Malthus & "The Rise of the Rest"

Milk prices

A lot of the things I've written about on here are simply facets of big trends driving the world today. You could punt and say that the big trends are just "global warming", or "peak oil", or "peak food", or "the credit crunch", but even those seem like facets of the broader globalization trends going on. If it were just the USA putting out greenhouse gases, consuming oil & other resources, and driving the credit markets, then the problems we're having now might (maybe) still be happening, but less acute. But the big national economies are all interdependent now, and depend crucially of the rapid growth of big new economies like China, India, Brazil, and others.

On one level, the growth of these emerging nations is unquestionably a good thing. It raises the standard of living in the growing countries, provides cheap goods & services to the developed nations, and opens up new markets on both sides. But it raises problems as well: as the standard of living in the emerging countries comes up, so does their level of consumption, increasing the strain on global resources and amplifying trends like climate change and habitat destruction, raising questions about whether this is all sustainable into the future, or whether it brings back a Malthusian crisis.

Thomas Malthus realized in 1798 (!!!) that human populations rise geometrically ("fast"), while natural resources rise linearly ("slow"), and eventually we're likely to hit a point where there aren't enough resources to feed everyone any more. The only problem is, Malthus ended up being wrong: the population has ballooned massively since 1798, and so has the global standard of living by almost any measure. The reason is often believed to be the Industrial Revolution., which brought about a wave of prosperity & growth that swept the world and is still improving lives today. While the pressures Malthus raised over 200 years ago are still present, many feel we can continue to stay ahead of them, while others point out that Malthus was right for all of human history up to his own time, and for all we know we won't be able to escape the trap he identified forever.

Enter Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria, who has coined the term "the rise of the rest" to describe where we stand now:

• Foreign Affairs, May/June 2008, "The Future of American Power: How America Can Survive the Rise of the Rest", by Fareed Zakaria"
• Newsweek, May 12 2008 issue, excerpt from Zakaria's "The Post-American World"
• NPR/PRI's Marketplace, May 12 2008 broadcast, interview with Zakaria, "Economic problem: 'The rise of the rest'"
• Bostonist blog, May 9 2008, article on a talk Zakaria gave about the book at Harvard

The main differences between what Zakaria is arguing and the themes I've been looking at include:

1. Zakaria is the editor for Newsweek, and I'm just some guy, so people will actually listen to him.
2. Zakaria has been watching these trends a lot longer, and thinking about them a lot more deeply, than I have, so people will actually pay attention to him.
3. Zakaria seems to be a lot more optimistic about the long term outcomes than I currently feel, so maybe people will prefer his take on the situation to my bleaker one.

I'll finish with an excerpt from Zakaria's "Marketplace" piece:

Expensive oil is one facet of the signature trend of our age -- global growth. Last year 124 countries around the world grew at over 4 percent. This year, despite the American slowdown, growth in most of those countries remains robust. While we debate the current financial panic and impending recession, our future is not likely to be shaped by crisis and collapse. The real problems we will face will be the consequence of what I call the "rise of the rest" -- the rest of the world that is.

Look around, it's not just oil that is soaring. Almost every commodity is at a 200-year high. Wheat and rice prices have doubled and then kept on rising over the last two years. In some cases, demand is so high that we're actually running out of stuff. Helium, the gas used in balloons and MRI machines is in short supply globally. And it is the second-most abundant element in the universe.

The problems of growth are, of course, high quality problems. But on this scale they are problems we have never really experienced before. We know how to handle a recession. But how do we handle the rise of the rest? That will be the real challenge of the next decade, long after this recession has turned to recovery.