{"id":961,"date":"2009-02-15T00:00:40","date_gmt":"2009-02-15T04:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.synapse9.com\/signals\/?p=961"},"modified":"2009-02-15T00:00:40","modified_gmt":"2009-02-15T04:00:40","slug":"unheard-dissent-the-real-world-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/unheard-dissent-the-real-world-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Unheard dissent – the “real world” problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

letter to NY Times 2\/14\/09<\/p>\n

\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of important dissent on the economic \u201crecovery\u201d plan, and you\u2019re not doing it justice at all.<\/p>\n

From the \u201cphysical world\u201d community, the\u00a0scientists who study the economics of the\u00a0environment and physical economy, the flaw in the plan is believing the phrase \u201clasting economic growth\u201d. \u00a0Those who study how popular views are misguided seem always to be mostly unpaid or underpaid, for failing to support what is popular of course.<\/p>\n

Spokespeople for the real world are treated as an annoyance.<\/h3>\n

As a community we also don\u2019t really \u2018do\u2019 political speech well, tend to speak with original scientific thought, don\u2019t have a \u201cdown pat\u201d story line to offer, and have no particular soap box to get your attention from. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We do \u2018thinking\u2019 and \u2018observing\u2019 instead.<\/p>\n

There is growing clear and threatening hard evidence that we are depleting\u00a0the necessary quality, quantity, availability, diversity and reserves of the entire spectrum of natural resources <\/strong>we rely on, while steadily increasing our unsustainable overhead and dependence on the irreplaceable ones being using up.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s a completely fatal natural progression, that \u201clasting economic growth\u201d would disastrously insure.<\/p>\n

The press has been giving short shrift to \u201cthe physical world problem\u201d, actually forever, of course.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to make \u201centertaining\u201d and that\u2019s what people like to pay for. \u00a0 Entertaining people does not generally get them to think for themselves, though, and that\u2019s is a major reason why popular wisdom is often so foolish.<\/p>\n

So, the physical world gets no spokesman, and our survival is unlikely unless it gets one.<\/h3>\n

Here\u2019s a piece to \u2018chew on\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As surplus resource availability is exhausted, previous uses that once could be independent come into conflict.<\/p>\n

This is not 1930 again because many of the vast surpluses of resources we had of high quality, quantity and diversity are gone.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0What happens to a growth system confronting that is something like the recent\u00a0world commodity price spiral. <\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a> To me it\u2019s clear evidence the world growth system crossed a physical threshold of sustainability, seen in how the former stable\u00a0\u201claw of supply and demand\u201d abruptly turned into an unstable \u201claw of limitless price\u201d<\/strong>, broken only by the whole system collapse that followed 6 years later.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That kind of pattern violates every law of economics\u00a0 but is a commonplace sort of collision in physical systems.<\/p>\n

The only good spokesman for the physical world is your curiosity, though.\u00a0 \u00a0It\u2019s stories tend to be spoken very quietly, but with lasting effect.<\/p>\n

Phil Henshaw\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00b8\u00b8\u00b8\u00b8.\u00b7\u00b4 \u00af `\u00b7.\u00b8\u00b8\u00b8\u00b8<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

letter to NY Times 2\/14\/09 \u2014 There\u2019s a lot of important dissent on the economic \u201crecovery\u201d plan, and you\u2019re not doing it justice at all. From the \u201cphysical world\u201d community, the\u00a0scientists who study the economics of the\u00a0environment and physical economy, the flaw in the plan is believing the phrase \u201clasting economic growth\u201d. \u00a0Those who study … Continue reading Unheard dissent – the “real world” problem<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-econn","category-theory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}