From: Hal Finney (hal@pgp.com)
Date: Thu Sep 11 1997 - 14:54:56 MDT
[Repost]
Eliezer Yudkowsky writes:
> The basic problem is economies of scale. At our level of technology, it only
> takes a billion people working to support six billion. And then the other
> five billion starve[...]
I don't know how seriously Eliezer means us to take this, but surely
this is not a plausible scenario. Five billion people will not starve
simply because one billion are producing enough to support six. All those
eager, productive hands, willing to work for subsistence wages, will find
many uses. Even if the productive one million are their superiors in
every way, it will still be worth their while to employ the others for
some tasks. The theory of comparative advantage applies to this situation.
A simple explanation can be found at:
http://io.newi.ac.uk/dbw/student/compar.htm
Hal
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