They're making people
everyday, but they ain't makin' any more dirt.
(Will Rogers)
Trespassers will be shot or
worse
In July 2015 the United
Nations estimated a global population of 7.349 billion people. Right
now (2016) we are currently at 7.4 billion and increasing.
In 1700, only 316 years ago,
the human population of the entire planet was approximately 600
million. In what we now call the United States the population
(Europeans) was approximately 250,000 people. The industrial
revolution in Europe wouldn't begin for another 80 years or so. The
human footprint across the globe was still relatively benign in 1700.
A momentous change in
agriculture had begun in Europe, starting in England in the late 17th
century. It had a profound effect on the lives of people and one of
the key factor in the global demographic explosion that would take
place in the next 300 years.
The first change was the
enclosure movement. Hedges began encircling more and more farmland.
Before, land had been largely communal; everyone could graze their
animals and raise crops on community land. But as new crops, new
methods of breeding, and new cultivation techniques developed
pressure grew to enclose the land, in order to improve both the yield
and the quality and insure better management. While the farming
system was undoubtedly revolutionized, many people lost their land,
became dispossessed and had to find work in the cities.
With the spreading enclosure
of land and the rising power of the landowners, the Norfolk
Four-Course System was established. Throughout the Middle Ages and up
to the late seventeenth century, field lay fallow every three years;
farmers slaughtered their farm animals in the fall because they had
no forage crops to feed them in the winter. The Norfolk system
changed all this.
The fallow year disappeared
and fodder crops, such as cornstalks, hay, and straw were fed to
animals. This produced a lot of manure and urine, enriching the soil
and ultimately increasing the harvests.
These new methods and
techniques spread to the rest of Europe and ultimately moved in one
form or another to the United States, where Europeans found some of
the most fertile and productive land on the planet with few human
obstacle to stop them from claiming it. For landless Europeans who
could only dream of possessing property of their own, the world to
the west seemed like a Garden of Eden with infinite abundance.
A book was published in
England in 1776, arguably one of the most influential books ever
written. The author was Adam Smith and the title of his work was An
Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. He
defined the free-market, what it was and its value in creating
wealth.
Politicians in America, in
particular, have always loved to talk about the free-market, its central role in America's greatness and “exceptionalism” and,
not surprisingly, government must not be allowed to impose
regulations on that “invisible hand” that knows best.
Well, not often stated, even
the venerable Adam Smith in the 18th century told us to
beware of capitalists because they could manipulate the “sanctity”
of the market. In fact, he said, “The proposal of any new law or
regulation of commerce which comes from [capitalists] ought always to
be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted
till after having been long and carefully examined...” America,
however, was going to demonstrate how the big swindle ought to be
played on a continental scale.
You cannot solve the
problem with the same kind of thinking that has created the problem.
( Albert Einstein )
The idea that human beings
are better off acting selfishly would have been laughable to
Shakespeare, anathema to Jesus, absurd to Darwin and insane to Freud.
Even Adam Smith, the father of capitalism, would have recoiled from
the crass self-interest philosophy promoted by Ayn Rand....
(Lynn Parramore, Institute
for New Economic Thinking and founding editor of New Deal 2.0)
TO BE CONTINUED
