Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations - Kootenay Local Agricultural Society

enefits of soil conservation can be harvested only after decades of stewardship,
and the cost of soil abuse is borne by all.
The idea of free markets for labor, land, and capital developed alongside
Malthus’s controversial theory. Adam Smith, the father of modern economic
theory, wrote his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations in 1776. In it he argued that competition between individuals acting
in their own interest, whether as buyers or sellers, would produce the
greatest societal benefit. Clearly, the past few centuries proved that selfregulating,
free markets can effectively set prices and match production to
demand. Yet even Smith acknowledged that governmental regulation is
needed to steer markets toward desirable outcomes.
Almost unquestioningly accepted in Western societies, classical economics
distilled from Smith’s views, as well as variants like Keynesian economics,
neglect the fundamental problem of resource depletion. They share the
false assumption that the value of finite resources is equal to the cost of using
them, extracting them, or replacing them with other resources. This problem
is central to soil exhaustion and erosion, given the long time required
to rebuild soil and the lack of any viable substitute for healthy soil.
Marxist economics shares this critical blind spot. Marx and Engels
viewed the value of products as derived from the labor that went into their
production. To them, the level of effort needed to find, extract, and use a
resource accounted for issues deriving from resource scarcity. Focused on
harnessing nature to advance the proletariat, they never put the idea that
society could run out of key resources in their lexicon. Instead, Engels
tersely dismissed the problem of soil degradation. “The productivity of the
land can be infinitely increased by the application of capital, labour and
science.” 1 Contrary to his dour image, Engels was apparently an optimist.
In effect, economic theory—whether capitalist or Marxist—implicitly
assumes that resources are inexhaustible or infinitely substitutable. Given
either scenario, the most rational course of action for individuals pursing
their own self-interest is to simply ignore the interests of posterity. Economic
systems of all stripes are biased toward using up finite resources and
passing the bill on to future generations.
Concern over long-term productivity of the soil is almost universal
among those who have examined the issue. Predictably—and understandably—more
pressing problems than saving dirt usually carry the day.
Long-term issues seldom get addressed when more immediate crises compete
for policymakers’ attention. When there is lots of land, there is little
incentive to preserve the soil. It is only when scarcity arrives that people
life span of civilizations 235