Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 9:15 am Post subject: Re: The Economist Has no Clothes
Ludi wrote:
I'm not convinced that it is "confusing" to try to determine where certain attitudes behind economic theory come from...
I would agree that we should not take as "written in stone by the finger of God" what is published as research in any field, whether it be economics, physics or "eugenics."
Still, isn't the root of the problem us? Driving down the interstate I "interact" with plenty of people who don't even know how to be courteous to other people sharing the road, maybe they don't really care about what happens to the environment far away?
One of the great promises of localization, I think, is the possibility that we can begin to see the consequences of our exploitation. If I exploit the land, then it will be out in the open for all of my neighbors to see and it will effect my standing in the community. We already stand up to oppose bad development "in our own backyard." If we literally live from "our own backyard" maybe we will be less heartless in our use of the environment? _________________ "Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens" -Friedrich von Schiller
Joined: Mar 12, 2007 Posts: 1004 Location: As close as I can get to the beginning of the pipe.
Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 11:06 am Post subject: Re: The Economist Has no Clothes
MrBill wrote:
If you or anyone else do not like my responses then I would warn you to stay out of Depletion Economics on this site. I for one have spent a lot of hours trying to expand on these topics. Go post in the Open Forum if you do not like it! Who needs you? Equating personal choice (micro economics) as leading inevitably to fascism just shows how divorced from reality your opinions are in any case.
Mr. Bill, last August you said, regarding the growing housing collapse,
Quote:
"Unlike Gideon or mmasters I have traded interbank FX and lived through many financial crises. If you think this is a crisis, you should have been trading ZAR in the 90s.
Any dimwit financial journalist that says, this is unprecedented, is an idiot. I have personally seen much worse."
There goes the name calling again, which is highlighted as the lowest form of argument at this interesting link.
I responded to that comment of yours with this statement regarding the economics of peak oil collapse:
Quote:
"I know you were referring to the innoculations of cash when you said the word unprecedented rather than the overall crisis, but to minimize this crisis is a mistake. As other posters have been pointing out in another thread on this forum about how it's different this time from the 1970s, I will add that this is a global reaction to global credit inflation and ultimately to global peak oil."
Since that time we have stayed in our separate corners; I'm not generally argumentative, especially if I can see that it won't get me anywhere. But I really don't like being told where I can't go. The fact that you are trying to squat all over this whole corner of the forum and obstructing discourse just rubs me the wrong way.
The problem of economic theory promoting growth is a really fundamental issue to peak oil. Crude Awakening's great link gets at the basic problem between economists and ecologists: "The economists were certainly prepared to give some weight to environmental effects, but nevertheless espoused economic growth." This is why you're getting a battle on this one, Bill. Economics and peak oil just don't mix. Cur has a nice way of putting it:
Quote:
"We are a species whose genius really is at exploiting our environment for max. benefit over the course of a (human) lifetime, that is how we have occupied most of the landed globe. That success has a cost. Economics is, if I am correct, the study of how we exploit resources. If we do not like the answer, than we should not blame the study but the subject of the study (i.e. ourselves).
_________________ "When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross." --Sinclair Lewis
Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 11:24 am Post subject: Re: The Economist Has no Clothes
MrBill wrote:
If you or anyone else do not like my responses then I would warn you to stay out of Depletion Economics on this site. I for one have spent a lot of hours trying to expand on these topics. Go post in the Open Forum if you do not like it! Who needs you? Equating personal choice (micro economics) as leading inevitably to fascism just shows how divorced from reality your opinions are in any case.
You are as subject to scrutiny as anyone else on this forum, as far as I'm concerned.
Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 12:21 pm Post subject: Re: The Economist Has no Clothes
MrBill wrote:
BigTex, you like many other posters like Threadbear and Ludi are just confusing economics with philosophy. Economics just is. It is not moral or immoral. Your failure is to try to make economics something that it is not. It is a system of allocation. Pure and simple.
