandemic level of activity? Or will the $2 Trillion emergency injection into the ailing economy prove to be insufficient to sustain it? Will the many businesses now unable to operate be forced to permanently shut down and/or face bankruptcy? Is this another phase of main street vs, Wall Street, when the big ones survive and come out even stronger than before, while the small businesses become victims of the crisis?  Will all this result in massive and protracted unemployment and economic contraction? 

We face a nightmare scenario when we consider the possible outcome of the given combinations: 1) the after-effects of the pandemic; 2) the continued AI-driven productivity improvements in the service industries with no place to go for the released labor to find new labor-hungry industries; 3) the wealth and income inequality that is likely to get worse as capital will continue increasingly to replace labor in all three segments of the economy (agriculture, manufacturing, and service); with 4) the growing social anger brewing on both the right and the left, an anger combination that wants to destroy all that we the believers in American liberal democracy hold and cherish.

We brace ourselves, hope for the best, and some of us are relieved and happy to be more than 80-years old!

Notes on Malthusian Ideas and Related Matters

                                                                          IG, San Francisco, March 2020

Notes on Malthusian Ideas and related matters

(or the road traveled from Malthus to European immigration in the 21st Century)

Recently I reread several notes on the  Malthusian catastrophe and related ideas. While for some time the  Malthusian ideas had been already rejected by most mainstream economists and political scientists, the definitive proof of observable data for its rejection was provided by the result of the Green Revolution. The Green Revolution, also known as the Third Agricultural Revolution, redefined agriculture in the developing world during the 1950s and early 1960s. Those were also the years of my Berkeley studies when I was much interested in philosophy, political science, economy, and the evolution of the global battle between communism and capitalism; the success of the Green Revolution was very much part of my studies and are major parts of my personal memories of that era.

Some would argue that the Green revolution peaked in the late 1960s, others argue that it is still ongoing. I will comment on this later, but there is a general agreement that the Green Revolution is the result of highly successful agri-technology initiatives that started in the 1940s and made their initial major impacts worldwide in the 1950s and 1960s.

Thomas Malthus was an English clergyman who studied and wrote extensively about economics. His fundamental belief was that the population of the world is doubling about every generation, i.e., every 25 years, while food production lagged significantly behind, and thus Humanity was heading into an unmitigated disaster of mass self-extinction. In his publications, he considered both preventive and mitigating actions. His preventive actions included advocacy of birth control and late marriage. He considered war, starvation, and pestilence as mitigating activities since they reduced the number of people who needed to be fed.

In the post-world War II period, while the developed world had no difficulty producing enough food to feed its people, there were significant worrisome signs in the developing world that Malthus may have been right. Some parts of Latin America, and also India, were not producing enough to feed their growing populations. After the Revolution In Mexico (1910-1920), the land reforms solved a political problem but created a new problem: food production was dropping.  Already in the 1940s, the Mexican government authorities recognized that to feed their people they needed to improve agricultural productivity and were seeking technical solutions. 

Possibly as a rare benefit derived from the conflict of The Cold War, the US came to Mexico’s rescue by undertaking the development of agricultural improvements that prevented the impending disasters of mass starvation and political unrest in the developing world. 

Key elements of the effort were the development of improved yield seeds, well-controlled irrigation, large-scale production, and the widespread use of chemical fertilizers. The initial developments took place in Mexico. The Mexican model was then employed worldwide. 

Norman Borlaug (1914-2009), an American agronomist led agricultural Improvement initiatives worldwide that became known as the Green Revolution. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 and he is now considered the father of the Green Revolution. He started his career with DuPont but in 1944 he moved to Mexico to head a new program of wheat research and production, associated with the Mexican Government and funded by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. The program also received support from the US government, the United Nations, and FAO. 

The Green Revolution that started in Mexico also achieved its first major successes there. The early efforts focused on the development of special high-yield variety (HYV) seeds. To appreciate the degree of success achieved, it's worthwhile to note that in 1943 Mexico was importing about half of its wheat need and by 1964 it was exporting a surplus of half a million tons per year.

Mexico's early Green Revolution success was subsequently followed up by successes in several developing countries. India's wheat production increased by more than 400% by 1986. A breeding program in the Philippines resulted in the IR8 miracle rice that was quickly adopted throughout Asia. In the adoptive countries, the rice yield increased by 52% by 1983. During the same period, in countries where the new varieties had not been adopted, the rice yields declined 4%. The story of the Green Revolution in Brazil followed a different path. In some parts of Brazil, the soil was too acidic for agricultural use. Therefore a massive effort of lime dispersal over the fields was undertaken and by the late 1990s about 15 million tons of lime we're spread on the fields yearly.  As a result of these efforts, Brazil became the world’s second-biggest soybean exporter.

