The industrial ladder depicts economies, as they develop and mature, moving up from agriculture to manufacturing to service provision and on to the knowledge-based economy (KBE). In the service delivery sector, the integration of KBE features leads to the opening of the experience economy.
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Manufacturing capacity has increased enormously over recent decades to the extent that, in most consumer goods markets, there is an excess of supply over demand: one of the main reasons why so much food is wasted in the western world is that there are so many competitors preparing it for sale should demand arise.
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It has been observed that the history of the working class is encapsulated by the struggle for the length of the working day. After generations of struggle and suffering, the working day was reduced from fourteen hours a day to an average of eight (of course, this is only true in the developed countries – elsewhere, working days remain dreadfully and dangerously long) and people can expect two days off a week, by and large. These sacrifices have been bitter and genuine and are not to be given up lightly.
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The fruits of economic growth have been hugely and dangerously skewed towards the owners of capital and away from labour in the last 30 years. Will this persist into the future and, if it does, what would it mean?
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An introduction to a series of articles that will describe what we do and do not know about economic development in the next five, 20 and 50 years.
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Fleets of vehicles – buses, trucks, vans – are essential parts of providing government as well as private sector services and that means they have a role in promoting development. Buses provide mass transit, usually at comparatively low cost, which help people in remote areas improve their quality of life and connect people with their places of work if they cannot find work nearby or cannot afford to live near to their place of work – this is a situation that is increasingly common in the cities of the developed world, which rely on low cost labour from service workers but force them to live long distances away and this greatly reduces their standard of living.
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Forests are particularly important in the management of climate change because of their role in exchanging oxygen and carbon gases and because of their vulnerability to the effects of changes in the climate.
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There has always been migration of plants and animals around the world: it is after all how small islands became habitable. Animals have been known to catch lifts on driftwood or other floating items, rats have travelled around the world as unwanted guests in the holds of ships and many plants are actually designed to propagate by spreading their seeds to the winds.
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Planning for future climate change is similar to any kind of planning: plans are like maps, they can tell us where we are, where we are going, how we are going to get there and how we can tell if we are going the wrong way.
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The weather is important to the world now more than ever – it has always been important, of course, since it is directly related to agricultural production in addition to lifestyle and security issues.
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