This is true of economics in general, but, within that definition, differing economic models are backed by differing philosophical assumptions.
Fundamentally, what a 'resource' is can be called into question with philosophy.
Related, what is 'wealth'?
-Adam Smith's economic model, and related models, considers, (philosophically), nature to be a resource that simply wasted if it is not put into material utility. This is the predominant view.
-An economic model posited by someone like Schumacher considers it impossible to put any price on resources. He is interested in maximizing the quality of resources, the quality of the environment, and other factors that are difficult to measure.
-A economic theory of labour considers how people are treated as resources.
-Some recent economic models have attempted to measure happiness, mathematically even, as a resource.
You are right to point out that it is technically too general to lampoon all economists, since everyone who presents an economic model is acting the part of an economist. This ignores the rather obvious point, however, that the type of economist that has cultural hegemony is the material resource / wealth-maximization paradigm. Everyone knows what is meant by an 'economist' in this sense - and indeed they often self style themselves as the only possible view.
Such people overwhelmingly populate all the Freidmanite think tanks. And they are affecting policy all the time. And furthermore they often do so with the kind of prescriptive language that what they are advocating is a social/moral good. Same for the predominant economic journals.
Last edited by Kaj on Thu Apr 10, 2008 3:02 pm; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 1:33 pm Post subject: Re: The Economist Has no Clothes
"We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole
spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody
or nobody."
"We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims."
R. Buckminster Fuller
Bucky encapsulates it better than I ever could. We are faced with
enormous challenges of an unprecedented type and scale. And
we are responding with talking about what would work on the
last similar, smaller scale, crisis. But most of all we are making us
some wicker men, and lighting them on fire to appease ourselves that they are to blame and the rest of us can somehow be held
harmless.
Many here used the advance warning of Peak Oil / Resources to
make a haul on Wall Street and now are looking for someone to
blame for the gravy train losing traction. When we win, it is
because we are brilliant and precocious, when we lose, it is
Mr. Bill and the evil economists.
The lemmings are getting up a class action lawsuit on the
evil bastard who owns the cliff.
Joined: Sep 25, 2004 Posts: 4542 Location: Boston, MA
Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 3:27 pm Post subject: Re: The Economist Has no Clothes
Economics assumes that consumers are utility maximizers. Utility is a mathematical concept in its most basic form. Why?
Economics comes from psychology that we don't fully understand.
Psychology is merely biology that we don't understand.
Biology, of course, is merely chemistry that we don't fully understand.
Chemistry is just physics that we haven't mastered yet.
Physics is just math that hasn't been solved yet.
So the mathematical model for utility is the best we can do for right now.
Eventually we'll understand how it all works and then have a perfect model for utility. _________________ "www.peakoil.com is the Myspace of the Apocalypse."
Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 3:33 pm Post subject: Re: The Economist Has no Clothes
Hornofhubris, I totally agree that we should not cast ourselves as mere victims. The point of criticising something should always be with an eye to improving it or replacing it, not just for blaming something external.
A useful function of po.com should be to look at alternative economic models in a constructive way.
But certainly one of the initial steps for this is to aknowlege that something is wrong with the status quo. Not everyone is convinced of this yet. Its myths continue to be perpetrated by powerful people.
There's an ugly, unstable asbestos-ridden house in the way of where we want to build. We need to examine its design flaws and tear it down before we can be "the architects of the future".
Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 3:53 pm Post subject: Re: The Economist Has no Clothes
Tyler_JC wrote:
Economics assumes that consumers are utility maximizers.
Yes!--almost--that underscores the prevailing economic view. That is 'modern economics'. The type that has so much force today that it is virtually the only one that affects policy.
You see how widespread this particular view is, to the point that it is synonymous with 'economics' itself? This is why 'economists' become the target of attack.
And you see the philosophical assumption of human nature that it rests on: 'consumers are utility maximizers'.
