Business Ethics

Project description
Why does Simon believe that natural resources are not finite and why we do not have to worry about sustainability? In what

way does Simon reflect the Technological Project? Make sure your paper uses the words “technological project”; it is not

enough simply to use the word technology.

CHAPTER 3: CAN THE SUPPLY OF NATURAL RESOURCES – ESPECIALLY ENERGY – REALLY BE INFINITE? YES!
A professor giving a lecture on energy declares that the world will perish in seven billion years’ time because the sun will

then burn out. One of the audience becomes very agitated, asks the professor to repeat what he said, and then, completely

reassured, heaves a sign of relief, “Phew! I thought he said seven million years!”‘ (Sauvy, 1976, p. 251)
[My economic analyses rest on] some principles which are uncommon, and which may seem too refined and subtile for such vulgar

subjects. If false, let them be rejected. But no one ought to enter a prejudice against them, merely because they are out of

the common road.
David Hume, Essays, 1777 (1987), p. 255.
Chapter 2 showed that natural resources, properly defined, cannot be measured. Here I draw the logical conclusion: Natural

resources are not finite. Yes, you read correctly. This chapter shows that the supply of natural resources is not finite in

any economic sense, one reason why their cost can continue to fall indefinitely.
On the face of it, even to inquire whether natural resources are finite seems like nonsense. Everyone “knows” that resources

are finite. And this belief has led many persons to draw unfounded, far-reaching conclusions about the future of our world

economy and civilization. A prominent example is the Limits to Growth group, who open the preface to their 1974 book as

follows.
Most people acknowledge that the earth is finite…. Policy makers generally assume that growth will provide them tomorrow

with the resources required to deal with today’s problems. Recently, however, concern about the consequences of population

growth, increased environmental pollution, and the depletion of fossil fuels has cast doubt upon the belief that continuous

growth is either possible or a panacea.
(Note the rhetorical device embedded in the term “acknowledge” in the first sentence of the quotation. It suggests that the

statement is a fact, and that anyone who does not “acknowledge” it is simply refusing to accept or admit it.) For many

writers on the subject, the inevitable depletion of natural resources is simply not open to question. A political scientist

discussing the relationship of resources to national security refers to “the incontrovertible fact that many crucial

resources are nonrenewable.” A high government energy official says that views that “the world’s oil reserves…are

sufficient to meet the worlds’ needs” are “fatuities.” The idea that resources are finite in supply is so pervasive and

influential that the President’s 1972 Commission on Population Growth and the American Future (the most recent such report)

based its policy recommendations squarely upon this assumption. Right at its beginning the report asked,
What does this nation stand for and where is it going? At some point in the future, the finite earth will not satisfactorily

accommodate more human beings – nor will the United States…. It is both proper and in our best interest to participate

fully in the worldwide search for the good life, which must include the eventual stabilization of our numbers.
The assumption of finiteness indubitably misleads many scientific forecasters because their conclusions follow inexorably

from that assumption. From the Limits to Growth team again, this time on food: “The world model is based on the fundamental

assumption that there is an upper limit to the total amount of food that can be produced annually by the world’s agricultural

system.” The idea of finite supplies of natural resources led even a mind as powerful as Bertrand Russell’s into error. Here

we’re not just analyzing casual opinions; all of us necessarily hold many casual opinions that are ludicrously wrong simply

because life is far too short for us to think through even a small fraction of the topics that we come across. But Russell,

in a book ironically titled The Impact of Science on Society, wrote much of a book chapter on the subject. He worried that

depletion would cause social instability.
Raw materials, in the long run, present just as grave a problem as agriculture. Cornwall produced tin from Phoenician times

until very lately; now the tin of Cornwall is exhausted… Sooner or later all easily accessible tin will have been used up,

and the same is true of most raw materials. The most pressing, at the moment, is oil… The world has been living on capital,

and so long as it remains industrial it must continue to do so. This is one inescapable though perhaps rather distant source

of stability in a scientific society.
Nor is it only non-economists who fall into this error (though economists are in less danger here because they are accustomed

to expect economic adjustment to shortages). John Maynard Keynes’s contemporaries thought that he was the cleverest person of

the century. But on the subject of natural resources – and about population growth, as we shall see later – he was both

ignorant of the facts and stupid (an adjective I never use except for the famous) in his dogmatic logic. In his world-

renowned The Economic Consequences of the Peace, published just after World War I, Keynes wrote that Europe could not supply

itself and soon would have nowhere to turn:
[B]y 1914 the domestic requirements of the United States for wheat were approaching their production, and the date was

evidently near when there would be an exportable surplus only in years of exceptionally favorable harvest… Europe’s claim

on the resources of the New World was becoming precarious; the law of diminishing returns was at last reasserting itself, and

was making it necessary year by year for Europe to offer a greater quantity of other commodities to obtain the same amount of

bread… If France and Italy are to make good their own deficiencies in coal from the output of Germany, then Northern

Europe, Switzerland, and Austria…must be starved of their supplies.
All these assertions of impending scarcity turned out to be wildly in error. So much for Keynes’s wisdom as an economist and

a seer into the future. Millions of plain American farmers had a far better grasp of the agricultural reality in the 1920s

than did Keynes. This demonstrates that one needs to know history as well as technical facts, and not just be a clever

reasoner.
Just as in Keynes’s day, the question of finiteness is irrelevant to any contemporary considerations, as the joke at the head

of the chapter suggests. Nevertheless, we must discuss the topic because of its centrality in so much contemporary doomsday

thinking.
The argument in this chapter is very counter- intuitive, as are most of the ideas in this book. Indeed, science is most

useful when it is counter-intuitive. But when scientific ideas are sufficiently far from “common sense,” people will be

uncomfortable with science, and they will prefer other explanations, as in this parable:
Imagine for the moment that you are a chieftain of a primitive tribe, and that I am explaining to you why water gradually

disappears from an open container. I offer the explanation that the water is comprised of a lot of invisible, tiny bits of

matter moving at enormous speeds. Because of their speed, the tiny bits escape from the surface and fly off into the air.

They go undetected because they are so small that they cannot be seen. Because this happens continuously, eventually all of

the tiny, invisible bits fly into the air and the water disappears. Now I ask you: “Is that a rational scientific

explanation?” Undoubtedly, you will say yes. However, for a primitive chief, it is not believable. The believable explanation

is that the spirits drank it. But because the ideas in this chapter are counter-intuitive does not mean

PLACE THIS ORDER OR A SIMILAR ORDER WITH US TODAY AND GET AN AMAZING DISCOUNT 🙂