It is interesting to note that efforts to bring the Green Revolution to Africa pretty much failed. The reasons for the failure are a combination of corruption, lack of needed infrastructure to support the effort, tribalism, and a mismatch between local preferences and the available HYV seeds. Also, colonialism and its after-effects cannot be ignored. In fact, some parts of Africa, for example, the two Congos, only became independent of Belgium and France in 1960. The postcolonial after-effects include the lack of integration of civil society with the state and a deep mistrust of benevolent state actions. Whatever the reasons, the failure to bring the Green Revolution to Africa, in combination with the large population explosion there, are certainly the most important fundamental reasons the 21st century Europe faces a continuously increasing very serious immigration problem from Africa.

In my view, Humanity has completed three agricultural revolutions and is currently in the fourth one. Some people combine the current one with the third one but in my view, they serve distinctly different purposes and thus I prefer to separate them. The first agricultural revolution occurred in the Neolithic era when Stone Age man domesticated plants and animals and thereby communities could grow larger than was possible previously when Man supported itself through hunting and gathering. The second Agricultural Revolution took place principally in the 17th  through the 19th centuries and it took place in North-Western Europe. During this era, all the new benefits of industrialization were applied to agriculture. It started with the adoption in Holland of the Chinese plow, allowing the use of fewer draft animals than was required to pull the previously used plows. The Dutch version of the Chinese plow was then imported into England by Dutch farmworkers working there. Subsequently, the early phases of the Second Industrial Revolution were principally taking place in the United Kingdom and then spread back onto the European continent. Its primary features were new ideas concerning the use of fertilizers, land reclamation, selective breeding, and crop rotation. The invention of the steam engine also made a significant impact by replacing animals in powering the progressively increasing sizes of machines combining plowing, planting, and harvesting. Transportation also became a significant component of enhancing agricultural productivity, allowing remotely located high productivity agricultural areas to support the growing city populations. By the second half of the 19th century, the Malthusian fear of mass starvation was no longer a concern in the developed world. As already discussed above, the Second Industrial Revolution was followed in the middle of the 20th century by the Green Revolution, or the Third Agricultural Revolution, which basically eliminated mass starvation in most of the developing world. Feeding all of mankind is no longer a question of whether it can be done but it is a question of will, political organization, and investment to deploy the known methods and tools. The Green Revolution slowly morphed into the currently ongoing Fourth Agricultural Revolution. Its objectives are to extend the beneficial results of the Green Revolution to those areas that are still living with agriculture that may not even be at the level achieved by much of the developed world during the Second Agricultural Revolution. Furthermore, mankind now faces new issues related to climate change and human-caused environmental stress. Simply stated, while we do know how to produce enough to feed and clothe and house all of us, our environmental, or ecological, footprint exceeds what is available on Earth. Since we do not know how to grow the Earth, we must shrink our footprint. While we may be able to develop still more efficient higher-yielding crops and less environmentally stressing fertilizers, most likely the most significant progress we can make in our footprint reduction is by switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources: switching to electrically-driven agricultural machinery from the currently used internal combustion-engine driven ones. 

Unlike political revolutions, agricultural revolutions cannot be defined by precise start and end dates.  Thus in the foregoing, the indicated time periods are approximate but they allow the significant agricultural events to be placed into a general historical context. The most significant message regarding Malthus and his ideas is that the Malthusian social ideas are completely debunked. Starting with the Age of Enlightenment, followed by the development of the scientific method and the Industrial Revolution, humanity is able to control much of its destiny. 

In closing, I wish to comment on the interrelationship between national wealth, agriculture, crime, and migration.

In the modern world, there is no nation on Earth whose economy simultaneously is dominated by agriculture and who also can be considered amongst those who can claim to be high GDP per capita producers. A set of very interesting analyses of agricultural employment was published by Our World in Data. One of their analyses covers the period from 1801 through 2010 and it shows on a single scatterplot graph the share of agricultural employment worldwide versus GDP per capita, using 2011 International Dollars. The data allows a straight-line approximation of the plot, showing on the linear vertical axis the percent employment in agriculture and on the logarithmic horizontal axis the GDP per capita. At $1,000 per capita  GDP, close to 80% of the people are employed in agriculture, at $10,000 per capita GDP about 30% work in agriculture, and in the USA In 2010 with close to $50,000 per capita GDP about 2% of the population worked in agriculture. Another analysis, from the same source, covering a period of about 700 years from 1300 through 2012, shows that all over Europe the share of agriculture in total employment significantly declined beginning at about 1800 and the decline continued into the 21st century. Clearly this decline indicates the success of the Second and Third Agricultural Revolutions. (See: https://ourworldindata.org/employment-in-agriculture)

