The Rantings of elROY

[andyfox]

"You use phrases like 'the United States consumes 90% of the world's resources' - as if there is a finite amount of resources which it is possible to put in the denominator of a fraction. The correct statement would be 'People in the US produce 90% of the world's resources'."

I don't recall using that phrase. Can you cite a link?

If there is not a finite amount of resources which is not possible to put ine denominator of a fraction, how could your "correct" statement be any more possible than my alleged incorrect one?

And, BTW, thanks for elaborating on this thread title.

[eLROY]

[ QUOTE ]
If there is not a finite amount of resources which is not possible to put ine denominator of a fraction, how could your "correct" statement be any more possible than my alleged incorrect one?

[/ QUOTE ]
Suppose you add 1 and I add 9 to a number, over and over. We will never get to "infinity," but I will add 90% and you will ad 10%. Or, if we start with "infinity," and I pull 9 off and you pull 1 off, over and over, I will produce 90%, but we would never consume 90% of anything!

Because if something cannot be used up, but keeps giving and giving - such as the design concept for the flathead screwdriver - then it cannot be consumed. And people in the US can produce 90% of such inventions.

You view rocks as resources, and I view people as resources. And any healthy adult with a proper religious upbringing can always produce, invent, learn, and discover more than he will consume over his lifetime. And still, one person can produce nine times a much as another, usually for the simple reason that he lives in a social system which has been allowed to grow up around the assumption.

Using common economic measurements, there is a finite amount of wealth produced by people in a given year. But that wealth is not resources under your definition. Quite the opposite, you green wackos see the absence of human industriousness as wealth, and you see buildings and ambulances and farms - at least when owned by other people - as a net loss. That wealth is resources under my definition, and can be produced. But no fraction of it has ever been exhausted.

Resources don't exist in the abstract, there are no resources on Mars, not until people make them into resources. Resources are the product of human inegnuity, such as the invention of the internal-combustion engine. The amount of production of wealth and knowledge - the resource - is finite and measureable in a given year. But the amount of resources not used is infinite. Resources can be used, and production can be consumed, but resources cannot be used up.