Chi non sa la matematica non può capire economia

Giovanni:
Io l’ho spiegata male, meglio quella di Nat.
“Se l'immigrazione è usata per prevenire il declino della popolazione (natural change – nati – morti), nel 2050 la quota di stranieri residenti in Italia sarà pari al 29 % della popolazione totale. Se l'immigrazione è usata per stabilizzare l’età media (ai livelli attuali) della forza lavoro (occupati) la percentuale sale al 39 %. Per mantenere un rapporto costante fra popolazione attiva (individui in età lavorativa o potenziali lavoratori ) ed anziani, la popolazione totale dovrà crescere fino a raggiungere la quota di 194 milioni di cui il 79% saranno stranieri e solo una persona su cinque sarà italiana. “

Sganzo,
io ho solo tradotto la didascalia di quella tabella e l’ho fatto perché mi sembrava che nessuno l’avesse letta o capita. Ho pensato che ci fosse un problema di lingua, tutto qui.
E l’autore ha semplicemente interpretato, dati alla mano, gli scenari proposti dall’ONU. Ha fatto 2+2.
Ho inserito quei documenti per farvi notare che i fenomeni che stiamo osservando non sono frutto del caso, anzi, rispondono a delle logiche di fondo abbastanza chiare.
Cioè, non stiamo facendo della dietrologia, stiamo interpretando un documento pubblico dell’ONU.
E volendo potremmo anche considerarne altri, tipo quelli dell’OCSE o della commissione europea. Sono tutti uguali, cambiano solo gli orizzonti temporali.

Evidentemente è un pretesto, il vero motivo sarà l'abbattimento del costo del lavoro, e magari quello che ha detto Mincuo, farci incazzare per avere il pretesto di toglierci diritti e andare verso uno stato di polizia. Cioè, prima ci tolgono i soldi, e poi anche i diritti, è giusto, mica si lasciano le cose a metà.

Pare evidente anche a me.
Ma, può essere la soluzione un tetto all'immigrazione? Forse si, ma una volta raggiunto quel tetto, che si fa col profugo che sta scappando perché la multinazionale ha espropriato il suo villaggio della sua terra o di quello che ha casa e famiglia distrutte da una bomba occidentale? E se quei profughi fossero molti?

Non lo so, ma da quanto ho appreso in questi giorni direi di sì, meglio limitarla, l'immigrazione. Poi, volendo essere buoni, c'è quella cosa che ha detto Mincuo, di aiutare le persone in difficoltà direttamente nei loro paesi, senza costringerli a emigrare, il che sarebbe più conveniente per tutti.

Non piangere Nat

Sganzo,
io ho solo tradotto la didascalia di quella tabella e l’ho fatto perché mi sembrava che nessuno l’avesse letta o capita. Ho pensato che ci fosse un problema di lingua, tutto qui.

Si lo so Nat, sono io che l’ho “tradotta” alla mia maniera.
Nessuna questione particolare, anzi, è uno scenario “what if”, nulla di strano.
In sedute di brain storming succede di peggio (non è il caso nostro) ma per dire che non mi stupiscono né le ipotesi (anche bizzarre) né i numeri. Ho riserve sulla fattibilità e sulla dimensione del fenomeno ipotizzato, specie in un arco temporale così breve.

Sempre dal paper:
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
How can countries escape the powerful currents that are now sweep- ing them towards population aging and decline?
Since the demographic history and future of every nation is determined by the interplay of three factors—longevity, fertility and migration—it is only by manipulation of one or more of these factors that a course change can be planned. Since societies invariably demand increases in longevity, however, not decreases, it is only fertility and migration that are subject to political tweaking. With this in mind, the UN demographers examined both fertility and immigration to determine how changes in these factors might offset the aging and decline problems.

Iacopo:
forse lo sai già, ma un esperimento comportamentale era basato sulla densità di topi presenti nella cassetta in osservazione: il numero era direttamente correlato all’aggressività manifestata. Non siamo topi ma il pattern potrebbe essere simile.