It is generally well known that fertility rate, and thus population growth declines with increasing income. The US FED carried out a global study examining the quantitative relationship between fertility rate and  GDP per capita. (https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2016/december/link-fertility-income) The published data shows that at an income level of a few hundred dollars GDP per capita the fertility rate is approximately 6, as GDP increases it continuously declines and once it reaches about $100,000 it is beginning to approach 1. It matches the replacement rate of 2.1 at about $10,000 GDP per capita. Clearly the USA and Europe follow this pattern and their native-born birth rates are below the replacement rate. In 2019 the EU had $44,500 GDP/cap PPP and a birthrate of 1.6. And so does Sub-Saharan Africa but on the opposite side. In 2017, Nigeria had $5,900 GDP/cap PPP and a birth rate of 4.72. In The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the corresponding figures were $800 and 5.77, Furthermore, in the DRC, 70% of the population is engaged in agriculture, cultivating about one-eighth of the available land, while receiving an excellent 147cm/year rainfall and 23-27C monthly average temperature; nevertheless, child malnutrition is widespread and most of the population lives in conditions of food insecurity. Major ongoing international efforts are engaged in assisting the economic advancement of the DRC, however political uncertainties interfere with significant progress.  (Data sources: CIA Factbook, USAID website, and DRC USA embassy website).

Major undesirable events in other parts of the world are beginning to cause starvation and displacement of several groups. The Syrian War forces millions of people to move from their homes and the narcotics trade in Central America is causing waves of migration heading north. While these forces are primarily not destroying agriculture, their effect on the well-being and feeding of the people is strongly negative. Clearly politics, war, violence, and social instability can cause significant local food supply and personal security problems. Again it is not a question whether we can take care of our people but it is a question whether the local powers wish to do so and whether the local social issues and conditions allow local powers to act contrary to the public good.

Clearly we know how to produce enough food for all people. Where there are shortages, most notably in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, the major unresolved issues that block the rapid full-scale adaptation of the results of agricultural revolutions that eliminated hunger and helped to boost modern economies are political and social in nature. - - Resolving these issues is key both to improving the lives of millions of people and to ease the migration pressure facing Europe, and to a lesser extent North America, already now. These pressures are huge now and will be even greater in the next half-century.

The optimistic view is to look forward to when all of Mankind practices the best agriculture technologies and reaches income levels commensurate with what is today the norm in the developed world. An interesting question though arises:  what will happen when all people enjoy a GDP/cap close to $100,000 a year, available today in the richest societies? According to the current data cited above, the birthrate then will fall not only below the replacement rate of 2.1 but may also fall below 1. Will mankind self exterminate at that point, possibly in a few generations? Will the populations collapse at a rate that none of the institutions of society and no part of the economy can continue functioning? Back to subsistence farming and then to hunting and gathering? I have no answer but I find the question interesting.

As I am writing this in March of 2020, it is impossible to conclude without a reference to the coronavirus COVID-19. It now permeates our daily lives at every level. The global economy is virtually shut down. Much of Europe and the USA stopped working, China is now beginning to start up after several weeks, or more, of enforced closure. My guess is that the world will have missed several months of productive activity with virtually zero GDP. How will this end and what will be the consequences? I do not know. Nothing like this happened in our history. I brace myself and hope for the best. Some believe that a new world, unknown to us, is coming.

P.S. According to some online news today, March 30, 2020, COVOD-19 arrived in Sub-Saharan Africa. Social distancing, the first line of defense to slow the spread of the virus in urban areas around the rest of the world, may not be applicable here. In Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC, initial plans by the governor of the city to implement lock-down rules to accomplish social distancing were withdrawn as undeployable because many of the city’s 12 million residents live in congested housing without running water. Many of the other 90 million inhabitants of the DRC live in widely spread out rural areas where social distancing may be less necessary, less effective, and less enforceable. What will all this mean in the future? I make no prediction other than here too COVID-19 will have major impacts on all aspects of modern life, on society, politics, and economics.

Timescales

I am fascinated by time: by the relative time scales of human life and the evolution of Life on Earth and of the Universe. Here below I capture a summary of what I found in my searches to satisfy my fascination.


Timeline Summary

Notation:  yr=years, B=billion,  M=million, k=thousand,  CE=Current-Era, BCE= Before-Current-Era=Before-Christ.   Reference: now (2019)=2019CE = 0 years (we are at about one-half of our Solar system’s projected life).

