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    Last modified 03/04/08


        Copyright © by Nila Gaede 2008
Adapted for the Internet from:

Why God Doesn't Exist

    If we take away housing and peer relations (reproduction, playing, infighting), food constitutes 100% of an
    animal’s economy. The population of a given species cannot exceed the availability of food. We refer to
    this crucial boundary using the mysterious term carrying capacity, the maximum number of individuals
    that can subsist as a result of the resources at their disposal.

    One problem with this concept is that population size fluctuates in response to resources. When food is
    abundant, population expands. When food is scarce, population crashes. However, the carrying capacity
    can be calculated and is useful only for a specific point in time:

    “ ultimately it is not a number but a relationship best described as a differential
       equation.”  [1]

    We can substitute but a single value at a time for a variable. When we change the value of a variable, the
    carrying capacity changes. Therefore, carrying capacity is quite nebulous as a 'dynamic' concept.

    In the case of Man, food can never constitute 100% of his economy once he develops civilization                
    (i.e., trade, commerce). Therefore, food doesn’t seem to be a good barometer for the carrying capacity      
    of civilized (i.e., post subsistence agriculture) humans, in part, because technology allows us to produce
    as much of it as we want. If God decides to send an extra mouth to the planet, we merely need to crank up
    production a notch. Population does not increase in response to food, but the other way around. Food
    increases in response to demand. In our artificial economy, food is just another tangible commodity, and
    this leads the experts to conclude that the carrying capacity of Man is unlimited.

    But let’s put food in its proper perspective. Food is not just another item that we trade in our artificial
    economy. It is not coincidental that we formally separate agriculture from manufacturing and services in
    official economic reports. Food is a unique, ‘Goldilocks’ type of commodity. You don’t produce too much
    of it and you don’t produce too little of it. You produce just the right amount to feed the population.
    Produce too much, prices drop, and the surplus rots. Produce too little, prices skyrocket, and people
    starve. We can reduce any good or service to zip in the economy, take your pick. You have the magic
    wand. What will you erase? Let’s eliminate cars. Or why not houses or energy or gold? Then again we
    could wipe out money or any service, it doesn’t matter. We can reduce supply to zero on anything you
    can think of except food. Proof of this is that hunter-gatherers of our own species subsisted for
    thousands of years only on what they could catch. They needed no transportation, oil, or TVs. The
    reverse is also true. You can produce double the number of cars or the number of TV sets. Someone will
    absorb them at the right price tomorrow morning. On the other hand, you can double the amount of food,
    but not because of it will anyone double their intake tomorrow. Or you can cut the prices of foodstuffs in
    half, and not because of it will urbanites spit out more children to absorb the excess. Food is in a category
    all by itself. It can neither go too low nor too high. It has to be just right. Certainly, we cannot reduce food
    supply and demand to zero like we did with pet rocks. Food can never be a fad. You can also look at it in
    another way. You can say that food is always at saturation level whereas all other industrial commodities
    still have room for growth. Unlike TVs and beds, jewels and cigars, the agri-business will neither
    overshoot nor vanish.

    In general, food is produced in proportion to the population. If you wish to know the population of
    humans at any one time, just look at the tonnage of food in circulation. That should give you a pretty good
    ball park figure. But actually, food is a little trickier. In the old hunter-gatherer and subsistence farming
    days, each individual would procure his own sustenance. Each man or family took care of their own
    needs. In these particular stages of human development, there was a direct correlation between people
    and food. The early humans had to work whether they liked it or not: there is no unemployment among
    savages! Hunting and subsistence farming are full-time jobs. In our modern economy, instead, we don’t
    really produce food in response to population, but rather like any other tangible item: in response to
    market demand. Population and demand go hand in hand, but they are not exactly the same. Population
    has to do with the number of people. Market demand is an economic indicator that measures how much
    money or wealth there is in circulation. If tomorrow I wave my magic wand and eliminate all the money,
    goods, and services in the world, we still have 6 billion people, but no demand. Suddenly, the proletariat
    has nothing to exchange for food. We have necessity, but no commerce. Demand is directly related to
    commerce and only indirectly to population.

    Unlike the hunter-gatherer and subsistence farmer, the urban proletariat has distanced himself from the
    only thing he needs to stay alive: food. The city dweller is at the mercy of others. There is one
    intermediary or another – a producer, a manufacturer, a distributor – between the urbanite and his vital
    resources. Today, it is not the subsistence farmer, but agricultural corporations which produce the
    overwhelming amount of food on the planet, and they do so in response to prices. People work. They get
    paid. They buy food as necessary. This aggregate demand determines the prices of different products.
    Agriculture is just another business. But our economic system is also founded on the ‘Captain John
    Smith’ rule that if you don’t work (whether voluntary or not), you don’t make money, and if you don’t make
    money, you can’t buy food. The day we invented trade and division of labor we placed our very lives in
    the hands of others.

    How is it that we allowed our intelligent species to be placed in such a precarious position? Perhaps we
    are not that smart after all… or maybe there are certain types of problems we cannot do anything about. I
    will argue that economics (i.e., our carrying capacity) is one of these.  But before I review the history of
    economics, let’s settle whether the carrying capacity of Man is unlimited as many believe today.
The
definition of
Carrying
Capacity
I don't know about all of them, but I
certainly won't have  a problem with
my carrying capacity.