Non lo so, ma da quanto ho appreso in questi giorni direi di sì, meglio limitarla, l'immigrazione. Poi, volendo essere buoni, c'è quella cosa che ha detto Mincuo, di aiutare le persone in difficoltà direttamente nei loro paesi, senza costringerli a emigrare, il che sarebbe più conveniente per tutti.

Si...diciamo che non c'è alternativa all'essere buoni. Infatti credo che non tirandogli bombe in testa e non derubandoli di terre e risorse, sarebbero ben pochi quelli che emigrerebbero per venire qui...in questa gabbia di matti...
Ma qui c'è il solito problema: il capitalismo.

Ma qui c'è il solito problema: il capitalismo.

Va beh Giovanni, ma perché tu hai questa chiave di lettura in senso socialista, e allora è il capitalismo che fa schifo. Io vedo il problema più.che altro nella natura umana, a volte altruista ma anche tante volte egoista, anche violentemente o viscidamente egoista.
E che ci si può fare? Niente, siamo fatti così.
Qualunque sistema si faccia, anche se si eliminasse la proprietà privata, o quel che volessimo, non cambierebbe nulla, ci sarebbero sempre soprusi, sfruttamento e quant'altro. Tu non credi?
Io magari sono anche di natura un po' pessimista.

Iacopo:
forse lo sai già, ma un esperimento comportamentale era basato sulla densità di topi presenti nella cassetta in osservazione: il numero era direttamente correlato all’aggressività manifestata. Non siamo topi ma il pattern potrebbe essere simile.

Non lo sapevo ma mi persuade, anche per gli umani.
Anche a questo avranno pensato.
Se si mette male forse forse me ne vado per davvero in Finlandia dove ho qualche parente.
Eppoi amo troppo la tranquillità.

Ma qui c'è il solito problema: il capitalismo.

Va beh Giovanni, ma perché tu hai questa chiave di lettura in senso socialista, e allora è il capitalismo che fa schifo. Io vedo il problema più.che altro nella natura umana, a volte altruista ma anche tante volte egoista, anche violentemente o viscidamente egoista.
E che ci si può fare? Niente, siamo fatti così.
Qualunque sistema si faccia, anche se si eliminasse la proprietà privata, o quel che volessimo, non cambierebbe nulla, ci sarebbero sempre soprusi, sfruttamento e quant'altro. Tu non credi?
Io magari sono anche di natura un po' pessimista.

La natura umana può essere egoista o altruista ok. In un sistema "egoista" come indubbiamente è il capitalismo, l'affermazione della natura altruista viene limitata, mentre quella egoista viene agevolata. Viceversa in un sitema più "altruista".
Non dico che verrebbero eliminati completamente soprusi o quantaltro, ma in un sistema "altruista" farebbero molta più fatica a verificarsi.
Ma come si può realizzare un sistema del genere se non si riesce a mettere completamente in discussione il capitalismo che ne è l'antitesi?

Nat:
su PPeshcara fai della sadira politiga!
Era una supercazzola alla Bertinotti (Guzzanti). Mi metti Er Califfo….

Non piangere Nat

La natura umana può essere egoista o altruista ok. In un sistema "egoista" come indubbiamente è il capitalismo, l'affermazione della natura altruista viene limitata, mentre quella egoista viene agevolata. Viceversa in un sitema più "altruista".
Non dico che verrebbero eliminati completamente soprusi o quantaltro, ma in un sistema "altruista" farebbero molta più fatica a verificarsi.
Ma come si può realizzare un sistema del genere se non si riesce a mettere completamente in discussione il capitalismo che ne è l'antitesi?

E tu dici che funzionerebbe nella realtà?
Potresti farmi un esempio di una società vicina a questi ideali dove effettivamente la gente sta o stava meglio? Storicamente parrebbe che le società dove si è stati meglio sarebbero non tanto quelle liberiste o socialiste, ma una via di mezzo.

