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C00002 00002	"The Limits to Growth" - Meadows and Meadows
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"The Limits to Growth" - Meadows and Meadows

	This book has been quite influential as  an expression of the
point of view  that the world must act to limit its industrial growth
in the near future  or catastrophe will  result.  This conclusion  is
supported by computer simulations of  a type invented by Forrester of
M.I.T.   Depending on the detailed  assumptions, the population grows
and  then starts  to  die  off from  pollution,    lack of  food,  or
exhaustion of energy or fuel resources.

	Here are some comments:

	1. I  have little  quarrel with the  simulations per se.   On
the whole,  I think the conclusions follow from the assumptions,  and
this  could probably  be  shown  mathematically  without the  use  of
computers.

2.  The  assumption  with  which I  have  the  most  quarrel is  that
production is proportional  to the  stock of capital  goods which  is
the  sum of  previous  investments  and that  a  fixed proportion  of
output is  reinvested.  This model is appropriate to an economy where
the ability to  satisfy people's wants  is limited by the  productive
capacity to  produce the goods.   It is  not valid in  a situation in
which  either  wants  are  saturated  or  production  is  limited  by
supplies.  At present,  in all countries, productive capacity  is the
limit,  and people will  be benefited  by more production.   However,
investment in any industry is limited by the demand for  the products
of that  industry, and  there are  plenty of examples  to show  it in
particular industries.   The same holds for the industrial economy as
a whole.

	To say "stop now,  because we will eventually  kill ourselves
by overproduction" is like telling  a hungry man eating his soup that
he should stop now, because if  he keeps eating in another ten  hours
of continuous eating he will kill himself.   When he isn't hungry any
more,  he will stop,  even if he  is now claiming  that he  can eat a
horse.

	Eventually,  the  rate of human  processing of material  will
have to reach a fixed ratio  to the population, and the population on
the earth will have to stabilize.

	Another  way of making the same complaint  is to say that the
Meadows' model makes no attempt to model demand.

	2.   My second quarrel  is with  the use  of a single  global
simulation.  Of course,  they recognize  that it  would be  better to
simulate the separate countries and their interaction but plead  that
their model  correctly predicts  global problems.   However, many  of
the  problems they  mention -  lack of food,  lack of  raw materials,
lack of  energy,  and  pollution  - do  and  will  affect  particular
countries at particular times.   At these times, these countries will
have  to  do something  about  the problems.    This is  the  way the
problem  really presents  itself  rather  than as  a  unified  global
problem.

	3.   I also quarrel  with some of  their specific assumptions
about resources, but  they are rather  vague, and I  will express  my
opinions about  this matter  in connnection  with the  works of  some
other writers.