Mothers probably everywhere ooh and ah about their children's sand castles, and reprimand the children when they kick over other children's sand castles.
And though I have no evidence and feel no need to consult anthropologists on the matter, I'd bet that early tribes gave greater honor to persons in dry climates who tended to find water than to those who polluted water sources, and greater honor to those who tended to find food effectively than to those who showed considerable ability to consume food supplies.
Our whole evolution up to this point shows that human groups spontaneously evolve patterns of behavior, as well as patterns of training people for that behavior, which tend on balance to lead people to create rather than destroy.
Humans are, on net balance, builders rather than destroyers. The evidence is clear: the civilization which our ancestors have bequeathed to us contains more created works than the civilization they were bequeathed.
In short, humankind has evolved into creators and problem-solvers. Our constructive behavior has counted for more than our using-up and destructive behavior, as seen in our increasing length of life and richness of consumption.
This view of the average human as builder conflicts with the view of the average human as destroyer which underlies thethought of many doomsdayers. From the latter view derive such statements as "The U.S. has 5 percent of the population, and uses 40 percent of resources," without reference to the creation of resources by the same U.S. population. (Also involved here is a view of resources as physical quantities waiting for the plucking, rather than as the services that humankind derives from some combination of knowledge with physical conditions.)
If one notices only the using-up and destructive activities of humankind, without understanding that constructive patterns of behavior must have been the dominant part of our individual-cum-social nature in order for us to have survived to this point, then it is not surprising that one would arrive at the conclusion that resources will grow scarcer in the future.
Paradoxically, rules and customs that lead to population growth rather than to population stability or decline may be part of our inherited capacity to deal successfully with resource problems in the long run, though the added people may exacerbate the problems in the short run. Such rules and customs probably lead to long-run success of a society in two ways. First, high fertility leads to increased chances of survival of the group, ceteris paribus; the Parsis in India seem doomed to disappear in the long run due to restrictive marriage and fertility patterns, though individually they have been very successful economically.
Second, high fertility leads to resource problems which then lead to solutions to the problems which usually leave humanity better off in the long run than if the problems had never arisen. Third, in a more direct chain of events, rules and customs leading to high fertility fit together with the positive effect of additional people on productivity, both through the demand for goods and through the supply of ingenious minds, that I discuss at length in recent books.
In the below clip Julian Simon talks about his
mind-boggling vision of resources: the more we use, the better off we become - and there's no practical limit to improving our lot forever. Indeed, he argues, throughout history, new tools and new knowledge have made resources easier and easier to obtain. Our growing ability to create new resources has more than made up for temporary setbacks due to local resource exhaustion, pollution, population growth, and so on. Is there some fundamental reason why this should be so?
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