Mokyr's favorable review of Smil whets one's appetite to read and learn from  
Smil. Some key points are missing, however.  
  
The idea that "the problem is not production, but distribution" is prominent  
in J.S. Mill, 1848; in Henry George, 1879; and in many socialists. This  
awareness preceded the great "saltation" of technology that Smil stresses as  
the bend in the hockey stick.  
  
The distributional view reached a high point in the 1930's, the formative  
years of many leading economists of the generation now retiring, and turned  
them toward careers in the social sciences. The idea of cultural lag of  
social organization behind science and technique had become commonplace, and  
kept us from being carried away by technolatry. Since then the view that "a  
rising tide lifts all boats" has taken hold, fortified by massive "deep  
lobbying" by think-tanks funded by those in the biggest boats.  
  
George, of course, stressed that many who have no boats suffer from that  
rising tide; that the prices of land and natural resources would take up  
most of the gains of material progress. Young people seeking affordable  
housing today are finding much truth in that forecast. High and rising  
energy prices, and various raw material prices, also attest to it. Much of  
those kinds of prices are artfully excluded from the official CPI, just as  
depletion is stubbornly excluded from the NIPA accounts, even after years of  
exposure by independent critics.   
  
Economists have not only let this happen, many have been downright  
contemptuous of those who warned against rising resource scarcity and  
prices. Tony Scott chaired a session at the 1972 AEA meeting in Toronto at  
which many speakers, including Nathan Rosenberg, gleefully ganged up on Jay  
Forrester and the Meadows couple and their Club of Rome Report on *Limits to  
Growth*.  (Tony himself, as chair, remained properly neutral.) Regrettably  
those papers were not published in the Proceedings, for they would document  
how many elders of the profession had come to view The Earth as an infinite  
reservoir of materials and building sites, only awaiting the magic touch of  
man's capital and technology to fructify them. Why not? That's what J.B.  
Clark told them, and the AEA still awards a high-level prize in his name, as  
though it were an honor.  
  
All hail to scholars who educate us on the history of material progress; but  
let us remember the problem of cultural lag, and the great classical  
economists' emphasis on distribution. Perhaps Mokyr could make it more clear  
where Smil stands on the matter.  
  
Mason Gaffney