Economics and China

[FireIceTalon]

Wind and solar? Maybe. There was an article I read just two weeks ago that conveniently went missing from the net after the stocks dipped, however it was an impartial study made to observe the worlds natural resources and the report discovered that we (as a planet) had exhausted our natural resources for the year in August, and that last year, we hadn't exhausted them until October. So in summation, we're using up resources faster than we can accrue them, meaning as population rises, so will demand and the product won't be there, thus prices will rise substantially in the upcoming years... this is inevitable. This isn't the news article I was looking for, but it will suffice to show the disparity: Link

So what does that mean? It means it doesn't matter what China does or does not do, so long as we as a species keep propagating at the level we are, we are doomed unless we can teraform other planets very soon.

EDIT: Found a article similar to the one I had read before: Link

"There are too many people in the world, it doesn't matter what happens with China's economy" - this is basically what you are saying, and sorry man, but its ridiculous on a number of levels. It is a popular argument to be sure, but a bogus one nonetheless.

Two immediate glaring problems:

Firstly, it is a way too generalized argument that reduces all the economic problems of China, or otherwise, to overpopulation - even if we assume the basis of the argument itself can be substantiated (which it cannot). There are approximately 5 empty houses in the USA for every 1 homeless person, for example. This has nothing to do with overpopulation. Granted, this is just one aspect of the economy in one country, but it is an example (among countless other contradictions) of a much more fundamental and deeply rooted problem of the system: Artificial Scarcity. The misallocation of resources and the way production is handled and distributed under capitalism are the problems here, not global population. In fact, I would venture to argue that population has little if any relevance whatsoever in the problems we face today. Distribution of resources, not the number of resources, is the problem. We have enough resources to feed, clothe, and shelter every human being on the planet MANY times over, but we don't. Because again, it is a problem of resource allocation - a problem that is intrinsic to and necessitated by the very system itself; for obvious reasons.

Secondly, because of the above problem described, your analysis also fails to acknowledge the ramifications that a China meltdown would have on Western economies. Capitalism is entering a stage, or more likely has already been in for the last few years, where it is extracting surplus without investing, or is under investing. This of course can be done for awhile, by running productive infrastructure and capital into the ground, but you can't do it forever. This is the case in the USA and many Western Europe countries. As I am sure you know very well, the US economy is very interlinked with China's and their large investment into the dollar. Do you think an actual downturn in the Chinese economy is not going to have an effect on the dollar? I think we both know it would. And given that the US is already doing very little investing, guess what that would mean? Yea, you guessed it - more austerity politics for working people and all the negative effects (both immediate and long term) that come along with it (more frequent and more severe bubbles, lower living standards, higher unemployment, more suppression of civil liberties and spying on citizens as times get tougher, etc).

A third problem, is that it reeks of defeatism, while employing the idealistic, unnecessary (and unrealistic!) solution of humans migrating to another planet in the near future. You've been watching too much Interstellar, I'm afraid.

So please kill that noise about overpopulation. It is an oversimplified and 'vulgar economics' argument that just serves to be another scapegoat in order to obfuscate what is really going on.

Now the effects of the current Chinese situation on other economies has yet to be seen, it should be said that this isn't even going to necessarily be the worst yet (that remains to be seen), but that is neither here nor there regarding the above points.