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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.