Giusto per tornare a discutere di contenuti , in onore di Jefferson, inserisco questo breve passaggio di P. Bairoch:

Population Growth: the More, the Better?

We saw in Chapter 8 that in the Third World a rapid increase in population had already begun during the period of colonization. In some countries this happened as early as the mid-nineteenth century, but for the whole of the Third World it did not start until the 1930s. Let us recall the main data. If between 1880 and 1913 the population increased by an annual rate of 0.5%, for the 1913-29 period it was already 0.7-0.8%, reaching 1.1-1.2% between 1929 and 1938 and 1.2% for the 1938-1950 period.

A population growth without precedent

From 1938 to 1950 onwards the rate of growth began to increase rapidly: 2.1% in the 1950s and 2.5% in the 1960s. Due to a significant slow down in China, the rate of growth for the whole of the Third World declined thereafter: 2.3% for the 1970s and 2.1% for the 1980s. Even if we take the entire 40-year period between 1950 and 1990, we are faced with an annual growth rate of 2.24%, which means a doubling of the population over a period of 31 years. If we exclude China from the rest of the Third World, the annual increase in the Third World market economies has been 2.44% during the same 40-year period, which means doubling every 29 years. For Africa the rate reached 2.7% (doubling every 26 years) and for some countries it was above 3%: Iraq, Jordan and Tanzania (3.2%); Syria (3.3%), Libya and Zimbabwe (3.7%). Also, 3.7% per year means doubling every 19 years, multiplying by 10 in 63 years and by 38 in 100 years.

Never has any large region witnessed a population increase during a 40-year period even half as rapid as the recent average for the Third World. If, to begin, we limit ourselves to the societies before the Industrial Revolution, the most rapid increase in Europe, China and India was about 0.4-0.6%. After the Industrial Revolution the 40 years of most rapid population growth for the developed countries was the 1870-1910 period, where it stood at 1.1%. But this was made possible by the largest migration in history, when between 1870 and 1913 some 33 million Europeans emigrated - most of them to North America. If we limit ourselves to Europe, the 1870-1910 annual increase was only 0.9%.

Western Europe took a century (between 1810 and 1910) to double its population; the Third World market economies took only twenty-eight to twenty-nine years (between 1950 and 1978/9) and while the European GNP per capita increased by 180-200% during the nineteenth century, the rise was only 60-75% in the Third World. Another, although minor, fact is that during the eighteenth century Western Europe's population increased globally by 45-55%, whereas for the Third World market economies between 1850 and 1950 the total increase had been 120-130%. All these comparisons prove the magnitude of this problem in the difficult task of Third World economic development.

A nexus of myths and a paradoxical alliance

Despite this, a nexus of myths took shape. These were largely mingled with ideological and religious dogmas, and even led to a paradoxical alliance. The first component in this nexus of myths is the wrong assumption that during the first stages of Western development, population increase was a positive factor. As we shall see later, this was not so, but even if it had been, as we just have seen, there is no comparison in the respective rates of population increase between these two cases.

Another component of the nexus of myths concerning population is that one of the major arguments for delaying population-control measures was that 'development is the best contraceptive', and the example of the West is given as a proof. The major problem in this argument is that it took almost a century in the Western world for the birth rate to counterbalance the decline in the death rate. In Western Europe the death rate had already begun to decline at the end of the eighteenth century, whereas the birth rate in most countries did not begin to fall until the 1870s and 1880s. Another argument against family planning is the belief that birth control is a disruption of traditional values, and of 'natural' population evolution. The real disruption is the rapid decrease in infant mortality due to modern technology, and birth control is only a corrective measure against this disruption.
Finally, very often there is confusion between population increase and population density. The fact that some regions are regarded, rightly or not, as low-density populated leads to the wrong conclusion that in such cases population growth has no negative aspects.