The Universe was born (Big Bang): -13.8 Byr

Sun evolved: -4.6 Byr

Earth evolved: -4.5 Byr

Life evolved: -3.5 Byr

Apes evolved: -10 Myr

Hominid (Chimpanzees split) evolved: -5.5 Myr

Homo Sapiens evolved: -300 kyr

Agriculture, Social organization, Writing (evolved/invented globally): -10 to -3 kyr

Christianity, European Culture appeared: -2 kyr

Now: 0 yr

Human individual’s lifespan; 100 yr

Possible events to cause the end of Life: 0, 10, 100k yr

Definitive End of Life due to solar evolution: 1 Byr

Definitive End of Sun and solar system due to solar self-consumption: 5 Byr

End of solar evolution: Sun -> Red Giant (5 Byr) -> White dwarf (??) -> Black dwarf (10^15 yr)

End of contact between not-gravitationally-bound clusters, visible Universe shrunk to what is
gravitationally bound, "redding-out", due to not-gravitationally-bound objects receding
from each other in the dark-energy-driven expanding Universe at speeds greater than the
speed of light (cold and empty Universe): few-100 Byr ~ 10^12 yr

Proton half-life: 10^32 yr

End of the Universe: ?? (Never??)


Discussion

Dornbusch’s Law says that events take a long time to evolve, but then they happen faster than expected. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudi_Dornbusch) He formulated this law most likely regarding financial crises, but it applies to many easily observable major natural disasters, global and everyday events. For example, earthquakes, asteroids striking the Earth, bringing water to boil, etc., all obey this law. ( Note: all my repeated internet searches of Dornbusch’s Law, including the above shown Wikipedia reference, ended sending me back to Paul Krugman, who referred to this law in one of his columns. I could not find an original reference source; thus, this maybe Paul Krugman’s Dornbusch’s Law. In any case, whoever’s a law it may be, it is a good description of the evolution of most calamities.)

But what is (are) the timescale(s) of event evolution(s) that matter? It depends!

My love has evolved over the years, my children gestated for 9 months, and they were born over a few hours.

The Universe was born 14 billion years ago, right after The Big Bang. Where the Big Bang came from and how long it took to develop, we do not know. It is a fact accepted by scientific consensus that the Universe was born in a sudden event and has been evolving ever since. (What came before the Big Bang, or what caused it, currently has no definitive scientific understanding; religions are welcome to address the mystery of the Universe before the Big Bang.)

The age of our solar system is about 5 billion years. Thus, the Universe had been evolving for about 9 billion years before it gave birth to our Sun and its associated planetary system, including our Earth.

Life on Earth started about a billion years after the Earth formed. Thus, the Earth evolved for about 1 billion years before it gave birth to Life. It then took several billion more years before the genus Homo evolved.

Mammals appeared on Earth about 200 million years ago. Primates came 75 million, Homo (humans) 2.5 million, Human speech 1.75 million, Homo Sapiens about 0.5 million (or maybe more, if we include the Neanderthals with us) years ago.

Based on an analysis of the genes of 1,200 Sardinian males, we are all descendants of an Adam and an Eve, both the original Eve and the original Adam lived between -200 and -180 kyr. But they were not necessarily contemporaries and very unlikely did they produce us simply together. (https://www.nature.com/news/genetic-adam-and-eve-did-not-live-too-far-apart-in-time-1.13478) In any case, we all share some part of our genes that we inherited from both this Eve and this Adam.

We all have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, or m generations ago we had 2^m forebear. Assuming 4 generations/century, 1,000 years or 40 generations ago we, each of us living today, would have needed to have had 1 trillion forebears. There were not that many people alive 1000 years ago. In fact, in all of history, there were not that many of us humans.

The resolution of this apparent quandary is that our predecessors were interrelated, and we are all related and we all descended from all who lived and had surviving children (about 80 % of the people who lived then) at some point in the past. When was that?

The statistical estimate (Joseph T. Chang: ”Recent Common Ancestors of All Present-Day Individuals”, http://www.stat.yale.edu/~jtc5/papers/Ancestors.pdf) is that if there are n of us today (n=current population), then our most recent common ancestor (MRCA) lived lgn generations ago, where lgn is the base 2 logarithm of n (MRCA=lgn generations). There are about 8 billion of us now. Thus, according to the above formula, our MRCA lived about 33 generations, or about 800 years, ago. The statistical analysis also shows that at a generation 1.77 times MRCA everyone who lived then and reproduced, was our common ancestors (CA=1.77*MRCA generations). Thus, about 56 generations, or 14 centuries ago, or at about year 600, all who lived then and successfully reproduced were our common ancestors; all of us now alive are related, and we all are descendants of them. Of course, all who lived before the above-calculated CE (and had surviving off-springs) were also common ancestors of all of us now living.

Thus, we have scientific proof that we, all of us living today, are descendants of emperors and prophets, as well as of aristocrats, commoners, serfs, and slaves.

