Capacity

Capacity: actual or potential ability to perform, yield, or withstand


I hear a lot about the ills of society these days and naturally this discourse tends to focus on the underprivileged which makes sense. Inevitably these underprivileged folk share some things in common and in particular they suffer from some “disability” which prevents them from getting on in society. I am using the word disability in a very wide sense such as a lack of education or skills as well as a physical or mental disability.

So here is a little thought experiment.

Think of a nomadic hunter gatherer tribe of say 20 odd people, basically a family unit making its way in the world as best it can. This is the human reality not so long ago (in a geological time frame). As the tribe hunts game and the like it will experience the usual tribulations of life such as some members aging to a point where they cannot hunt effectively or one of the tribe might get injured in a hunt and some of the 20 might be infants who can’t contribute to food gathering.

These “unproductive” members of the tribe will be supported by the rest and life will be fine. However for the sake of argument let’s assume you need at least 10 hunters out of 20 to make the system work ie each hunter can support one other person. This is what I am referring to as the Capacity of the tribe.

What would happen to the tribe if there were only 8 hunters and 12 young old or weak members? Not sure but it is bound to be bad for at least 4 members of the 12 to bring things into balance. If nothing changed then presumably all the tribe would slowly weaken and everyone would die in the long run.

So what?

Well all groups have a carrying capacity even our really complex industrialised societies. It is not so easy to see but it must still be there after all as nothing has really changed from the tribe days in terms of providing enough resources for all.

But I have never heard a conversation about whether or not we can “afford” the numbers of disabled persons that we carry in society. To be truthful I am not even sure how you would work it out and I know that the idea will seem a bit icky to some people because in the brutal world of our ancient ancestors some or all of the 4 would have been left to die and you could infer that is my idea for dealing with our disadvantaged (which it is not).

This idea potentially matters because let’s just assume the number works out to be 40% of society needs to be productive to support the other 60%. Let’s further assume that we currently sit at 62% unproductive. (there are a lot of kids and older folk out there) Then any attempt to fix the problem that does not address this issue is doomed to failure so it is important that we know.

The current solutions all really boil down to have the rich give some of their surplus to the poor. In comes in various packages but this is the central idea nine times out of ten. However if we are beyond capacity this will result in the death of the total tribe.

In NZ in 2006 (the latest census figures I could easily find) the population was just over 4M and the number of people in full time work was 1.4M so the 35% of the population supports the remainder. (yes I know part time work etc. but it isn’t going to get past 40% ) Bet you thought it was more than that.