ourfiniteworld | We are using renewable resources faster than they replenish and
continue to use non-renewable resources. The workarounds to fix these
problems take an increasing share of the total output of the economy,
leaving less for what I have called “ordinary workers.” The problems we
encounter include the following:
- Pollution control. Pollution sinks are already full. Continuing to use non-renewable resources (including burning fossil fuels) adds increased pollution. Workarounds have costs, and these take an increasing share of the output of the economy.
- Energy used in energy production. When we started extracting energy products, the cheapest, easiest-to-extract energy products were chosen first. The energy products that are left are higher-cost to extract, and thus require a larger share of the goods the economy produces for extraction.
- Water, metals, and soil workarounds. These suffer from deteriorating quantity and quality, leading to the need for workarounds such as desalination plants, deeper mines, and more irrigated land. All of these take an increasingly large share of the output of the economy.
- Interest and dividends. Capital goods tend to be purchased through debt or sales of stock. Either way, interest payments and dividends must be made, leaving less for workers.
- Increasing hierarchy. Companies need to be larger in size to purchase and manage all of the capital goods needed to work around shortages. High pay for supervisors reduces funds available to pay lower-ranking employees.
- Government funding and pensions. Government programs grow in size in good times, but are hard to cut back in hard times. Pensions, both government and private, are a particular problem because the number of elderly people tends to grow.
It should be no surprise that this type of continuing pattern of
eroding wages for ordinary workers leads to great instability. If
nothing else, workers become increasingly disillusioned and want to
change or overthrow the government.
It might be noted that globalization also plays a role in this shift
toward lower wages for ordinary workers. Part of the reason for
globalization is simply to work around the problems listed above. For
example, if pollution becomes more of a problem, globalization allows
pollution to be shifted to countries that do not try to mitigate the
problem. Globalization also allows businesses to work around rising the
rising cost of oil production; production can be shifted to countries
that instead emphasized coal in their energy mix, with much lower energy
used in energy production. With increased globalization, people who are
primarily selling the value of their own labor find that wages do not
keep up with the rising cost of living.
