India and Food Prices

I recently blogged that the increased food demand in India and China had to also be a contributing factor in the increase in food prices…implying that the furore in India about President Bush’s remarks was overkill.  The world bank recently put out (inadvertently it seems) a report that analyzes this.  And the results…

Here is a link to a Yahoo news report on this.

It turns out that 75% of the increase in food prices comes from Bio fuels.  So much for all of President Bush’s remonstrations.  And yes, my hypothesis has been proven incorrect.

So then the question becomes: Are we willing to use food for energy to power machines when there isn’t a surplus of food to go around?  Seems like quite an unreasonable thing to do…the aftereffects of going green without thinking I suppose.

Malthusians

I had never heard of Thomas Malthus, an English philosopher who lived in the 18th century.  But apparently, he was a pessimist when it came to demographic theories.  Based on what I read in this article in the Atlantic Monthly, he predicted that while population grows geometrically, the food supply can only keep up arithmetically.  This would inevitably result in a global shortage of food.  Until now, science and economics has proven him repeatedly wrong with innovative agricultural techniques and the lack of purchasing power (For large majorities in the world) respectively.  Malthus’s theory is now again relavant as there are no new frontiers in agricultural production and vast numbers of people (read India and China) have increased purchasing power. 

Is there enough for everyone? 

The Inequality Gap and Darwinism

The Economist published a very interesting article in its last issue that discussed the emergence of (human) talent as a critical business issue. Part of this article discussed how a new inequality gap is emerging. Until recently, there has been plenty of discussion about how the rich are privileged and are able to provide the best of opportunities to their progeny, hence boosting them to further riches. And quite the opposite happens to the poor, whose offspring are relegated to a life of poverty. Of course, the exception to this are the shining examples of how an underprivileged youngster is able to work hard or take advantage of a few lucky breaks to pull themeselves out of the lower economic rungs of society. There are quite a few examples of such people who are now famous personalities in their respective fields. I would argue that these people were not only lucky, but more importantly, smart!

This brings me to the core of the Economist article. The point that was being made was that today’s work force rewards intellectual ability more than anything else. The kinds of jobs that require brain power are rising, and it is clear that the winners will be the ’smart’ people. For example, circles of friends are beginning to emerge where everyone is of the same educational qualification or higher. These people marry similar individuals (of similar intellectual capacity and educational qualification). At the risk of generalizing, this means that their children will be of high intellectual capacity. As our workplaces demand and reward people of high intellectual capatity, those people will become the new elite in tomorrow’s society.

So does this mean that tomorrow’s society will be truly Darwinian one? Will Darwin’s ‘fittest’ be society’s smartest? Will it be true that the smartest people will occupy the highest echelons of society? Will meritocracy rule the world? Will society devolve into something that was depicted in the movie, Gattaca, where Eugenics was the norm of the day? Surely the situation portrayed in Gattaca will come to be if we continue to evolve into a meritocratic society! Won’t people want their children to be engineered smart? And does that doom the un-engineered to a life of economic mediocrity?

I have to say – I’m worried for my kids – I’m notoriously bad at standardized tests.