Resources as the Object of International Conflict
?In 1986, geologist Eugene Cameron published "At the Crossroads, US Mineral Resources and the Problems of the Future." This was an informative and realistic book. The author noted that the US (and he could have added "the developed world") was running out of resources and more reliant every day on foreign countries, especially developing countries, for resources. Thirty-nine years later, the liars in Washington are still pretending that it isn't so. They want us to believe that they don't invade and seek to conquer other countries, especially African countries and Russia, in order to steal their resources.
But the average, REAL, marginal productivity of labor has probably been negative since before WWI. (REAL marginal productivity accounts for opportunity costs and diseconomies or "externalities," like air and water pollution, in determining costs.) The biggest capitalists and ruling classes of every country know that if they can steal resources from other countries, they can increase the productivity of their own workers. They can thereby extend the life of class society a little longer in their own countries and their own "privileged" residence atop class society's dung hill.
It is even more fundamental and important FOR ALL OF US to recognize that our savage, class society world consists essentially of Ks and Rs. Like the big mammals, Ks pursue a quality reproductive strategy. They equip their relatively few children with every advantage for survival. Rs, the people on the bottom that can't do that, pursue the R, quantity reproductive strategy. Rs can only tolerate Ks by being Rs, which is why our savage class society's GLOBAL population is always ballooning and out of control. Resources are ever scarcer. War and every other variety of savagery are ever more common.
To solve any of our symptoms, we must minimize BOTH K AND R by maximizing, respectively, equal opportunity and population control. Until we are educated and sane enough to do this, military defense and solidarity must remain the top priorities for developing countries, especially African countries and Russia.
Dave
March 16, 2025