re: Mr. Soddy’s Ecological Economy NY Times Op-Ed, Sun 4/12, mentioned by Tom in a LinkedIn “Global Foresight” conversation.
Tom,
Thanks for mentioning the Times Op-Ed, It’s just great some mention of Soddy and the “physical world problem” finally appeared in the Times. As I find so often, I agree with his analysis of the problem, about 110%, but that I find is as far as it goes!
You might be interested to know that J.M. Keynes and Kenneth Boulding also came to very similar end conclusions. Each used their own language for it, but each at least would agree firmly that 1) economies are physical systems, and 2) at natural limits something would need to be done about excess savings of financial capital.
Post to LinkedIn’s Global Foresight discussion 4/11/09
Tom,
I guess the problem is that we’ve been steering the development of the earth as if expanding our vehicle with our windows painted over with out of date explanations, having a party and not watching the earth’s responses as we crashed into things. Our blind procedures, then, have not been doing what we intended them to do.
“Truth cannot be out there – cannot exist independently of the human
mind because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is
out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of
the world can be true or false. The world on its own – unaided by the
describing activities of human beings – cannot.”
From MAKING TRUTH: METAPHOR IN SCIENCE, by TL Brown (2003).
is interestingly “garbled” in the usual way self-consistent language has problems referring to inconsistent things.
I’m not talking about the difficulty of even narrowing down what “truth” means. I’m talking about a suspicious distortion that his thinking seems to add in the process.
It’s that in emphasizing how the meanings in our minds are distinctly our own, and different from the organization of the “world out there”, he ends up seeming to say that the outer world has no language of its own. What would make more sense is that the rich world of natural languages that systems evidently develop on their own, seem incompatible with what we are able to fit in our minds.
When you look at the world “money game” as having been a bit too successful in multiplying other people’s obligations, measuring the degree of distortion and resetting the whole game seems quite necessary. It would also be the best bet for something guaranteed to work and work quickly.
There’s a lot of important dissent on the economic “recovery” plan, and you’re not doing it justice at all.
From the “physical world” community, the scientists who study the economics of the environment and physical economy, the flaw in the plan is believing the phrase “lasting economic growth”. Those who study how popular views are misguided seem always to be mostly unpaid or underpaid, for failing to support what is popular of course.
Spokespeople for the real world are treated as an annoyance.
As a community we also don’t really ‘do’ political speech well, tend to speak with original scientific thought, don’t have a “down pat” story line to offer, and have no particular soap box to get your attention from. We do ‘thinking’ and ‘observing’ instead. Continue reading Unheard dissent – the “real world” problem→
Phil, What evidence do you have to claim that my well-being is dependent upon
me “multiplying other peoples obligations” to me? Steve
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Steve,
It’s mainly a kind of “generosity” and show of “trust” that becomes an onerous multiplying obligartion.
We typically all act to multiply the obligations others have to us for performing financial and resource exploitation around the world in two ways. You and I and everyone else buys products that are made by businesses that are given financing only if they return a profit.
It has to be a level of profit that assures their investors a rate of compounding returns, too, better than or equal to what is generally available. Secondly You and I and nearly everyone else, have money in the bank or in the markets earning compound interest, acting in to be the enforcer of the first process from the investor side of it.
It has no limit but for those so obligated breaking their trust and failing to be able to do so, as when the economy as a whole ceases to provide net returns.
We choose to receive compounding returns better than or equal to what is generally available, or we move our money elsewhere to get a better compounding return. With each choice we opt for using the surpluses of business to create real multiplying obligations for others to fulfill. Continue reading Ever multiplying obligations – the “Gold” rule→
CCG post 2/11/2009 – responding to Malcolm and RML
Malcolm – “How can we express the climate risk in way the public can understand?”
RML – That is probably the entire point right now. An infinite supply af “facts,” expecting people’s reasoning ability to take over, doesn’t seem to work.
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In that spirit, we might show our own ability to reason with simple arithmetic. If you consider a growth system as always starting with a non-renewable seed resource, that is finite, then as the system grows what can you say about the rate of % changes in the balance of the seed resources available?
(meht gnissorc erofeb sdlohserht ees ot elba eb ot doog eb ti dluow .e.i)
Assuming you get the first part of that right, it’s not so hard, how valuable would it then be to have a way to tell?
responding to Alex:
Phil, I liked your coded message. You mean a threshold like ‘peak oil’? Or the peak carrying capacity of the earth in terms of population? The question is, how do you propose to reduce demand? Right now, governments are doing their damnedest to stimulate demand to save the global economy from implosion. You’re saying let’s reduce demand. How? How is this going to work? Asking a question for which there’s no answer is probably a good way to get no answer.
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Alex,
Thanks very much. My usual worry is not leaving people with questions, but getting none in return. Whether any answer about the future is more than half an answer, after all, depends on what question you ask. The best available answer to what “people want to know” is often only speculation.
Yes, “being able to see thresholds before crossing them” would apply to “peak oil” and to the carrying capacities of things. For example, the rate at which a scalar peak like “peak oil” is approaching is visible in the derivative rate long before. Continue reading Getting peeks at the the coming peaks→
Dot Earth comment 2/12/09 regarding misreading short term trends:
“Too Much Hot and Cool Hype? – A leading British climate expert berates climate campaigners of all stripes for overstatements.”
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There’s an interesting add-on to how people are often confused by statistics and trends being interepreted without any actual causal mechanism identified. I’ve seen that in lots of “whacko conspiracy theory” kind of science discussion that is all over the blogs these days.
The confusion seems to be between scientific answers and questions.
How often the error is clearly visible in the work of rather distiniguished scientists too, points to how we are all rather inept at “public science” discussion. If science is to lead the world it can’t be done in a closet where sloppy reasoning gets sorted out in private. Continue reading Missing from the scientific message→
To GreenLeap 2/10/09, edited response to Glenn Albrecht saying “I am genuinely surprised that the global financial system has failed before ecological systems.” in his blog post: http://ethicsclimate.blogspot.com/2009/02/ethics-of-nation-building.html
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Glen,
Yes indeed. If surprising, yes, but it’s also quite fortunate that the global financial system failed BEFORE the ecological systems… That gives us a little time to think, before the calmity occurs that we couldn’t recover from.