In the 1950s and 1960s a very paradoxical informal alliance was formed between the Catholic Church and the Marxists. The Bible was, and still is, the origin of the Catholic Church's opposition to birth control. For the Marxists the 'theological' opposition to birth control goes back to the bitter feud between Marx and Malthus. Western efforts to persuade less developed countries to introduce birth control were presented as an 'imperialistic plot' against the Third World. Mao Tse-tung even suggested the 'absurdity' of birth-control measures through his slogan 'a mouth more to feed means two more hands to work', forgetting, or deliberately ignoring for political reasons, that a mouth has to be fed for years before the hands can work: and that without tools, fertilizer and, above all, additional land, often hands cannot increase food production sufficiently.

One of the paradoxes is that all less developed countries that adopted Marxism, from China to Cuba, had, most of the time, stringent family-planning policies, and in fact experienced the lowest population increase. Between 1950 and 1990, China's population rose at an annual rate of 1.8% compared to 2.4% for the Asian market economies; Cuba's population increased annually by 1.5% compared to 2.5% for the rest of Latin America. The coalition between Catholics and Communists was one of the major causes of the failure of the 1974 United Nations-sponsored World Population Conference to recommend the family-planning policies in the Third World, a failure that retarded such measures in many countries.

After all, one could expect such a nexus of myths and paradoxes when we are dealing with a problem that arouses so much emotion and which entails such complex interactions. What is more emotional than dealing with expected or existing children and, even more, with grandchildren (and a grandfather is writing, who is blessed by great joy provided by 6-year-old Alice, 3-year-old Jonas and a newly born Colin). Complex interactions . . . yes indeed, the problems of relations between population growth and economic growth are very complex.

Population growth and economic growth: a complex problem

Some years ago I was asked to prepare a report on 'Population growth and long-term international economic growth' for the International Population Conference in Manila, 1981 (organized by the International <b>Union </b> for the Scientific Study of Population). In the introduction, I wrote the following:

“Population growth and economic growth, what a wide and marvellous problem; but what a difficult one also. Marvellous and frightening at the same time, for it involves two of the most important aspects of human evolution for, in the last two centuries, and even more so over the last three decades, there has been an unprecedented increase in the pace of change of both of those aspects which may lead, in the case of the Third World, to dangerous food shortages. A difficult problem . . . yes, since it is obvious that the interactions of these two fundamental aspects are numerous, deep, and complex. Difficult, as it is also obvious, population growth is only one among many factors which can influence or be influenced by economic growth. It is also d
ifficult because there are few questions which are so deeply related to religious or political dogmas.”

Yet despite the wide interest in and profound implications of this problem, and probably because of its difficulty, what a United Nations report of 1973 said then is still valid today: The empirical and comparative study of the interrelation between population and economic growth remains one of the least explained areas in the field of demographic economic interrelation.

Statistical analysis of growth in the populations of individual developed countries and economic growth during the last two centuries does not provide any indication that periods of accelerating population growth lead to more rapid economic growth. Whatever the relation between these two factors, it is not a very strong one. If one takes into account the quality of the data, to the very limited extent that a statistically valid conclusion can be reached, it shows a negative relation between population and growth. The results are similar if, instead of a chronological, a cross-spatial analysis is performed. Here too it appears that it is rather the countries with a slower population growth that achieved the better economic performance. More rapid population growth was rather negative, especially when the rate of growth exceeded 1% per year.

The constraints of rapid population growth

One of the most negative results of too rapid a population growth lies in the great difficulty for an economy to absorb the numerous newcomers into its workforce. In the Third World market economies around 1960 we had the following parameters. An annual increase in the workforce of 2.4%; a workforce distribution where 77% were employed in agriculture, 10% in industry and 13% in services. In such a situation, in order to absorb the surplus agricultural labour, it implied that employment in the other sectors should be increased by an annual 8.0%, which is impossible. In Europe, around 1800, when the share of the agricultural workforce was close to that of the Third World in 1960, the comparable percentage increase was below 2% per year.

