[coberst]

Avocados, Abstract Ideas, and Categories

I plan to have friends over this evening and will go to the market this afternoon to find some ripe avocadoes. Selecting avocadoes that can be served immediately is a difficult task.

Ripe avocado is a literal idea and science is an abstract idea. An abstract idea is a complex neural network consisting of literal concepts and other abstract concepts.

Is psychology a science? It all depends upon how you categorize science. If the natural sciences are the only sciences then psychology would not be a science. If the social sciences are science then psychology is a science. If human sciences are a science then psychology is a science. Where does one go for authority for such matters? I suggest that you go to the philosophy of science for your answer.

Wiki advises me that philosophy of science studies the assumptions, foundations, and implications of all domains of knowledge that seek to be included within those prestigious halls of science. This includes both the natural and human sciences. “In this respect, the philosophy of science is closely related to epistemology and metaphysics.”

Robert Schenk tries to answer the question ‘Is economics a science?’ in a copyright article at: http://ingrimayne.com/econ/Introduction/Overview1.html

In this article Schenk recognizes that this question has been argued for over a century without a clear winner. He further argues that to provide a legitimate answer to this question about economics that one must have the ability to answer such questions as:
What does "invisible hand" mean, what was Malthus opinion regarding population growth, what was Poppers judgment regarding this question, and what does scarcity, choice, and self-interest mean to economics.

I started this search under the assumption that I could give good evidence to support a clear necessary and sufficient condition for any domain of knowledge to be judged a science. After searching Google and scratching my head I have decided that the question “What is science?” is, in fact, a value judgment.

Is value an abstract idea?

Is this question “what is science?” a matter of fact or a matter of value judgment?

[Tanada]

What will 2017 bring for the economy? Heck i dunno but I will speculate a bit anyhow

I look around and I talk to small business owners from time to time and I have noticed a change since the election night eight weeks ago.

For going on six or maybe even nine years people, especially small business people, have been hunkering down and biding their time hoping for a brighter tomorrow.

The crash of 2008 really hurt like a you know what for a lot of us. I ended up losing a house I had invested my life savings in three years ago because the economy never recovered far enough for me to refinance it and mu financial circumstances changed. I am not alone, there were a lot of people who lost big financially in the 08 crash and right up through about 2015 when prices finally recovered enough to let you have some breathing room on home and small business loans.

It doesn't matter that the big banks were saved. It doesn't matter that 'Wall Street' was saved. What really drive the America economy is the individual consumer and the small business owner/operator who are the majority of employment.

During the last eight or nine years we had lots of pretty speeches and lots of money thrown to the top of the economic pyramid. Based on the theories of the lobbyists everything has been just hunky dory and the good ole USA is doing just fine.

Sorry but from down here in the weeds by the gutter the picture doesn't match up to those pretty speeches and proclamations that everything too big to fail was saved. From down here about the normal number of small businesses have gone under just like they always do. An average small business has just a 50/50 chance of lasting five years because the skill level and macroeconomics of the start up is always a risky proposition.

The difference is for the last nine years not very many small businesses started up compared to the number that went out of business. Normally small business failures are balanced by new small business start ups. Well for the last eight years especially we have gotten an ever longer set of regulations for businesses to comply with and most people who have thought about starting a business have taken a good hard look at compliance issues and decided they just don't have the ability to succeed.

In large measure the small business people I talk to the last few weeks are now looking around and considering going ahead with expansions they had planned years ago but did not go forward with. But wait, none of those regulations have been changed! Why are they changing their thinking?

It is all about hope and fear, for the last near decade they have been operating in fear mode. Conserve what you have and avoid risk whenever possible because the risk/reward is far too heavy on the risk side of the equation.

Now even though regulations have not changed a bit the risk that even more regulations will show up next year and the year after appears to have dissipated. They have a lot of pent up desire to open a new business or expand an existing business that they have suppressed out of fear, but the fear is lifting. Take away the fear and what you have left is the hope, hope for a bigger success, a brighter tomorrow than yesterday, a more vibrant economy with a stimulating challenge...

Are these business people right? Will their new or expanded businesses succeed?

That all goes back to timing, hard work and a bit of luck. One thing I am sure of, if a lot more people are willing to take risks in 2017 then some of them will hit it out of the park and succeed big. Nobody will notice all the failed small time mom & pop operators if there are a few very splashy success stories to focus on.

