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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Haim R. Branisteanu who wrote (22113)	11/20/2004 6:49:02 AM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

The most interesting course I took at U.C. Berkeley was "Economic Demographics" taught by the late Carlo Cipola, who was head of plague control for the U.N. in addition to being a professor at both the University of Pavia Italy and Berkeley. The course covered the economic impact of plague which arguably delayed the industrial revolution by 300 years from the 1500s to the 1800s, and would heavily impact our current economy. Given a not unusual mortality rate of 40%, the entire cohort of many specialties are likely to be lost - say the death toll included all elevator repairmen and engineers - or jet engine mechanics. At 40% mortality this type of knowledge deletion is likely. Of course new people could be taught from books, but the economy is simply too specialized in too many ways to continue unaffected in major ways. The most interesting information was saved for the last day of class. He showed graphics of the various plagues, in which he placed overlays of important events such as the discovery of bacteria, improvements in public sanitation etc. All of these improvement occurred long after the last plague ended. The plagues stopped largely because they became less pathogenic through natural selection, not because of anything man did. The implication being that random mutation would inevitably send these pathogens out of balance with their hosts to become once again major plagues. Based on past experience, he showed we were long overdue. His approach to plague control was the World Health Organization Health Stations. He suggested it was likely that plagues would first affect stressed populations in poorly fed areas of the world where WHO operated their medical stations. If this occurred he hoped transportation to the area could be shut down long enough to discover something useful about the pathogen. .