[hornofhubris]

"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.

[Tyler_JC]

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.

[Kaj]

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".

[Kaj]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', 'E')conomics assumes that consumers are utility maximizers.

[Tyler_JC]

Would you care to offer an alternate view?

Do consumers attempt to maximize something else?

[Iaato]

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?

[CrudeAwakening]

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?

[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', 'W')ould you care to offer an alternate view?

Do consumers attempt to maximize something else?

[wisconsin_cur]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', 'W')ould you care to offer an alternate view?

Do consumers attempt to maximize something else?

[seldom_seen]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', 'W')ould you care to offer an alternate view?

Do consumers attempt to maximize something else?

[seldom_seen]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Iaato', 'W')hich are you? A human being or a consumer?

[hornofhubris]

I was watching a Wall Street round table on cable about 2 years
ago. Someone was fretting about the foreboding deficits and
the impossible to measure leverages that were in the system.
One of the people on the table responded:

"The investors are doing well and the consumers have a
lot of unused credit available. I do not see anything
fundamentally wrong."

For me it was a snapshot of the common mindset. That somehow
the world can be managed and prosper at a transaction level
indefinitely. It was simply investors and consumers, and if the
investor owned a leveraged piece of something real and the
consumer had a leveraged means of obtaining it, all was well.

Being in the exhilarating upward phase of overshoot is very
heady and situational that way I suppose. The trend has
a lot of upward inertia and there isn't anything above us
to slam into, so I do not see anything fundamentally wrong
when I look up either. Remember not to look down.

[Tyler_JC]

What's so bad about being a consumer?

I consume, ergo, I am a consumer.

Doesn't mean I'm not a person, it's just a descriptive term for one who does an action.

It's a neutral term. It's not a compliment or an insult.

I don't understand the objection. Our understanding of the language is fundamentally different.

[Iaato]

Tyler, labels reflect the culture and the transactions. For example, in the late 80s and early 90s in healthcare, during the corporatization of health care, patients got relabeled as "clients, consumers, or customers." The patients didn't like the change. They preferred the label patient. The other labels implied that they existed to buy services from "providers," rather than to be cared for while ill by physicians and nurses. That is a whole different meaning.

Notice how this language has changed in this country over the last 50 years. Corporations have spent an amazing portion of their wealth researching the best way to get you to buy more stuff, and being labeled as a consumer is one very effective method. If you identify yourself primarily as a consumer, then you will behave like an economic widget so we can all buy lots of things that people are making, and everyone can get rich!

Speaking of labels, dude looks like a lady, Seldom.

[seldom_seen]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Iaato', 'S')peaking of labels, dude looks like a lady, Seldom.

[darren]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Mastodon', 'F')or those who might like a small insight as to why the human spp is in such deep shit.

quote
Because neoclassical economics does not even acknowledge the costs of environmental problems and the limits to economic growth, it constitutes one of the greatest barriers to combating climate change and other threats to the planet

[Mastodon]

A few basics to lay out the problems I see with the system we have:
1. Money is myth
a. Money measures human belief (I will pay what I believe is fair)
b. As far as we can ascertain everything in the known universe is controlled by the laws of physics, we are part of the universe. There is no physics equation that includes the $$ (or equivalent) sign. Money is not in any way connected to the planet on which we live.
c. All human society decisions are based on money.
d. When you abstract everything to money you lose information. Money is incapable of differentiating between $1 of oil and $1 of sawdust of $1 of legal service. There is no value on a tree in the forest, a m3 of clean air or an ecosystem. A $1 of incarceration/war/destruction has the same gdp as $1 of wheat. A kwh of electricity requires exactly the same coal/oil/ng/hydro/etc consumption whether it is produced at 2am or 6pm. This is not what the money system tells us.
e. Life is not an externality. Money is not connected to life.

2. Supply and demand, the market
a. The market can not measure the remaining amount of any resource. The market measures the fuel in the carburettor not in the fuel tank
b. How can humans reduce demand for food, water, oxygen (demand destruction)
c. There are no substitutes for our energy sources nor the existing life forms and ecosystems of this planet.( the price will increase till it is economically viable to use something else) We are out of something elses…
d. No matter what the price we are not making resources, we are making consumers…
e. Technology cannot recant the laws of physics. Over time all resources get more difficult to obtain, ie they require more energy to obtain.

3. interest
a. As soon as you charge interest you must have continuous growth
b. Continuous growth is impossible on a finite planet
c. Resource constraints mean a decreasing real economy, interest repayments cannot be made in such a condition.

4. Rational Utility maximizers
a. Humans are not rational
b. Humans are intentionally not appraised of the reality of their situation with regard to the planet they live on so their ability to make decisions for the benefit of the human race is non existent. We are taught to consume from day one. This same aspect is reflected in our problems with democracy as is the time problem.

5. Time
a. The monetary system must make return each quarter. The problems we face need planning over decades.


In a nutshell: we are driving a vehicle, the controls do not do what we think, the gauges do not show what we think, we have no idea where we are going and of course the land is surrounded by serious pitfalls. And I feel we are over the edge of a rather nasty one right now.. how many survive the crash as we careen down the cliff is the only question


And for those interested, a very interesting paper try this pdf file

[Tyler_JC]

1. We already discussed externalities. They have to be included or else the market is inefficient. Perfect information is a requirement of the perfectly competitive outcome. Hence the rarity of perfect market.

2. Money is a measure of time. We assign values to various goods/services in order to figure out how much time we should spend working to acquire them.

3. Money is not a myth. Without money, we would be incapable of making complex decisions. Should you work at the hospital or the lumberyard? Without money, how would you know which is the better option?

4. They can't reduce demand for food but they can substitute chicken for beef or soy for chicken. That's demand destruction because we end up consuming fewer food resources in total. Also, Americans consume 100-200 billion more calories per day than is necessary for healthy survival. Water can be recycled and waste can be cut down dramatically. Do Americans really need 160 gallons per DAY?

[Mastodon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', '1'). We already discussed externalities. They have to be included or else the market is inefficient. Perfect information is a requirement of the perfectly competitive outcome. Hence the rarity of perfect market.

2. Money is a measure of time. We assign values to various goods/services in order to figure out how much time we should spend working to acquire them.

3. Money is not a myth. Without money, we would be incapable of making complex decisions. Should you work at the hospital or the lumberyard? Without money, how would you know which is the better option?

4. They can't reduce demand for food but they can substitute chicken for beef or soy for chicken. That's demand destruction because we end up consuming fewer food resources in total. Also, Americans consume 100-200 billion more calories per day than is necessary for healthy survival. Water can be recycled and waste can be cut down dramatically. Do Americans really need 160 gallons per DAY?

[yesplease]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Mastodon', 'P')lease tyler, think for yourself, read the pdf and even read this pdf file (1.3mb) then read carefully what you wrote above and tell me honestly that you see no issues with the things you say.