But the first Americans already split from their Siberian forebear about 25 thousand years ago. (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2018/11/ancient-dna-reveals-complex-migrations-first-americans/#close). Thus, they can only share common ancestors with Europeans, Asians, and Africans from before about -25 kyr. At that time the population of the Earth was likely to have been significantly less than 10 million, maybe even under 1 million. (https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/international-programs/historical-est-worldpop.html) If we assume that 10 million people lived at -25 kyr, then their CA lived 41 generations, or about 10 centuries (1000 years), before them. Thus, the common ancestors of all us, Europeans, Africans, and Asians together with the original Americans, lived about 26 thousand years ago.

We started growing food for ourselves, instead of simply hunting and gathering it, about 12 thousand years ago. Writing, to keep records and communicate, is 5 thousand years old. Once we knew how to grow our food and how to keep records and communicate, we were ready for social organization.

The earliest known organized societies were in the Nile and Tiger river valleys, they evolved about 5000 years ago.

The Indus Valley and Yellow River Valley civilizations, early India and China, came somewhat, maybe about a thousand years, later.

Mesoamerican civilization evolved on its own, somewhat later than the above four river civilizations. There was no known contact between the Indigenous early Americans and the rest of the world for many thousands of years, till the 15-th century Columbus voyage. Thus, the civilizations that the Conquistadores and pioneers found in the Americas obviously had to evolve on their own.

While in detail these early civilizations were very different from the modern civilization of our current times, in general outlines how we now live, our society, is a direct result of evolution from these early civilizations. If again we assume that in a century about 4 successive generations of humans follow each other, then our modern social organization spans about 2000 generations.

I personally, before I die, will have known 5 generations: I knew 3 of my 4 grandparents and probably I know already all my grandchildren. I am now 81 years old; I shared a snippet of my grandparents’ lives and will share most likely a snippet of my grandchildren’s lives. All my grandparents were born in the 19-th century and all my grandchildren in the 21-st. Thus 4 generations per century seem to be true for me too, even though I came from a family of late bloomers. (My paternal grandfather was close to 50 when my father was born, my father was 50 when I did, and I was 40 when my son was born; on maternal lines, we delayed less, my grandmothers and mother were all born to much younger mothers than were we men to our older fathers). Thus, I have lived already, and thus before I die I am likely to will have lived, for about 1/500-th, or close to 0.2% of all generations that lived since human communities evolved into organized societies, since the concept of society was formed, and ever since it existed.

The Industrial Revolution was started about 250 years ago by the steam engine of James Watts. About 100 years later the invention of the Otto engine initiated the widespread deployment of the internal combustion engine. These two inventions led to a rate of utilization of fossil fuels, coal and oil and later natural gas, that the Earth’s biosphere cannot support.

Currently, humanity’s ecological footprint significantly exceeds the biocapacity of our Earth. The last year when the Earth was able to meet humanity’s growing need was 1970, or -49yr. ( https://data.footprintnetwork.org )   For the past half-a-century, we have been consuming more than the Earth can support.

Carbon is the main culprit.  Fossil fuels produce more CO2 than the photosynthesis of all the Earth’s plants can recycle. Currently, we would need about 1.7-times the available biocapacity to support us, i.e., to continue living as we currently do, we would need a 1.7-times bigger Earth than the one we have. Without Carbon use, we would only need about 70 % of the available biocapacity to support us. However, for sustainable recycling of the Carbon we now use, we would need a full Earth; as if, we just stopped eating and living, then we could continue to burn all fossil fuels at the rate we now do. Since we can’t stop eating, we must cut back on fossil fuel use.

This excessive fossil use results in an accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere that results in a greenhouse effect, that leads to global warming. Global warming leads to environmental changes that bring disasters to human habitats globally. Unless we rapidly convert to renewable energy sources, reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and/or deploy large-scale CO2 sequestration, major disasters are expected within the next few decades, certainly within the next century. Starting with melting glaciers and rising sea levels, followed by food shortages and massive population displacements, Life on Earth will massively change for the worse. Our species, much diminished in numbers and with a much-changed lifestyle, may survive, but not society as we know it.

Let us not kill ourselves, not with environmental disasters, not by violent means. We, humans, can kill ourselves totally today. Using our nuclear weapons capability, we have the means to extinguish ourselves. Our ultimate destiny on Earth is our extinction due to predictable natural causes, but we do not need to hurry up the process.

The Sun will exhaust its Hydrogen energy supply and expand into a Red Giant in about 5 billion years. At that time, it will envelop the Earth, but the Earth is likely to become uninhabitable by humans much earlier. Assuming no man-made, or nature induced catastrophic events, human Life is expected to end on Earth (and on any nearby planet, should their colonization occur) in less than 1 billion years due to the natural life-cycle of the Sun and its solar system. That is a definitive and unstoppable “end of our World” event. Other, man-made or natural Life-extinguishing events may occur sooner, such as massive tectonic plate movements and earthquakes, or asteroid collisions, maybe within this century or within a few millennia. But the definite end of our solar system is predictable, and this prediction stands on no weaker foundation than the well-substantiated most-fundamental law of conservation of energy.