In the Third World this situation did not allow the rest of the economy to absorb the agricultural labour surplus. Therefore, we saw a continuous increase in the agricultural workforce which exacerbated an already negative situation in the land/workforce ratio. Since in most regions land suitable for agriculture was already in use by the mid-nineteenth century, the situation in the mid-twentieth was even more negative. Around 1950 in the Third World market economies there were only 2.4 hectares of agricultural land2 per agricultural worker. In Europe, around 1910, which was the historical low point, this figure was 3.6 hectares. At the same time, it was 14.6 hectares in the United States and 5.1 hectares for the whole of the developed countries. Around 1990, for the Third World economies this ratio had fallen to below 1.8 hectares, and in some large Asian countries even below 1.0 hectare (Bangladesh, 0.4 hectare).

Even if we take into consideration the fact that, because there are two crops a year in most rice-producing countries, yields are higher than they were in Europe in the nineteenth century, and that thanks to the green revolution important progresses were made, this still implies low cereal production capacity. In Asia, where three-quarters of the Third World's population are concentrated, the average yield per hectare for all the cereals combined is now close to 2,600 kg compared to 950 kg for Europe around 1850. But, on average, each European farmer then had four or five times more land. This explains the low agricultural productivity in the Third World, which, in turn, is one of the factors that has led to the rapid increase in cereal imports (see Chapter 9). But, in addition to this important negative constraint of population growth, others are also present. Let us give a brief overview of these.

The first, and the most obvious, is the need for a high rate of investment in order to absorb the population increase. According to the best estimate of the capital output ratio, 4-5% of GNP must be invested in the Third World in order to obtain a 1% growth in the economy. This implies that to compensate for the 2.4% population increase, some 10-12% of GNP needs to be invested. Such an investment ratio was reached in Europe only after more than half of a century of development, at a time when its population increase was only a third of that of the Third World today, and, what is even more important, when per capita income was higher.
A high rate of population increase implies an even more rapid rise in school-age populations. This, in turn, implies the necessity for a very rapid expansion in school facilities in both physical and human terms, and both are not easy. Training a large number of teachers is not an easy task. Rapid population growth also implies very large families, which entails negative consequences for both parents and children.

To what extent are these constraints modified in less densely populated countries? The only difference, and it is not a marginal one, lies in the availability of agricultural land. This, for example, enabled Latin America to increase the amount of land per agricultural worker despite an increase in their number. Even if some poorer land had to be used for cultivation, this enabled Latin America to increase its agricultural productivity much more rapidly than the rest of the Third World.

This, however, was not enough to counterbalance the other negative constraints of too rapid a population increase, especially since Latin America's agriculture was less dominant globally. The economic performance of this region has been much worse than that of the rest of the Third World. In Latin America, GNP per capita exceeded that of the rest of the Third World market economies by 170% by 1950, but this figure was reduced to 100% 40 years later. Without giving too much significance to this, it is worth noting that if we rank the major regions by their rate of population growth in the last 40 years, this ranking is exactly the inverse of that of per capita GNP growth.

Finally, and this is far from being a minor aspect, rapid population growth is one of the major causes of Third World urban expansion, which is unprecedented in both its scale and modalities.

Its scale . . . Between 1950 and 1990 the number of people living in the Third World cities rose from 0.26 billion to 1.45 billion. This implies a rate of growth more than twice as fast as that in Europe during its greatest period of urbanization. The absolute increase during this period, close to 1.2 billion city dwellers, represents a number twice as high as the total world urban population in 1950.

Its modalities . . . This urban expansion took place virtually without economic development and led to a concentration of populations in very large cities. Furthermore, living conditions in those cities are deplorable, especially as far as housing is concerned, not to speak of services such as basic health care, water and sewage. There has been a proliferation of shantytowns whose population in 1980 represented 40-45% of urban inhabitants in the Third World economies. Worse still is the fact that practically all the qualities that made Western cities in the nineteenth century (and in traditional societies in general) a factor in their countries' economic development do not play a similar role in the Third World. Globally, today in the Third World, urbanization is more a burden than an asset.
Undoubtedly awareness of the reality of the constraints imposed by rapid population growth has increased. The number of countries in the Third World supporting family-planning programmes rose from two in the mid-1950s to eight in the mid-1960s, to 33 in 1970 and to 113 in 1988, and the 1980s were characterized by a slowing in the rate of population increase.