Well there are philosophical disagreements with that view of humanity.
And those lead to alternative models.
Economics, of course, existed before Adam Smith. The word goes way back to the ancient Greeks whose political philosophies centred around the central institution of the family. Hence the word: "oikos" (house) "nomos" (rule). I.e. the rules of the household--from where the Greek notion of wealth (money, women, slaves, booty) was organised.
The word has modified itself continually way up until the present, and it will continue to change as our perceptions about the world alter.
Last edited by Kaj on Thu Apr 10, 2008 7:03 pm; edited 1 time in total
Joined: Mar 12, 2007 Posts: 1004 Location: As close as I can get to the beginning of the pipe.
Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 5:33 pm Post subject: Re: The Economist Has no Clothes
Tyler, you're calling us consumers instead of people. Do you see the stack of assumptions you just made with that statement?
Yes, I know that 70% of the US GDP is consumption. But why is that? Is that normal? Is it OK?
Which are you? A human being or a consumer? _________________ "When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross." --Sinclair Lewis
Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 5:44 pm Post subject: Re: The Economist Has no Clothes
It's interesting that 19th century utilitarianism still provides much of the bedrock of economic theory, although it has been heavily criticised as a moral philosophy.
Is "my utility + your utility" = "social utility", or is there is actually some feedback, whereupon changes in your utility affect my utility, and vice versa? Neoclassical theory strikes me as very linear in its approach to a non-linear world.
And, WTF is a util, anyway? _________________ "Who knows what the Second Law of Thermodynamics will be like in a hundred years?" - Economist speaking during planning for World Population Conference in early 1970s
Joined: Aug 03, 2006 Posts: 4298 Location: Graceland
Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 5:47 pm Post subject: Re: The Economist Has no Clothes
Tyler_JC wrote:
Would you care to offer an alternate view?
Do consumers attempt to maximize something else?
To me, the relevant question is not whether we seek to maximize utility, but rather WHEN we seek to maximize utility. If you have a finite supply of something, you may choose to maximize your utility by consuming it VERY slowly. However, when all of the messages aimed at you are focused on consuming NOW, then the process of maximizing utility begins to overlook the time element--i.e., people don't ask themselves "What is the cost tomorrow of what I am consuming today? Would I actually be happier consuming less today so that I would have some left to consume tomorrow?"
Short circuiting this internal analysis is what advertising is all about.
If people had a better feel for the long term consequences of current excessive consumption, they might find less utility in consuming as much as they do today.
Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 5:56 pm Post subject: Re: The Economist Has no Clothes
Tyler_JC wrote:
Would you care to offer an alternate view?
Do consumers attempt to maximize something else?
I think the terms you use are evidence enough of what a distorted and useless model economics provides for us.
For instance, I have friends and family and neighbors, co-workers (as you do to). I have never, once, heard any of them refer to themselves as 'consumers.' I have never met any 'consumers.' The only time I hear the word 'consumers' is when economists start talking.
Economists have not only removed nature from their equations, they've removed humans as well. They've hallucinated a big machine, not of the real world, but an imaginary perpetual motion machine where if the right levers or buttons are pushed at the right time, the goods will flow in just the right amount at the right time. Only goods though, no bads. If something is wrong with the 'economy' it doesn't mean the machine is broken (or that it actually doesn't even work). It just means that some economists pushed the wrong button at the wrong time, or pulled the wrong lever. Not to worry though, they have fancy equations borrowed from mathematics (a real science) that they will dazzle us with, and promise that next time they'll push the right button and everything will be okay.
I don't buy any of it. It's like when Christians came up with 'Christian Science.' WTF? To add some sort of legitimacy to whatever they are up to. I heard Alan Greenspan on some talk show. How he has studied all these "complex equations for years." I just laughed, and then he went on to say how they were useless in predicting the housing crash. As if you needed a fcking calculator to figure that one out!
As the thread title says, The Economist Has no Clothes.
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