All physical processes either consume or produce energy. Life is a physical process that consumes energy.  Energy is needed to sustain all Life and this energy is provided by the Sun. Life on Earth depends on the steady insolation of about 1 kW/m^2 reaching the surface of the Earth; much less than this, we would freeze, much more, we would boil or burn.

In the process of producing energy, inexorably the Sun consumes itself. It consumes continuously its Hydrogen, in which its energy is stored. In this consumption, the stored energy is released by Hydrogen fusion. This fusion energy is converted into radiation (Sunshine) that is radiated out and lost into space; some of this radiation reaches Earth and this is our Life-sustaining insolation. Eventually, all the Sun’s stored energy will be consumed, radiated away, and there will be no energy to support Life on Earth.

It is a curious fact that in this process before everything goes cold, the Sun’s heating of Earth will increase. It is this heating that will kill all Life on Earth in less than 1 billion years from now. As the Sun consumes itself, its gravitational force decreases. Because the decreased gravitational force the radius (size/volume) of the still-hot Sun grows and this results in increased insolation on Earth. This will increase the surface temperature on Earth to a level where Life will not be sustainable. (Note: now our comfort zone is around a temperature of 300 degrees K, at 373 K water boils; at boiling temperature no Life as we know it survives.) The temperature of our Earth is expected to rise much above boiling.

Long after Life has ended, in about 3.5 billion years from now, before our Sun completely disappears, this growth leads to its evolution into a Red Giant that will embrace our Earth. This Red Giant then will morph into a hot White Dwarf, which will be followed by a cold Black Dwarf in the evolving Universe.

The ultimate end of the Universe is not known. Clearly, every star, like our Sun, progressively consumes itself. The very big ones turn into giant Black Holes, the smaller ones into Black Dwarfs.

According to some theories, ultimately even elementary particles, like protons, and also electrons, decay. Black holes also evaporate eventually. What will be left then? TBD.

Changing "isms"

Notes on changing “isms”

I was born into semi feudalism, was a small child in fascism, grew up in communism, and then studied and worked and raised a family and retired in capitalism.

Fascism ended by starting and then losing the Second World War. Communism of the Soviet-type lost and died by not being able to compete with American capitalism. A new version of communism is practiced in China and it is currently gaining more and more momentum. They practice the totalitarian political authority of the Communist Party much like the Soviet Union did, but pursue an economy much like American capitalism. In fact,  China now mostly looks like crony capitalism, probably beyond that what is practiced in the USA.  Thus, the Chinese version of capitalism, or capitalistic communism, or communistic capitalism, is still growing. But it still has a way to grow before it catches up with American capitalism, according to the traditional measures of progress based on a nation's wealth, military power, and technical innovations. In many ways, China is still copying the USA, but it is rapidly moving forward and can be expected to catch up in the not very distant future. 

America is still the number one Global power. It is still the leader in global innovation and provides its citizens with one of the highest living standards available anywhere on the Globe. Nevertheless, there are significant signs that not everything is well.  In the course of the last quarter of a century, and possibly even somewhat longer, significant income inequality has developed. Unprecedented wealth has been accumulated by the richest members of society, while the median income has not moved, and the lower-income members of American society have seen their incomes progressively decline. 

The growing inequality is not a purely American phenomenon. As China's economy grew, equality in China has been growing too, and as measured by the Gini index, it now exceeds that in the USA. (https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/SI.POV.GINI/rankings)

In all societies of traditional “isms” labor was essential, the social-economic system recognized its importance and at various times it rewarded it, sometimes well. Possibly the best period for labor in America, and probably anywhere in all human history, was the first two decades, or so, after the Second World War in the USA.* In the post-war years traditional industries in America operated in full swing. Coal mining, steel, construction, and pretty much all traditional industries were doing well, and labor enjoyed the benefits accorded them for their efforts. Much of the income and job security that labor enjoyed during that period may have been the result of strong unions representing them. In any case, during that post-war period, American society recognized the value of labor. Then things began to change. First globalization, supported and driven by new developments in transportation and communications, moved much of the labor needed to make things offshore from America. Then technological changes started to obviate much of the traditional need for labor. Much needed environmental mandates and the cost-effective evolution of renewable energy resources are rendering coal mining part of history fulfilling no economic need. Automation and AI are progressively replacing labor in most manufacturing industries. Construction is also changing. I met an SW programmer, someone who studied in a junior college and first became a master welder in the building industries. Then one day his boss called him in and told him that he either goes back to school and learns how to program automated welders or he can go off on unemployment to look for opportunities elsewhere. Obviously, he accepted the offer to go back to school and became a programmer. First, he programmed welders welding steel-reinforced structures, then eventually left the building industries and when I met him, he was programming for a publisher.