All thi
s does not imply that the measures have been strict enough (except for China) and that therefore the rapid population growth will disappear in the near future. According to United Nations projections (medium variant) published in 1991, the Third World market economies' population will rise from 2.8 billion in 1990 to 5.4 billion in 2025. This means that by then, compared to the mid-eighteenth century, when this region was already largely populated, the level of population will have multiplied by 15 (for the developed countries, by seven). Furthermore, this does not imply either that the myth that population growth does not have negative aspects has disappeared, especially in the lower densely populated regions. Therefore it is crucial to take into consideration the fact that population growth was never an asset, and is in every situation a great constraint. Even if a rapid population increase had no negative economic consequences, it still leads to a reduction in one of the most prized assets: space, and this is more than a sufficient reason for an international effort to reduce population growth.

Chi volesse leggere l’intero volume mi contatti privatamente (non vorrei che Truman s’incazz****!)

Questo invece è un paper di E. Reinert , “How Rich nations got Rich Essays in the History of Economic Policy”. Sono tre brevi saggi che metto giusto per fornire un assaggio del testo consigliato da Istwine “E. Reinert - How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor” .
https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/32638/WP2004-01.pdf?sequence=1

Questo è un breve saggio sulla globalizzazione: Globalization myths: some historical reflections on integration, industrialization and growth in the world economy - Paul Bairoch and Richard Kozul-Wright.

“It has become popular to draw a parallel between current globalization trends and the half century of international economic integration before the First World War. Indeed, some writers suggest that current trends mark a return to this earlier period, from which they draw strong conclusions about growth prospects and convergence associated with globalization. This paper assesses this historical parallel. It accepts that many features of today's international
economy are not unique. However, it is sceptical of efforts to make a direct parallel with the earlier period. In particular, the paper shows that the period before 1913 was not one of trade liberalization, nor one of reduced expectations about the role of the State, and suggests that rapid industrial growth in some economies cannot be explained by globalization pressures.More generally, a description of this earlier period of globalization as one of rapid growth and convergence is questioned, and instead associated with uneven economic development, during
which a very small group of countries were able to reinforce their domestic growth efforts through links to the international economy, while for others these same links did little to alter long-term growth prospects, and in some cases even hindered them.”

Il resto è qui : http://unctad.org/en/Docs/dp_113.en.pdf

Peraltro il testo di Reinert non si spinge molto sulla questione popolazione. Lui si limita a discutere del fatto che i limiti sono dati anche e soprattutto dalla struttura produttiva, cioè la distinzione che poi guida tutto il libro tra rendimenti crescenti e decrescenti. E quindi si hanno situazioni tipo i Paesi Bassi con una densità ab/kmq oltre i 400 e paesi molto più poveri con densità irrisorie. Va da sé che conta non solo la struttura produttiva ma anche il clima, il territorio ecc. Ma il discorso di Bairoch fila di più per me, e Reinert lo lascia un po' così, in sospeso.

Però fa un esempio interessante per quanto riguarda il genocidio del Rwanda. Cita uno studioso francese, Gerard Prunier che sostiene:

"The decision to kill was of course made by politicians, for political reasons. But at least part of the reason why it was carried out so thoroughly by the ordinary rank-and-file peasants... was feeling that there where too many people on too little land, and that with a reduction in their numbers, there would be more for the survivors."

Ora, posta così è molto tragico. Ma è tutto concatenato necessariamente e spesso che l'opinione comune sia empiricamente fondata o meno (che ci fossero poche terre in questo caso), può comunque portare a situazioni drammatiche. Da qui la necessità di discuterne, tenendo conto che a prescindere dalle politiche implementate, una centralità della variabile "popolazione" esiste.