At this point I am starting to think that even if the Stock Market does crash the small business folks won't really care. The disconnect between Wall Street and the real Joe6P economy has been made glaringly plain for everyone to see if they actually look at the image before them. I think 2017 is going to turn out to be a boom year simply because of the pent up demand for good times.

The fact that oil is still under $60/bbl and we have quite a few barrels in storage atm doesn't hurt any either. So hang onto your hats folks, 2017 is going to be a banner year for the average American.

I promise not to delete this thread if I turn out to be dead wrong so next December you can all point out my failures as a prophet to me.

[GHung]

Tanada wrote; "What really drive the America economy is the individual consumer and the small business owner/operator who are the majority of employment."

What really drives the American economy (all economies) is the exploitation of energy, resources and the environment. I expect 2017 to bring more of the same; pissing away our finite endowments trying to cope with day-to-day life in an unsustainable society, all-the-while leaving the bills (consequences) for others to deal with; most, yet to be born. That's the art of the deal, eh? Of course, those doing the dirty dealing will do fine because the house always wins, until the house burns.

I feel your pain, Tanada. 2008 hit us really hard as well because we both worked for the same employer who was leveraged hugely in local real estate. He defaulted and moved to North Dakota to do it again. We stayed put and hunkered down since we were already into Greer's collapse-now-and-beat-the-rush thingy. Chasing a different dream. Still,, it was a close call.

[Newfie]

Tanda,
You may be right, or not, I've not a clue. The thing that is difficult is that what is good for our short term economy is often what is bad for our long term environment and perhaps survival. So I'm ambivelent about which side to root for.

I can tell that of late I've become much less tolerant of the climate change debate. To my mind the evidence is so over whelming that there is no meaningful debate. There is much we don't know and it's not settled science in the sence that we can predict the future with any detail. But we clearly know the general direction things are moving in and they are far from good.

This impacts my economic outlook. Sure I want things to go well so that my investments improve and my life is easy. But I also want us to care for our planet and our future generations. And these two goals are often at cross purposes.

So it may well be that you are right, and that is a bad thing.

I'm wary that the Trump win will encourage the deniers, that they will renew their economic efforts which are harmful even if they don't intend to be. I'm getting less and less tolerant of deniers. This is where I have difficulty reaching across the divide. Frankly this response is provoked by an article linked in realclearpolitics which sought to deny climate change as a hoax perpetrated by greedy scientists. I can see that clique being emboldened and doing much damage. Not that the liberals we effectively any better.

As usual I see the contradictions and cumumdrums ahead of us. No clear winners.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Tanada, overall, I think your thinking looks reasonable and reflects my general outlook.

The one big thing I think might change things (but I don't know when), is when (IMO) the people who expected POTUS Trump to somehow bring back the jobs to reflect the American heydey of plentiful good middle class jobs for low skilled workers -- realize Trump (like everyone else) can't magically make this happen, there is going to be blow-back.

I don't know how severe, and whether it will be mostly political, or whether it will influence the economy via lowered confidence, but I expect it by the 2018 midterms.

To explain my belief, I'll quote (from memory, so it might be inexact, but I'm confident I'm capturing the meaning) a great quote I saw in an editorial about Trump and jobs yesterday on CNBC's site: "You can't go back in time. You can't reverse the laws of entropy. And you can't go back to the days of lots of US factory jobs."

(I thought that for anyone with a meaningful amount of education, that this expressed the certainly that we can't magically reverse the effect of automation on jobs, perfectly.)

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'T')anda,
You may be right, or not, I've not a clue. The thing that is difficult is that what is good for our short term economy is often what is bad for our long term environment and perhaps survival. So I'm ambivelent about which side to root for.

I can tell that of late I've become much less tolerant of the climate change debate. To my mind the evidence is so over whelming that there is no meaningful debate. There is much we don't know and it's not settled science in the sence that we can predict the future with any detail. But we clearly know the general direction things are moving in and they are far from good.

This impacts my economic outlook. Sure I want things to go well so that my investments improve and my life is easy. But I also want us to care for our planet and our future generations. And these two goals are often at cross purposes.

So it may well be that you are right, and that is a bad thing.

I'm wary that the Trump win will encourage the deniers, that they will renew their economic efforts which are harmful even if they don't intend to be. I'm getting less and less tolerant of deniers. This is where I have difficulty reaching across the divide. Frankly this response is provoked by an article linked in realclearpolitics which sought to deny climate change as a hoax perpetrated by greedy scientists. I can see that clique being emboldened and doing much damage. Not that the liberals we effectively any better.

As usual I see the contradictions and cumumdrums ahead of us. No clear winners.