Currently, people studying the STEM professions (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), are faring reasonably well. Especially with advanced degrees and working in the areas of high current demand, these professionals can earn a very good living and become part of the upper few percent on the income scale. Also, individuals who by lucky coincidence think of a breakthrough idea, are in the right place and have the right contacts, and the needed capabilities fare extremely well and in fact, they are the ones who occupy the upper fractional percent on the income and wealth scale. As the well-known founders of well-known tech companies have shown, it is nowadays possible to earn not only millions of dollars but also a billion per year, year after year. In this ongoing process that rewards a few winners, most members of society are left behind, and their services become superfluous more and more.

Thus, we are now moving in a direction of historical social evolution where traditional labor is progressively becoming unnecessary, and thus it is unlikely to be rewarded.

With continuous technological development, especially that of robotics and AI, what is now true for labor will likely be true also for most professions. Thus no one will be safe for a lifetime holding onto and deploying learned useful skills. What is already true for most people in our society, will be true for all of us soon.

We must, need to, invent new social concepts such that human dignity and the right to life and well-being are still recognized and guaranteed when no one's skills and commitment to hard work can be assumed to be needed for a lifetime. With our automated activities we will be able to produce enough to feed, house, and in general maintain all humans who may be living close to a full century, without most people participating in activities that provide the means for meeting these needs.

Of course, I assume that we will have managed successfully the evolving environmental crisis of our own creation. While solving the environmental problems is very difficult, we do have a reasonably good idea of how to do it. We need the political will and society’s commitment to complete this task. The social restructuring that is necessary to establish a new more egalitarian society is a different story. How to organize a new “labor-less” society, and how to share and distribute the goods that are produced by this automated society is something nobody yet knows, and certainly, I do not have any clear idea even how to approach it. But it must be done. Unless we do it the world will face cataclysmic events that we have never seen before in our history.  And these cataclysmic events will certainly lead to the end of history as we know it, if not to the end of mankind.

*Note

While for labor the decades following the Second World War may have been the best, ever and anywhere, American society did not practice integrated inclusivity then. Strong and at times very violent discrimination according to race and gender preferences was practiced. In the 1950s and 60s, it would have been inconceivable to elect an African American to be president. In 2008 that is exactly what happened when Barack Obama was elected to be the first African American president of the United States. The first black Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall was appointed to the Supreme Court 22 years after the end of World War 2, in the same year that the first black senator since Reconstruction was elected to the US Congress.  Currently, we have four African Americans serving in the US Senate. The explicit discriminatory practices in the 1950s and early 60s (up until the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964), widely practiced nationwide but especially in some of the southern states, e.g. Alabama and Mississippi, would be inconceivable and are bordering on the incomprehensible today. We now have officeholders and candidates for the highest offices in the country who are Hispanics, Blacks, Asian Americans, as well as Whites. We also have openly gay and transgender candidates and high officeholders.  - -  It is a surprising fact that as labor lost out and income inequality exploded, American society has become more inclusive. Is this a law of human behavior, is it part of our nature? I do not know, and I do not think that it matters much. It is an observable fact. But it is also an observable fact that as society has become more inclusive, populism (another “ism”), drawing on our discriminatory lower instincts, has become a recognizable significant force in our political theater. As most of us enjoy giving and receiving greater inclusivity, some of us feel left out and focus on excluding those who we feel are responsible for us being left out.

Some Reflections

 San Francisco, CA  July 25 and October 5, 2019

SOME REFLECTIONS THE DAY AFTER

AND THEN SOME LATER

Major takeaways from the Robert Mueller, Special Counsel for the United States Department of Justice, overseeing the investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and related matters, Congressional testimony on July 24th, 2019:

• Following the Department of Justice instructions, there were no investigations related to indictment.
• The investigation did not find the president innocent of Obstruction of Justice.
• Accepting aid from a foreign power to gain an advantage in an election is not only unethical, but it is also a crime.
• Even though a sitting president cannot be indicted, after leaving office an individual who was previously president can be indicted. 
• The Russians did interfere in the 2016 presidential elections and they continue their attempts to influence our political process. This should be a major concern do all Americans, so stated special counsel Mueller in his testimony. (Note that following shortly this Congressional testimony, majority leader Mitch McConnell did not even allow to bring to vote in the Senate a bill proposed to address the Russian interference problem.)

