Monday, July 18, 2005

12 Planets

Insomnia again. I was watching the show 30 Days on the FX channel last night, and the topic was taking two average American consumers from New York City to a commune that is off the grid. They were to live on a commune called Dancing Rabbit for 30 days. Before they went to the commune they were followed by some environmental consultant who watched their behavior. The analyst told them that if everyone on the planet lived as they did we would need 12 and half planets. The above statement got my attention.
Since last night I have been thinking about how one would explain this using economics?
If we accept the consultants claim that we would need 12 planets to sustain the lifestyle of the two volunteers, could this explain unequal distribution of resources?
Or is our current structure a temporary outlier that will be corrected by the market forces?
What will be the effect of these market forces on our standard of living?
Or is this what economist call tragedy of commons?

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