Sometimes it is good to take stock of the battle of ideas and see how the scorecard stands.

• The world is running out of scarce resources.
We hardly hear that these days since Julian Simon and others showed that our ability to develop less accessible sources, and to use substitutes, are increasing faster than resources are being used. They are relatively more plentiful, therefore, with falling prices to prove it.

• The world faces an overpopulation crisis.
Actually, it may not. World population is leveling off. It seems that population increase slows as countries become richer and people no longer have to rely economically on their children. Europe faces a falling population, for example.

• Pollution is spreading and poisoning the planet.
The case used to be that rich countries pollute, and that as everyone became richer the world would become an open sewer. Now we think that wealth enables production to be cleaner. It is the poorer countries which pollute. As they become richer, they will be able to afford a cleaner environment. In Britain, for example, air and water quality are reportedly much cleaner than they used to be.

• The Kyoto Protocol is the only hope to prevent global warming.
If all its assumptions were correct, it might delay until 2100 the warming level which would otherwise be reached by 2094. That’s six years. But the assumptions are increasingly questioned. How much warming is there, and how much of that is down to a natural geophysical cycle? If any is man-made, how much of that is down to land use changes rather than emissions. The view is spreading that there are more urgent uses for all that money.

• Globalization hurts poorer countries and holds back their development.
The lesson of the success stories of last century is that countries which traded became richer; the others did not. A global economy gives poor countries the chance to earn by selling their goods. Holding them back are tariffs by rich countries to protect their more costly domestic production. It is globalization which can bring investment, development, and growth to lift them from poverty. Many once-poor countries have made huge gains from globalization; others can do likewise.

• Only if rich countries transfer wealth to poor ones can poverty be tackled.
Rich countries can generously help them with humanitarian problems such as disease and clean water. But economic development takes place by wealth creation, not by transfer. Poorer countries can create wealth by trade, and rich ones can help not by handing out a few crumbs, but by buying their goods and services, and by enabling their businesses to invest there.

• The rich world is getting richer, the poor poorer.
With some exceptions both are growing richer. The income spread across the world is much narrower than 50 years ago, largely because of the rise of the Asian economies. Now China and India are forging ahead, so it will continue. Many of those exceptions are in Africa, where major changes are needed to secure the right conditions for economic take-off.

• Poor countries need protective tariffs to protect their own industries.
If you think their future lies in static production, protected markets and fixed prices, you might support this. If you think they should produce whatever they can do cheaply and efficiently, and get richer by seizing market opportunities, you might go for free trade instead. It makes for a less certain, less managed future, but one that seems to offer more wealth opportunities.

• Multinationals exploit people in poorer countries.
One person’s exploitation is another’s opportunity. Multinationals pay lower wages in developing countries than in rich ones: that’s why they go there. But their pay and conditions are reportedly better than those available elsewhere in poor countries, and so represent economic advancement. There are usually waiting lists to work for them. More and more of them are also providing education and healthcare for their employees.

• We must stop economic growth and learn to live more simply.
Economic growth brings choices and opportunities. It has brought us the wealth to make huge strides against hunger and disease, and given us space to indulge in art and education. Not surprisingly other countries want it. They do not seem to find simple poverty attractive, but choose economic advancement when they can. Some people might yearn for the stability of a quiet, planned and predictable life, and some seek to impose such a life, with all its limits, on others.

My scorecard suggests two of these won, four currently being won, and four still to be won.

"The world is running out of scare resources."
Not while Michael Moore is alive. Or should that be "scarce"? [Editor's note: Thanks. Typo is corrected].

Fasten your safety belts, because stupidity never goes away. These trade issues you mention were argued over in Smith's day. And others take on the characteristics of a secular faith -- I rode on a train through rolling landscape without any more than a single house as far as the eye could see, listening to some berk tell me that Britain was small and too crowded for the population it already has. These notions are rather like mice -- one can on average keep them out of the house but never eliminate them completely.

This new religion will be the death of us all. Communist envy overlain with enviro piety.

I notice that Adam Hart Davis has joined the "global warming" scam with a piece in "RAdio Times" this week. He says how when he was at school CO2 was 300 ppm but is now 370 ppm - 23% increase so it must be us!! Seems as if there should be a ban on cycling, it obviously affects the brain. Funny though, I thought the brain was at the top end of the body

- That nuclear power is dangerous. The record from accidents (even including Chernobyl) shows nuclear at causes less than 1,000th as many deaths as black lung & it is now clear that low, or even intermediate, level radioactivity reduces cancer.
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail311.html#hormesis

It is curious that contributors to this website regularly make accusations of about peoples entrenched beliefs hwen there is a criticism of free market policies. Yet adam Smith's whole approach to understanding how the economy works was founded upon the assumption of a blue print from God as to how the economy is best set up. Perhaps they should read his earlier work on the 'Theory of Moral Sentiments', where he outlines the presuppositions he makes about the political economy. He even sought to put political economy of the same foundations as physics, as he wanted to emulate what Newton had achieved in the physical sciences.
We should also note what every student of economics knows from elementary economics, the theory of second best shows us that some moves towards market freedoms in one area can seriously distort/harm another area of the economy. The free market system is only shown to be pareto optimal where the whole system free, a noble desire but not necessarily a pragmatic one ( by the way this only works when we assume that human beings operate in a very limited and dysfunctional way).

So far as Climate Change and Kyoto goes, the Competative Enterprise Institute put a useful paper together last November explaining the flaws in the cliamte alarmists case.

Its well worth a read.

http://www.cei.org/pdf/4286.pdf

The rich getting richer, and the poor poorer....In some cases the gap is indeed closing. In others, it is widening. But the latter still does not imply that the poor are getting poorer.

Say we are in the 60s and a third-world farmer makes$1,000 per year. His rich-world counterpart makes $10,000 a year. Gap : $9,0000.

Now fast-forward to the 90s and our poor farmer now makes an inflation-adjusted $10,000 and our 'rich' farmer an inflation-adjusted $30,000. Gap: $20,000.

The gap has more than doubled. Yet the poor farmer is not poorer. He has caught up to where our rich farmer was in the 60s.

The increase of an income gap does not in any way tell us which way the quantities involved are trending. It's like watching two cars driving down the highway; say the gap between them is 100 feet. Five minutes later the gap is 150 feet. We are being told the only possible explanation for this increase is that the car in front accelerated while the one in the back slowed down. Not so.

Lastly, it is quite entertaining to note that this income-gap drivel comes from people who constantly remind us that "money is not everything" as soon as GDP and income stats are used to support the case for trade and globalization. Clearly, money and income are evil, unless they can somehow be used to further the anti-trade argument. Except these arguments are mathematically bogus.

With money the world looks much better. Oh my god, and he's a Dr.!!!

I read it in Spanish at http://www.libertaddigital.com

Congratulations¡

The richer a country is, the cleaner is true. But it is well known that the first economy of the world (USA)is not one of the cleaner ones. Should the other countries follow the example?

By the way, Neil Craig has added one of the most important ideas with the Nuclear issue. I am tired of wind-power generators with its ridiculous low efficiency and its huge environmental impact (though not in form of emissions)

To Sylvain:
The gap in the example you mention has not widened if you think in relative terms. Before, the rich earned 10 times the poor salary and now is only 3 times.

The country most concerned about the environment at all levels (government and people) is Switzerland. Is it a rich or a poor country?

Originally environmentalism meant keeping the mountains free of industrial smoke. Unfortunately in most countries the movement has been taken over by those who think it means covering them with windmills. I suspect Swiss environmentalism is still in stage 1.