Sustainable economies, world resources and wolframalpha

Today we are doing economics at business school. It is frightening to think that 21% of the world's economy comes from 5% of the world's population (the USA). The USA has a high services component (education, health care, safety etc.) and relies heavily on other countries for Agriculture and mining (food and minerals). Of course that comes from Africa which is the largest food and mineral resource base (25% of the world's physical resources comes from here). Amazingly the world's production of food has outstripped the world's demand for food - in other words there is MORE food in the world than there are hungry people! Of course this food goes where there is money (so most African nations export their food and minerals while their people starve).

Ghandi once commented that ?The earth has enough resources to meet every man?s need, but not every man?s greed?.

I quickly went back to WolframAlpha to get some 'knowledge' (as opposed to just information - see yesterday's post on this wonderful tool). Now consider this - nations that can buy food, and that have a high proportion of services (health, education, safety, water production etc.) in their economy will have a much higher expected life expectancy at birth). So consider this... If you are born in the USA you will be expected to live longer (because you will have both food and services). Yet a nation like Swaziland that is resource rich will export its food and its economy is structured towards providing food and minerals for export to the rest of the world!

Take a look at this shocking statistic for life expectancy in Swaziland (31.9 years!), whilst in America it is 78.9 years! Of course HIV and AIDS have a huge impact on this (again, what is required is a strong services sector in the economy! Medical care (for those who are sick) and education for those who are not yet effected - but these lesser developed economies cannot focus on these elements since their basic survival is based around harvesting their natural resources to bring money into their economies to fund growth).

I am not sure if you know that 'economics' comes from two Biblical words (oikos meaning household, and nomos meaning to manage). I wonder how God feels when God sees all of the Children in God's household, some are fat, some are starving, some of us have everything whilst others have nothing!

I remember Bishop Dandala commenting some years ago that Africa is heading for a new form of colonisation - economic colonisation, where the strong will take over our land, our resources, and our political and economic systems simply because we shall have the natural resources, but our people will be so weakened by poverty and AIDS that we will sell it all for survival. In this context strong economies like China, America and India will take over what we have in order fund their development and growth from a position of dominance...

I would love to hear your thoughts. How do we turn this around? What can we, as Christians, do to transform the world's economies to make them more sustainable and Christ honouring?

I have a few other posts on economics here.