by strata » Fri 11 Jul 2008, 22:32:37
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jdumars', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OilFinder2', 'j')dumars, you know zilch about economics. For starters, the price of oil in Zimbabwe has skyrocketed not because of a shortage of oil, but because the value of their currency has collapsed. But that, too, will eventually come to an end. I guarantee it.
Economics is not a philosophy or "fiction," as you believe. Economics is just as much a science as is ecoology. And frankly, they both obey pretty much the same rules.
Actually, I know plenty about economics. I don't mention it often, but I am a senior executive in one of the fastest-growing 500 companies in the US. So don't presume what I know and don't.
Second, you completely disregarded what I wrote in terms of hyperinflation and the literally infinite capacity to loan fiat money into existence. Zimbabwe is a perfect example of this phenomenon. How does their currency in any way reflect natural resource availability?
Economics is not a physical science at all. It's a
social science like sociology or psychology. While social sciences address observed human behavior, they do not in any way translate into the physiology of the action -- nor does classical economics concern itself with systems that are incompatible with nature. If every last person died, economics would cease to exist, but meteorology, geology, biology wouldn't.
True but I think the truth is that there is a practical limit to the inflation-adjusted price of oil, in that after a certain point, entire economies would be paralyzed and thus generate massive demand destruction in excess of decline rates. I was an econ major and agree that econ is a social science, and it is laughable to equate its reliability with that of ecology, which itself isn't even a natural science either! Biology, I can sort of see as being on par with natural sciences, but that's built on top of chemistry and physics anyway.