[Cog]

Donald Trump seems to want a more lethal and capable military while meanwhile cutting costs. I actually believe that is doable and we can bring true competition back to the military procurement system. Big companies like Boeing and Lockheed are going to take some financial hits in this arena.

Overall, prices will go up for consumers to pay for a more fair trade deals with our overseas competitors. I look for major retailers to take some financial hits. The stock market is likely to correct in a meaningful way. Perhaps a small recession and some debt shake-out.

But overall I'm feeling that some realism will start to creep in with regards to the economy as there is a lot of fantasy type thinking keeping consumption up. People need to save more and spend less.

I agree with Tanada that small businesses will be the winners in all of this. Which is where we should be as a nation.

[ROCKMAN]

Cog - I have a somewhat different view. We don't need better or cheaper weaponry. We have all we need right now to kill every mother f*cker we want dead. LOL. What we don't have us the public will to take the casualties that come along with winning. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing IMHO.

Same decision faced by every society for ever...even back to caveman time. Essentially fight vs flee. If one doesn't think the objective justifies the potential lose why would they fight? Syria is a horrible example to use.

So let's use it. How many here would vote for US boots on the gound to save those civilians if we took 500 dead + wounded? And forget the monetary cost for now. And fortunately we have a dedicated military that would be willing to take the casualties. OK for those that voted YES what if the generals projected 60,000 dead + wounded? And for those that still vote YES how about 100,000 dead + wounded?

Easy choices? Obviously not. And we're talking about taking on a relatively unsophisticated enemy. What if in addition to casualties what if there's also an escalation potential pulling in another opposing military force? If need be we could neutralize N Korea. A terrible body count on our side but no doubt we have the weapons to do it. But what about the Chinese sending hundreds of thousands of troops across the border to fight us? Not really that theoretical, is it? That's exactly what happened about 65 years ago.

Other then maintaining our current capability I see no reason for new weapon systems if the public lacks the will to engage. IMHO most of the world have lost most of its concern over confronting a powerful US military if they doubt the will of our public to deploy it in mass.

[Newfie]

Tanda,
I hear and understand your position. I don't criticize it, it makes sense. But I can't adopt that attitude. I try but it doesn't work. Something in me just won't let go sufficiently. Somewhere I harbor hopes of my genes passing through the bottleneck. Very primal, I know.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'T')anda,
I hear and understand your position. I don't criticize it, it makes sense. But I can't adopt that attitude. I try but it doesn't work. Something in me just won't let go sufficiently. Somewhere I harbor hopes of my genes passing through the bottleneck. Very primal, I know.

[Newfie]

Re: Newfoundland. It's a happy coincidence that my Mom was from there and we have been able to re-establish those roots. Just a lucky guy.

[evilgenius]

You know, people talk about needing to build an alternative energy infrastructure. I think that right now it's probably more important to start thinking about building some water pipelines. We may need a network that can transport water from anywhere where it is plentiful to anywhere where it isn't. We've allowed our water policy to follow rivers. We should have been thinking about irrigable land and concentrations of people. We can overcome the lack of supply, but not by overusing what's in the rivers. It sounds impossible, but they've just gotten done arguing over a ff pipeline from Canada through the US, to the Gulf refineries (I think) which illustrates how pipelines can move liquid. We can get energy in liquid form from one place to another regardless of where it is found in abundance. Why can't we do that with water?

If climate change does rise up and smack Trump one right in the kisser, this kind of infrastructure building, jobs creating thing would still loom. People would have to undergo almost a complete mental reversal to carry it out, but, hey, the evangelicals had to do that when they backed Trump in the first place. If they can do that, then probably they, and the rest of the climate deniers, can do this as well. The seemingly endless parade of boobs, bozos, deniers and charlatans don't really make the decisions. Those are made by the collective faith of all the people. Our biggest problem right now is that people have largely lost faith in the future. Long ago we embraced Blade Runner and Mad Max visions of our future. We froze in fear at what was possible. We chose to believe in the worst, and that we would be powerless before it. Those boobs and bozos are just living out that dream. It shapes their denial. Talking of projecting military power and saving money at the same time is also anachronistic in the face of the kind of crisis climate change will bring on. What's really necessary is the ability to deal with unprecedented numbers of refugees, and the ability to endure under the same forces that shove them in your direction. A water infrastructure that can deal with climate change would go a long way toward providing for that endurance.

[Cog]

@Rockman

I guess it depends on what you want the military to do. The size, the cost, the complexity of the military is related to what missions you want them capable of performing. Here are three different levels that we could design our forces for.

