Title: On the strategy of trying to reduce economic inequality by expanding the scale of human activity.
Abstract: Strategy to achieve sustainable economic development supported in the Brundtland Report is founded upon the assumptions that there will be no serious limits to matrial growth and that factors of production are substitutable. This strategy aims to raise the standard of living of the poor to the level of those who are better off bringing them to the forms of consumption and investment in present-day industrialized countries. This evolution would be based upon a rate of global economic growth and asset and income distribution capable of allowing developing countries to attain a significant per captia increase in disposable income. Concerned about global consequences of human activity such as pollution and resource depletion the World Commission on Environment and Development points out that some key factors of production are complementary rather than substitutable and will limit growth. An ever-increasing input of natural resources is called for to support required growth; it follows that natural capital stock would have to be liquidated. The productivity of manmade capital and labor as natural resource transformation agents will however decline if flows of resources wane or disappear. When one regards the notion of sustainable development over the requisite several generations or centuries it becomes clear that the goal will not be reached where population and per captia use of finite resources continues to grow significantly. The authors discuss the flaws of technological optimists; why the free market approach to the problem will not work; north-south trade and aid cooperation; and considers whether technological advances will benefit the strong or the weak. In sum an acceptable solution to development requires a fairly good knowledge of the consequences of alternative paths of human activities in the future and a body to authoritatively use this knowledge to choose and enforce the future path of development.
Publication Year: 1992
Publication Date: 1992-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 17
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