Comments on: Natural selection and economic growth

By: Jason Collins

Jason Collins — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 17:51:51 +0000

On the first question, human capital is dependent on the level of education, which increases human capital, and technological progress, which decreases it. Technological progress decreases human capital as it makes the education received redundant – e.g. you learn to use one form of software and it is then superseded. At lower levels of human capital, there are higher returns to education. Hence, human capital eroding technological progress increases the returns to education and the incentive to invest in it. I should note that this is an assumption of the model rather than a result of the model.

On the second, the quantity-preferring types need more incentive to invest than the quality-preferring types. As technological progress speeds up, the incentive increases (as indicated by my first answer) and the incentive becomes large enough that the quantity-preferring types respond to it through educating their children.

(and sorry for the long time for a response – I’ve been on the road for the last week)

By: Miguel Madeira

Miguel Madeira — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 23:04:06 +0000

“as the average level of education in the population drives technological progress. This in turn increases the incentive to invest in education” (…)

“Eventually, the rate of technological progress gets high enough to induce the quantity-preferring genotypes to invest in education.”

Why?

By: Brenton

Brenton — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 03:49:34 +0000

“If some people chose to focus all excess consumption into raising children they would come to dominate the population.”

Looks likely to happen over the next century or two, even without considering immigration in Western countries. Some small fundamentalist populations are growing very, very quickly. The USA might become mostly Amish 100-200 years from now :)

By: Jason Collins

Jason Collins — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 08:40:34 +0000

Morstern, I tend to agree that the introduction of contraception makes the relationship between quantity and education more complex than the model suggests. As for IQ, that is one of the elements in my mind when I talk of inherent quality. arosko, in many ways, this model is simply taking the r-K selection model of biology and putting it into an economic context. Although I'm not particularly familiar with the research, my understanding is that r-K selection theory can be (and has been) applied at all scales.

By: arosko

arosko — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 21:41:45 +0000

Whenever I read something like this, I wonder if similar phenomena take place on other scales or in other guises. Like within bacterial colonies, or among different cell types within the human body.

Like for instance, what (“optimization-ally” speaking) drives the relative rates of synaptic growth vs. mitosis in other cell types that merely provide body mass or metabolic capacity? Maybe this kind of economic model, when translated to multicellular organisms, could explain the correlations in risk between certain mental conditions and metabolic disorders.

By: Morstern

Morstern — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 08:45:04 +0000

- vulcanized rubber and the spreading use of condoms (mid 1800′s)
- The pill (early 1960′s)
That one can now focus more on education (mainly applies to women, but also to men that could not even with the help of extended family support children) is the after effect.

The scale effect with competition produces progress in populations with a higher base IQ. The quality factor is subjective with regards to being tied to IQ. If the land is scarce in resources then being stronger is perhaps better as you can kill and take from your competitors. Brawn is the champion of quality in that case. Lies and the ability to con from others could lead to the quality factor in some populations.

I think a slightly modified model of scale with regards to a population’s base will give a better result that can be applied across all populations. Regardless of my very narrow scoped comments I think the graphs you posted still show reasonable expectations of where we as a worldly people are heading. I just think the cause and effects of the models are a little off.

Back to birth control for a minute though. I do not believe that education has pushed people to breed less for some advantage of quality. Instead I think it is simply that the brighter man has always molded nature as best as he could. With current technologies related to reproduction, this is very easy to do. Now (last 30 something years?) you have a culture in which baby making is more often looked down upon as if it is a thing the poor do. (An exception would be Utah where it is still rather popular/expected that you have a family.)

Lastly sorry for such a poorly worded response. I have a seminar to attend and you subject was rather large as it is outside of my daily readings. I may give it another look when I return.