Of course Malthus and the CoR will be proved correct. In fact some of the CoR’s predictions are starting to come in. From memory they were predicting shortages of various commodities from around about now. Since we’ve already hit peak oil, and peak phosphorous is looming, their predictions look pretty good (although perhaps a bit conservative).

I remember the certainty with which the CoR forecast our fate, but last time I checked the world hadn’t ended, now I seem likely to outlive it.

It’s odd that those who still think humans succesfully negotiating a future are accused of religosity, rather it’s the counter argument all sounds like a much older fanaticism about the nature of humanity and certainty about good and evil.

Flower, I’ve just been in the South West of WA, it had a good winter and looks great and there are plenty of species not facing extinction, bar, apparently, beef farmers, who can’t get sufficient prices for their offput – an odd thing given the malthusian equation!

And poor LO being called a smug (Saint- (give us our due)) Simonite and libertarian – both! bought back memories of campus life in the early ’70s – What! has the Tardis landed and the doctor’s latest avatar a fanatical trotskite, stepped out!

Nothing, except, cotton farming would no longer be the most profitible use for holders of water licenses in those areas that currently produce cotton if the price of water reflected its scarcity…

If you want to read about how allocation should be done and how pricing would ensure that end-prices to consumers reflected environmental externalities, how about reading the Wentworth Group’s Blueprint for a National Water Plan and their follow-up work. On pricing, check out Quiggin’s CEDA paper for a start….

The following has been crossposted as a comment to the article
Melbourne’s skyrocketing population: Kelvin Thomson speaks out in Melbourne November 11

I just heard Brisbane local ABC radio’s Madonna King interview Doug McTaggart the former (I think) boss of the Government owned Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC).

He talked of 20,000 (I think) people moving up to Queensland each quarter.

I am not sure how this topic came into it, but Madonna King asked if that would cause property prices to go up and he unsurprisingly confirmed that it would. Then Madonna King suggested that property would be a good investment.

In other words, Madonna King sees profiting others’ needs for such a basic necessity as shelter is a good thing and, presumably, allowing (or deliberately casuing) population growth to drive up property values is also a good thing, although se didn’t state that explicitly.

A regular feature of her program is a discussion of property values with a real estate investment adviser. In those sessions she talks as if its inherently good if property prices go up and bad if they remain the same or go down

Then, on other occasions, Madonna King rails with seeming passion against housing unaffordability and the plight of the homeless. At least one of her Saturday Courier-Mail columns was devoted to this issue, However, she seems inexplicably incapable of understanding the obvious, as I put in a media release as Lord Mayoral candidate on 4 March 2008 in response to one of Prime Minister Rudd’s similar pretences at concern about housing unaffordability:

Mr Rudd needs to decide whether he will continue to serve the interests of the property sector or whether he will provide ordinary Australians with affordable housing, but he cannot do both.

Naturally my media release was not published.

Doug McTaggart als went on to explain how population growth necessitated the Queensland Government’s fire sale. The argument he put was, the Queensland faced 3 choices:

1. Not build the infrastructure necessary to provide jobs for and meet the needs of the new arrivals;
2. Raise taxes; or
3. Sell off assets (“Rearrange the balance sheet” as he put it at one point.

Interestingly, both Kevin Rudd and Rupert Murdoch’s Australian newspaper neglected to tell the Australian public that selling off public assets was part of the price they would have to pay for the population growth that they insist is so much in our interests. (See, for example “Population is destiny” in the Australian of 19 September.)

Somehow, it apparently occurred to neither King nor McTaggart that another choice should be offered to the Australian public:

4. Reduce immigration and stablise our population.

For those who may be interested, I have written more of Madonna King’s method of journalism, which many of her listeners mistake for properly holding to account our political and business leaders here on John Quiggin’s web site as well as in the article “Brisbane ABC suppresses alternative candidates in state elections despite listener dismay with major parties” of 30 Apr 09 on this web site.

Proper water rights allocation and pricing would make cotton production in Australia UNPROFITABLE not more profitable. So, you have it almost excactly the wrong way round!!

Well perhaps. OTOH, having taken my view from empirical reality, perhaps not. “Proper” and “would” are probably the key flaws in your comment. How do you envisage allocation & pricing being done properly? Why “would” this stop water licence owners from seeking to maximise their return?

There’s only one thing worse than a smug Simonite, and that’s a smug Libertarian. I suspect LO is both.

Unfortunately their nutty religion ideology will lead us to the edge of the cliff and over. The commonsense view (encapsulated by Kenneth Boulding’s famous quote below) will fall on deaf ears as Kevin and his ilk put the pedal to the metal and launch us towards the precipice.

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

- Kenneth E. Boulding, Economist.