Economists

[hkhenson]

At 12:00 PM 5/13/2008, Ronn! Blankenship wrote:

>At 01:28 PM Tuesday 5/13/2008, Kevin B. O'Brien wrote:
>
>>But the most interesting critique I can recall was by Michael Porter,
>>who wrote a pretty well-received book called "The Competitive Advantage
>>of Nations". He simply pointed out that anyone who advocated reducing
>>the standard of living of our citizens as a sound policy was not living
>>in a reality-based community.
>
>How do the demands^H^H^H^H^H^H^H recommendations of the 
>environmentalists fare under that analysis?

I can remember a related group, the Club or Rome.  They sponsored the 
Limits to Growth Conference in (I think) 1975.  A contingent from the 
just created L5 Society was there promoting solar power satellites as 
a way out.

The argument was that the advanced countries had to drop their 
standard of living to the level of third world countries because the 
resources for the rest of the world to come up to the US level did not exist.

To some extent this has come about in the hollowing out of the US 
middle class and the third world extremes of income distribution.

They didn't want to hear that there might be a technological/engineering fix.

It was kind of weird.  Thinking back, the people at that meeting were 
the elite of the elite (except for our bunch).  Maybe that had 
something to do with it.

Keith