We've all been seeing growth of big companies worldwide for the last few decades. GE, GM, Ford, Microsoft and more recently, Tata and Reliance have gone on massive acquisition sprees and have seen their market grow many fold. Is that a good thing? Massive growth implies generation of wealth, which is a good thing, but can this generation last for ever?
Is wealth like entropy - a universal constant or does the total wealth of the world actually grow. I'm not talking in terms of the dollar value but more along the lines of per capita buying capacity of everyone in the world.
The answer is probably - wealth is a constant value. As certain people get richer, the nett wealth increases, but the population is also increasing and our resources are limited. This translates into - as wealth increases, so does the population and so does poverty. Which means that when you put everything together, the per capita/average wealth is not really increasing.
More importantly, however, it does seem like all wealth is being created by the exploitation of natural resources of the non-renewable kind. Iron, Petroleum, Coal, Nuclear power, IT seem to be major growth areas but all of them utilise non renewable resources. Yeah, even IT. IT cannot function without the plastics (petroleum) and silicon chips, all of which require massive transportation (USA to China to Korea to the rest of the world kind) - petroleum.
We all know that petroleum is going to finish sooner or later. Prices will go up once we reach a point where petroleum starts to become prohibitively expensive. The hollow growth that we are experiencing will become all too obvious then.
We are ignoring the human cost at our peril. History has shown us ample number of times that when the downtrodden are ignored for far too long, there is an uprising. As Ms Antoinette found out when she asked the poor to eat cake, times are rapidly approaching when the have nots of the world will, in their anger, cause havoc and destruction.
However, this does not mean that everyone who 'has' should give it to the 'have not'. On the contrary, this means more responsibility that each and every one of us has to bear. If we are priviledged enough to have a house, a car and money in the bank, then we must support causes for poverty alleviation.
Only by doing this will we ensure that the future will be a peaceful and a content one - like the future in Star Trek where everyone lives happily together (stoned!! ). However, if we continue down the road we are treading on now, then it's Mad Max !!!
Is wealth like entropy - a universal constant or does the total wealth of the world actually grow. I'm not talking in terms of the dollar value but more along the lines of per capita buying capacity of everyone in the world.
The answer is probably - wealth is a constant value. As certain people get richer, the nett wealth increases, but the population is also increasing and our resources are limited. This translates into - as wealth increases, so does the population and so does poverty. Which means that when you put everything together, the per capita/average wealth is not really increasing.
More importantly, however, it does seem like all wealth is being created by the exploitation of natural resources of the non-renewable kind. Iron, Petroleum, Coal, Nuclear power, IT seem to be major growth areas but all of them utilise non renewable resources. Yeah, even IT. IT cannot function without the plastics (petroleum) and silicon chips, all of which require massive transportation (USA to China to Korea to the rest of the world kind) - petroleum.
We all know that petroleum is going to finish sooner or later. Prices will go up once we reach a point where petroleum starts to become prohibitively expensive. The hollow growth that we are experiencing will become all too obvious then.
We are ignoring the human cost at our peril. History has shown us ample number of times that when the downtrodden are ignored for far too long, there is an uprising. As Ms Antoinette found out when she asked the poor to eat cake, times are rapidly approaching when the have nots of the world will, in their anger, cause havoc and destruction.
However, this does not mean that everyone who 'has' should give it to the 'have not'. On the contrary, this means more responsibility that each and every one of us has to bear. If we are priviledged enough to have a house, a car and money in the bank, then we must support causes for poverty alleviation.
Only by doing this will we ensure that the future will be a peaceful and a content one - like the future in Star Trek where everyone lives happily together (stoned!! ). However, if we continue down the road we are treading on now, then it's Mad Max !!!
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