Also noteworthy:

Following the testimony, the authors of news items posted on the web appear to have heard two different versions of the same event. Some, mostly Fox and others aligning on the right, indicate that in their opinion the testimony was a major failure for the Democrats, it exonerated the President and nothing new was said. Yet others tend to align themselves more with the Democrats and the left, emphasizing the takeaway elements I listed above. While political persuasion may have dominated some of this perception split, a media component may have had a significant role too.

According to a news analysis I saw on the Internet, the Mueller testimony had certainly similarities to the Nixon-Kennedy debates that took place prior to the 1960 presidential elections. In both cases what people heard depended on the media through which they received the message. Back in 1960, some listened to the debate on the radio, while others watched it on television. Those who listened to the radio felt for sure that Nixon won. They heard Dick Nixon's clear voice that had none of the strong regional accent that so strongly characterized Jack Kennedy's way of speaking. Those watching television were convinced that Kennedy was the doubtless winner. They saw the youthful relaxed Kennedy standing against a sweaty Nixon exhibiting a nervous body language.  In the aftermath of the Mueller Congressional testimony, there also appear to be two camps of perception. Those who watched the entire 5-hour testimony appear to have focused on Mueller‘s style that lacked charisma, and on his unwillingness to answer questions close to 200 times. Those who watched only the highlights presented on some TV news channels after the debates were over, or read articles published on the web, tend to consider the testimony a major historical event and credit the Democrats with significant gains.

And then some notes two-and-a-half months later:

And then in September, about two-and-a-half months after the Mueller testimony, we find out that the day after that testimony (the very same day I wrote the above “takeaways”) Trump was engaged in trying to pressure a newly elected president of Ukraine to start an investigation against Joe Biden, Trump’s front running Democrat opponent in the forthcoming 2020 elections. This now triggered an impeachment inquiry in the Democratic Party-controlled House and an impeachment is highly likely to follow. Will the Republican Party-controlled Senate then find him guilty? Not likely. Though Trump’s strange behavior gets more bizarre daily (House of Representatives member Adam Schiff should be tried for treason, Chine should investigate Joe Biden, Mitt Romney should be impeached, etc...), his base (close to half the country) still has not abandoned him. But nothing is for sure, things evolve slowly and then happen faster than expected.

What to do with symbols of shame?

Reflections on some public discussions ongoing  in San Francisco in the Summer of 2019.

Most societies commit shameful acts, including enslavement and colonization. Some societies, sometimes glorify their shameful acts, capturing them in paintings as victorious activities of their hallowed leaders, maybe showing perpetrators and victims together. As new generation replace the old ones, such objects of remembrance can serve useful purpose: they remind us of the sins and the pains of our forebear and could help us to avoid new age cruelties.

Some who identify with the victims may find these objects very offensive, others who identify as descendants of the perpetrators may find them very upsetting. Neither group wants regular exposure to such memorabilia.

This problem gets especially complicated when perpetrators and heroes may be the same people, or pride and shame appear together in valued documents and/or artifacts. For instance, the Declaration of Independence refers to Native Americans in a derogatory manner. It contains: “the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions”.  The Declaration of Independence is probably the most honored historic document in the USA; nevertheless, such language is totally unacceptable in the 21st century. Furthermore, most of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence were slave owners, including Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin, both heroic figures by most accounts. Recently there was much discussion about a large mural in a San Francisco high school that depicts George Washington together with some Native Americans and slaves; both the Native Americans and the slaves are represented in a manner that today most people find objectionable and offensive.

How do we avoid offending and upsetting the current generation with the images of the sins of the past, but retaining their useful purpose (and their possible artistic value)? The answer is simple: retain the objects under appropriately guarded and described conditions and show them publicly for appropriate educational and artistic purposes.

There are some successful examples where shames of the past were successfully saved and are being used to remind us of the past that has not always been happy or to be proud of. In Budapest, Hungary in 1956 there was a popular uprising that started with an angry mob dismantling a large statue of the much-despised Soviet dictator Stalin. That uprising failed and all over the city of Budapest many statues of communist heroes disliked by the population remained and many more were still erected between 1956 and the collapse of the evil empire in 1990. These much-hated symbols of an unhappy and painful past were collected into an outdoor exhibit, named Memento Park, located on the outskirt of Budapest and are now available to be visited as historic reminders of the sad, painful and hateful past most are happy to see gone. Likewise, there is a Holocaust memorial outside the Legion of Honor museum in San Francisco and this memorial includes a display listing all the Nazi camps where Jews were interned and murdered over the shameful period that lasted more than a decade, from 1933 to 1945. On a typical day one may see people from all over the world standing in front of this display and reading slowly the names of one horror place after the other; the readers are clearly not rejoicing, nor celebrating, but deeply reflecting.

History cannot be rewritten. The shames of the past cannot be erased, nor totally hidden. They must be preserved as reminders of a part of history that is never to be repeated.