La natura umana può essere egoista o altruista ok. In un sistema "egoista" come indubbiamente è il capitalismo, l'affermazione della natura altruista viene limitata, mentre quella egoista viene agevolata. Viceversa in un sitema più "altruista".
Non dico che verrebbero eliminati completamente soprusi o quantaltro, ma in un sistema "altruista" farebbero molta più fatica a verificarsi.
Ma come si può realizzare un sistema del genere se non si riesce a mettere completamente in discussione il capitalismo che ne è l'antitesi?

E tu dici che funzionerebbe nella realtà?
Potresti farmi un esempio di una società vicina a questi ideali dove effettivamente la gente sta o stava meglio? Storicamente parrebbe che le società dove si è stati meglio sarebbero non tanto quelle liberiste o socialiste, ma una via di mezzo.

Gli esempi che ti posso fare sono tanti quanti me ne puoi fare tu riguardo ad una società vicina agli ideali liberisti dove effettivamente la gente sta o stava meglio. Anzi io forse ne potrei fare uno in più. Ma non è importante.
Invece parli di una via di mezzo. Per esempio l'Italia dal dopoguerra fino al finire dei '70 era una via di mezzo. Il fatto è che si stava bene finché si è percorsa una strada più socialista e si rispettava abbastanza la Costituzione. E proseguendo per quella strada poteva migliorare ancora. I guai sono cominciati da quando c'è stata l'inversione di rotta verso il liberismo con conseguente tradimento della Costituzione, ritenuta troppo socialista.

Iacopo
ho trovato qualcosa a riguardo l’esperimento sui topi:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/economicHistory/pdf/FACTSPDF/2308Ramadams.pdf

Abstract
In John B. Calhoun’s early crowding experiments, rats were supplied with everything they need ed – except space. The result was a population boom, followed by such severe psychological disruption that the animals died off to extinction. The take-home message was that crowding resulted in pathological behaviour –in rats and by extension in humans. For those pessimistic about
Earth’s “carrying capacity,” the macabre spectacle of this “behavioural sink” was a compelling symbol of the problems awaiting overpopulation. Calhoun’s work enjoyed considerable popular success. But cultural influence can run both ways. In this paper, we look at how the cultural impact of Calhoun’s experiments resulted in a simplified, popular version of his work
coming to overshadow the more nuanced and positive message he wanted to spread, and how his professional reputation was affected by this popular “success.”

Considera comunque che un comportamento aggressivo è condizionato anche da latri fattori oltre alla densità di popolazione: la genetica, fattori culturali, comportamentali propri di specie etc etc etc.

Dopo la chiusura di Nokia la Finlandia è ancora appetibile in prospettiva futura?

Istwine
ti riferisci anche ad una condizione simile (vedi topi) per quanto riguarda la questione del genocidio Rwandese?

Giovanni
nel periodo post-bellico fino agli anni 70 si era comunque in un sistema capitalistico.
Si faceva crescita, il lavoro c’era, la popolazione aumentava, erano i tempi del boom consumistico.

No no sganzo, mi riferivo al fatto che spesso si hanno delle percezioni o delle idee magari esagerate ma comunque che hanno un minimo di radicamento. Che so, si dice che la percezione degli italiani sull'immigrazione sia del tutto fuori luogo in termini di numeri, ma è anche conseguenza di alcune situazioni particolari (criminalità, sovraffollamento, disoccupazione). Quindi magari etichettare come "razzisti" "fascisti" ecc chiunque abbia un atteggiamento critico, non sempre è intelligente, è bene cominciare a parlarne e a parlarne tenendo conto di tutti gli aspetti, soprattutto quello della sostenibilità sociale ed economica, senza moralismi. Ma qui a parte Fernesto mi pare nessuno ne abbia fatti, quindi non mi riferisco ai partecipanti.

Il caso del Rwanda è estremo, l'ho portato per la tesi riguardante la struttura produttiva e di come pur non sapendo cosa sia un rendimento decrescente il cittadino del Rwanda lo "percepiva".