Resources
Since the time of the English economist Thomas Malthus, it has been thought that the capacity for development is severely limited due to the inherent limitation in the availability of natural resources. Resources can be divided into four major categories: physical, social, mental and human resources. Land, water, mineral and oil, etc. constitute physical resources. Social resources consist of society's capacity to manage and direct complex systems and activities. Knowledge, information and technology are mental resources. The energy, skill and capacities of people constitute human resources.
The science of economics is very much concerned with scarcity of resources. Though physical resources are limited in their availability, the same cannot be said about social, mental and human resources which arguably are not subject to any inherent limits. Even if these appear to be limited at present, there is no fixity about the limitation and these resources can and will continue to expand over time and that expansion can be accelerated by the use of appropriate strategies. In recent decades the rate of growth of these three resources has accelerated dramatically.
The role of physical resources tend to diminish as society moves to higher levels in the scale of development. Correspondingly the role of non-material resources keeps increasing as development advances. One of the most important non-material resources is information, which has become a key in-put in modern times. Information is a non-material resource that does not get exhausted by distribution or sharing. Greater access to information helps increase the pace of its development. Ready access to information about economic factors helps investors to immediately transfer capital to those sectors and areas where it will fetch a higher return. The greater input of non-material resources helps explain the rising productivity of societies in spite of a limited physical resource base.
The application of higher non-material inputs also raises the productivity of physical inputs. Modern technology has helped increase the proven sources of oil by 50% in recent years and at the same time reduced the cost of search operations by 75%. Moreover, technology has shown that it is possible to reduce the amount of physical inputs in a wide range of activities. Scientific agricultural methods demonstrated that soil productivity could be raised by application of synthetic fertilizers. Dutch farm scientists have demonstrated that a minimal water consumption of 1.4 liters is enough to raise a kilogram of vegetables compared to the thousand liters that traditional irrigation methods normally require. Henry Ford's assembly line techniques brought down the man-hours of labor required to deliver a car from 783 minutes to 93 minutes. These examples show that the greater input of higher non-material resources can raise the productivity of physical resources and thereby extend their limits.
Read more about this topic: Social Development Theory
Famous quotes containing the word resources:
“The old, subjective, stagnant, indolent and wretched life for woman has gone. She has as many resources as men, as many activities beckon her on. As large possibilities swell and inspire her heart.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)
“We live in a time which has created the art of the absurd. It is our art. It contains happenings, Pop art, camp, a theater of the absurd.... Do we have the art because the absurd is the patina of waste...? Or are we face to face with a desperate or most rational effort from the deepest resources of the unconscious of us all to rescue civilization from the pit and plague of its bedding?”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances? No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he’s chosen from among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him, wearing it at best with a resignation which is chiefly supported by comparison.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)