1) A defensive military. One that is designed more or less purely for defense against attack. We still would have a nuclear component for offensive purposes but little conventional capability to project that force overseas. A larger air force, a smaller navy, smaller active duty army. More reserve forces. Sort of the way Israel and most European counties design their militaries. I actually place Russia and China in this group. Their ability to project force is much more limited than the USA except for regionally.

2) Mixed defensive and offensive. A large navy and air force component. Large logistical chain to project force on anyone who attacks us or our interests. Sizable ground component. But not much in the way of overseas bases or defense agreements with "allies". We only use this force projection if the USA is attacked or some important strategic asset is threatened like oil or free transit in the ocean.

3) Offensive military. This is the military we have now and some want to continue to have. The ability (5th Gen fighters and bombers), huge navy, foreign military bases, defense treaties with "allies", to conduct offensive operations on foreign soil. We attempt to hedge in possible enemies by surrounding them with military bases or with countries friendly to us. We play constant interference games with other countries and de-stabilize them.

I favor #2 which results in more of a defensive force but the ability to marshal offensive forces for a very specific and limited purposes. I do not envision we will ever fight a conventional war with China and Russia. Spending trillions to have the capability to invade their air-space with our fighters and bombers is a waste when most of our actions will be against goat-herders and 2nd or 3rd world militaries.

[evilgenius]

If you don't want the refugees coming to your shores, then number 3 is your only option. You have to make your 'allies' take them. It's best if it looks like it was their decision.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('evilgenius', 'I')f you don't want the refugees coming to your shores, then number 3 is your only option. You have to make your 'allies' take them. It's best if it looks like it was their decision.

[Cog]

Or you go with #1 and kill everyone who attempts to cross your border. The Berlin wall in reverse as it were.

[ROCKMAN]

Cog - I think you missed my point. We have the tech to destroy any MILITARY that attacks our homeland. But would we have the will to respond with full impact? Probably. But do you serious believe any govt would have its MILITARY attack the US homeland?

Now a more realistic possibility: China sinks a US Navy vessel in the S China Sea as a result of the US trying to deny China access to oil in the region. Would US leaders have the will to retaliate? The public might call for blood until we had a carrier group or two destroyed. Then if the public loses the will to fight China for control of the region...what next?

Now let's get away from the theoretical: today the is open warfare going on in a region vital to global energy production. The level of participation by the US today is minimal and nearly non-existant in terms of boots on the ground. That's a tremendous contrast to our history in the region in the 90's and early 2000's. The region is no less vital to the US the it was 25 years ago yet our military exposure is not significant. Because we don't have the combat capability we had back then? Hardly. The American don't have the will which has been recognized by our politicians.

Now jump to global terrorist. We have more then enough capability to hunt them down in their strong holds. That might involve violating the sovereign rights of the host counteries. Might enflame more local antyi-American sentimeng. Might alienate major players like the KSA. But the point is we already have the weaponry we need. What's missing is the will to do so.

Bottom line: the US already has the armed military today to conduct any of those ops. But if we lack the will to pursue some or all of those options today then more expensive weapon systems won't change the dynamics.

[Newfie]

Why does this make me think of the German Navy in WWI. Big and powerful but the admirals were afraid to commit to battle for fear of losing their ships. But then look at Scapa Flow where they scuttled the entire fleet rather than have Britan get it.

It's not all about warfare. Part of it is about having the neatest toys. Jealousy. Greed. Those with the most toys when you die win.

[evilgenius]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'W')hy does this make me think of the German Navy in WWI. Big and powerful but the admirals were afraid to commit to battle for fear of losing their ships. But then look at Scapa Flow where they scuttled the entire fleet rather than have Britan get it.

It's not all about warfare. Part of it is about having the neatest toys. Jealousy. Greed. Those with the most toys when you die win.

[evilgenius]

Anyway, getting back to the economics of hope, I wanted to say that a network of water pipelines could be built in such a manner as to integrate with an alternative energy grid. Right now, people are shaking their heads at alternative energy because it doesn't make electricity when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing. Well, water runs downhill even at night. If you used the alternative grid to pump water uphill in order to transport it to places like Phoenix, then when the sun wasn't shining or the wind wasn't blowing you could let it flow downhill through a series of turbines all along the pipes. The trick is in having a purpose to pump the water up in the first place, and in realizing that you can have more than one power generating turbine along the pipe that goes downhill because gravity doesn't go away simply because you have used it once.