Yes, this is exactly where I disagree strongly. Malthus and his imitators have all been horribly wrong. I will concede that there is ultimately a finite amount of stuff in the universe, but looking at any apparent hard limits like you suggest has been a recipe for undue pessimism. For example, I don't think "arable land" is a fixed resource.
Oh yeah I forgot about that, that could do it. Maybe that's where the certainty comes from. My genuine belief is that there will continue be droughts and wars that cause famines and the excess deaths that come with them, but that the overall trend of famine-related deaths per capita will continue to trend downwards despite climate change. I think war and other geopolitical disruptions are the greatest threats to food security.
Right, I think we can come up with an agreeable or used an established definition of famine deaths that includes these. I'm taking a closer look at this our world in data page to try to come up with well-defined terms.
So these will be starvation deaths? I like looking at excess deaths, so we need to look at the base rate of starvation, and I'd like to go per capita, as I expect population to continue to increase substantially and more people to die of all causes year over year as a result. Can we do $10k?
I would like to make a bet specifically targeting the parent comment's absolute certainty that there will be failed harvests that cause the deaths of millions. When do we expect this to happen? How much time would have to pass without it happening to cause you to reconsider the inevitability of this specific prediction?
As someone who grew up in the Midwest and currently living on the East coast, I always get a little pissed off when I hear this trope. People in the Midwest are honest and just genuinely nice and friendly. Politeness to me has performative connotations. Most of my peers from back home talk like sailors.
I think rural vs suburban vs urban mannerisms might be a confounding variable here as well. I'm from the suburbs.
I think late 2014/early 2015 I had my first iPhone stolen when playing soccer with some bros in a local park. We were able to use Find My iPhone to track it to a specific address. Went to the local police station, filed a report, and they told me candidly that they'd probably never find it and that they wouldn't go to the house. So another guy who also had his phone stolen and I went to the house and called police to let them know that we were about to knock on their door. About 4 squad cars showed up almost immediately. A man answered the door and we explained that our phones went missing and we tracked them to that address. He yelled for his kid who apparently had a history of trouble. The kid denied it at first but his dad(?) gave him a talking to and we got our phones back an hour or so later. We did not press charges.
It wouldn't take a genius because that would be a terrible business decision when you consider number of units sold. And profit-maximizing wouldn't be a particularly weird obsession for a CEO to have, in fact, it's exactly the obsession you'd want him to have.
If there hypothetically was a magical source of near infinite renewable energy that could be harnessed without negative side effects, would you be ok with 2600+ sqft homes and air conditioning? I sometimes get the impression that sustainability advocates/environmentalists are more anti-technolgy or anti-human than they are pro-nature and saying things like "there is no amount of renewable energy that will make [enjoyable living standards] a sustainable way of living" doesn't make environmental reforms seem very palatable to me. What number of humans can the Earth ideally sustain in your estimation? If it's substantially less than the current population, then the cure is worse than the disease.
Can't believe I had to scroll this far down to see the first mention of Excel. I'm an Excel wiz turned junior dev. My biggest limitation usually was integrating with other software/systems, but power query actually covered a lot of use cases. Excel dominates that liminal space between software engineers and end users
Since you said "economic value" specifically, I'd have to say that the man-hours are only one of the factors that could determine value. Strictly speaking, economic value is determined by supply and demand. Man-hours are a cost and help determine the shape and position of the supply curve of a given good or service, but the demand side is almost completely independent of how much effort it takes to produce something. Instead the demand curve will be shaped the culmination of individuals' marginal utilities (the perceived value of the next additional unit of a thing) for the good or service in question. On a more philosophical note, value is entirely subjective, but the equilibrium price model is compatible with value's subjectivity and gives us a powerful paradigm for understanding why some things are more "valuable" than others