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105 comments on Open thread

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Gloomy on October 17, 2005 - 12:40pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Economics today is as much a science as a political tool as much religion was before. I don't believe that anybody from the policymakers believes these guys, I'm not sure even if they believe themselves.

The only way economics can survive and help us solve our problems is to clear itself from the politically induced dogmas. Don't outlaw it just make it a true science not a religion.

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step back on October 17, 2005 - 2:05pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Gloomy,
I concur.
Economics "could" become more of a science if the alchemists who practice it were to come clean and admit (confess) that much of what they preached thus far is contradicted by observed "facts".

For example, at the microeconomic modeling level, economists tell us that we have "rational" human beings negotiating over the "fair" valuation (a.k.a. "price") of a given transaction (i.e., the purchase of a Pet Rock circa 1980). Easily available observations of Madison Avenue behavior indicates that we are not dealing with "rational" creatures but rather with highly emotional beings who are easily manipulated by advertisements and other forms of persuation. If economists admitted to this indisputable "fact", they would go a long way towards moving their area of study from the realm of alchemy/religion and towards the realm of a properly measured science.

What does this have to do with Peak Oil?
Everything.

There are certain factions of our society that have a clear "conflict of interest" in being truthful about what the actual situation is regarding our "energy situation".

Do we have to start listing "them"?
O.K.

  1. Automobile companies,
  2. Construction companies that build highways and suburbia,
  3. Petrochemical companies,
  4. Politicians who receive campaign money (a.k.a. "bribes") from factions 1-3 (&5-8 below),
  5. Military-Industrial complex needed to maintain factions 1-4,
  6. Accountants who keep the "books" for Enron and friends in factions 1-5, where the accountants had better arrive at good numbers if they want to remain in the good graces of factions 1-5,
  7. Financial wizards who used the cooked books of faction 6 to predict what is coming our way next,
  8. Economists who are paid by factions 1-7 to write "scholarly" papers supporting the infrastructure created by factions 1-7, ...

I'm sure I must have still missed a couple of biggies. It's hard to keep it all in one's head. Anyone want to add to the list? ... Oh yeh, number 9) Airline industry, 10) ???

Lay people are convinced that "price" is a good "signal" of what is going on in our world. They are wrong ... and they are the ones who are going to be dead because they're wrong.

When a gun is being pointed at your head, what good is "price" as a measure of what is going on? When you have to pay for gasoline or else you cannot survive, because you can't get to work, what information does the "price" of gas give us? When the infrastucture is built to make alternatives too pricey (unsubsidized), what valid information does the "price signal" give us?

Can we do away with money?
Of course not. We need a medium of exchange. We do need to be able to value things and prioritize among them.

But we also need to do away with the lies and deception.

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Gloomy on October 17, 2005 - 3:32pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The problem with economics is that it is quite static and some things that are truth in some occasions are stubbornly claimed to be all-times-and-places valid laws.

I am absolutely positive that this is done on purpose and you pointed out some of the reasons why. Yes price is a signal - and people will react. But how come that each reaction transforms into a successful adjastment? The economy does not question this assumption - it just says that's what it is. This is the core of the Western view of man embodied in economics - and it is that a mankind can do anything if he wants. He can find new forms of energy, spoil the nature, than fix the nature and so on and so on... This is our new religion and economics is just a function of it, but the problem is mainly in our heads - we have forgotten where we came from and we even don't know what we are.

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step back on October 17, 2005 - 4:21pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
One of my kids was STUNNED, absolutely STUNNED to learn that when I was a kid ... we did not have personal computers ... or video games.

I did not want to explain about vacuum-tube black & white TV's or crystal set radio. It may be too much to absorb for the new generation.

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PhilRelig on October 17, 2005 - 7:47pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
10)  You missed perhaps the biggest vested interest of al:  Major oil-exporting nations - chief among them the Saudis, of course.  In this light, the fact that Chavez is willing to come clean is even more remarkable.
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