Race Condition

cactus flower wrote:

What interesting posts.

A girl's way of saying 'bunch of nerdy freaks' ?

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

What interesting posts.

A girl's way of saying 'bunch of nerdy freaks' ?

More so "fascinated but too sleepy to take it in "

Atticus wrote:

That issue of the New Scientist also has an article by Andrew Simms of nef, The New Economics Foundation. They have published A Green New Deal this Summer. Sorry, no idea yet if any good, only just downloaded it to read tomorrow.

http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/

Quote :

welcome to nef (the new economics foundation).

nef is an independent 'think and do' tank. We believe in economics as if people and the planet mattered.

Daily updates on The nef triple crunch blog
The global economy is in meltdown. The response to date, has been revisions of the system that has caused the crisis. It has been left to a special report on the economy, in this week's New Scientist, with contributions from the father of Ecological Economics Herman Daly, and nef’s own Andrew Simms to imagine how we might rebuild a new economy from the ashes of the old.

A Green New Deal
A Green New Deal was published by nef on behalf of the Green New Deal Group. It is a response to the credit crunch and wider energy, climate and food crises, and to the lack of comprehensive, joined-up action from politicians.

It's gettin urgent alright.

EVM - what do you mean by 'gain' in your big post on the previous page where you're talking about feedback loops ? An example of a feedback loop is the melting of the north pole - it reflects sunlight while it's still there but gradually the water is heating up around it melting it so the more it melts the less it reflects and the quicker more water heats up around it melting it more and so on until it's all gone.

Is that a feedback loop and by 'gain' do you mean acceleration of the process ?

Audi, unfortunately the only skill that god gave me when I got in the big queue for skills from god was electronics. I asked for more but he told me to f off.

So I have to see everything through the lens of the only eyepiece I have. Yet it's an eyepiece I like having.

Gain is simply a multiplication factor, can be greater or less than one. Less than one is called attenuation, greater is amplification. Gain is independant of time, but is dependant on frequency due to the transfer function.

The transfer function of any system is a bit of a mad concept. So......Oh jesus who stole me beer....I can't explain it in a few words. I'll think of an analogy in a minute. Cactus flower get out. Ya lunatic.

Attenuation is to do with signals going through wires isn't it ? Isn't it the decay of those signals (your voice over a phone line for example) so it needs a booster every so often.

Auditor #9 wrote:

Attenuation is to do with signals going through wires isn't it ? Isn't it the decay of those signals (your voice over a phone line for example) so it needs a booster every so often.

If I shout at you - and you can hear me.
And then I walk 100 meters awy - and you cannot hear me.
That's attenuation. Time independant.

Time is far more important .

See this from 2 years ago. http://www.politics.ie/economy/8138-interest-rates-rising-too-quickly.html

The point of starting that thread was that I thought that Trichet was not allowing enough TIME for the effects of rate rises to cojole european society into reducing their debt.

As far as I remember the first rate rise was in Dec 05 and went from 2.0% to 4.25% , 9 quarter point increases in 2 years. Nuts. Far too fast. Trichet was watching the M3 index produced by his bureaucrats.

And now we're back to feedback.

Edit - EVM apologises for dragging the thread wayyyy off topic. Naturlich

I don't know if you are dragging it off topic really - it's a difficult subject all round. Already Atticus brought economics into it and then there's science and tech naturally being a part of it too. And systems theory - a grand machine nation thread indeed.

Kerrynorth too is very prescient or predictive (or morbid) isn't he ? What's the word for you both in this - 'sanguine' ? 'Conservative' ? 'Careful' ?

Like any system though, what goes up slowly should probably come down slowly unless you want to generate plenty of kinetic energy which might be what we are seeing in the financial and economic sphere, hopefully we won't see it in an ecological one. The graphs I posted on the previous page of the Dow, FTSE even ISEQ look eerily similar - a big wave crashing and toppling over. Your own instincts in the p.ie thread from well over two years ago were focused on the image of something teetering .. which is what the economy was and now it's crashed or crashing ? And we can restrict our discussion to the economy of Ireland or Europe but in this case we can extend it to the whole world economy at this stage.

What the hell is happening though ? Is it a kind of feedback mechanism at work ? Has a big wave of consumer spending and resource extraction and usage just fallen over or is in the process of falling over ? Bizarrely we can talk about attenuation and waves and time in all this in an abstract systemic way and it might make sense when applied either to physical processes and systems or economic ones ... What do you think ?

What do I think ?
Systems falling over is not abstract. More like predictable.
Every system has to fall over. Except nature. That never falls over.

Analysis shows clearly that any system which raises the competetive awareness of nature - gets crushed.

Atticus wrote:

That issue of the New Scientist also has an article by Andrew Simms of nef, The New Economics Foundation. They have published A Green New Deal this Summer. Sorry, no idea yet if any good, only just downloaded it to read tomorrow.

http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/

And Susan George, who I find pointlessly hysterical as usual.

Quote :

Like any system though, what goes up slowly should probably come down slowly unless you want to generate plenty of kinetic energy which might be what we are seeing in the financial and economic sphere, hopefully we won't see it in an ecological one. The graphs I posted on the previous page of the Dow, FTSE even ISEQ look eerily similar - a big wave crashing and toppling over. Your own instincts in the p.ie thread from well over two years ago were focused on the image of something teetering .. which is what the economy was and now it's crashed or crashing ? And we can restrict our discussion to the economy of Ireland or Europe but in this case we can extend it to the whole world economy at this stage.

Well, no, the only similarity is that they're graphs, really. The planetary resources we're spending simply become harder and harder to get. It's a bit like getting orange juice out of a carton - the first bit is so easy you've probably poured a load of it onto the counter, and have to mop it up - the last few bits you more or less have to wring the carton out. After that, if you want orange juice, you'll have to extract it from the cloth you used to mop up the first spills, or wait and recycle it out of your urine...

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

What do I think ?
Systems falling over is not abstract. More like predictable.
Every system has to fall over. Except nature. That never falls over.

Not so! Ecosystems crash regularly, and for similar endogenous reasons - all self-cycling systems do it.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Analysis shows clearly that any system which raises the competetive awareness of nature - gets crushed.

Hmmmm....what?

Wehey back on topic.

ibis, did we really need the urine-mop analogy.

Anyway getting back to the OP graphs, see the shape ? That's a bad shape. I know exponentials exist in nature, but not in that timeframe. Bad shape.

Reminds me of the Tangent of (pi()/4)

ibis wrote:

Not so! Ecosystems crash regularly, and for similar endogenous reasons - all self-cycling systems do it.

So! How long have you been around ?

ibis wrote:

The suggestion I like is one that deals with the essential limits - put caps on emissions of pollutants and consumption of raw materials. Leave everything after that up for grabs, but accept the limits we have to observe in any case. Let people apply their ingenuity to making things work better within those limits. Currently, we're really lazy - our solution to a better tomorrow is just to have a bigger economy. Our solution to reducing poverty is simply to make everybody richer (and make the rich richer by many times the amount that the poor get richer). It works, but it's the same as flooding your garden to water the flowers, and it's not sustainable.

There's no reason we can't continue improving our standard of living, but we need to do it by building smarter economies, not bigger ones. We're being lazy, like rich kids spending their inheritance rather than working, and it will come to an end when the capital runs out.

Great post ibis - it reminds me of a ZhouEnlai post from a little while ago where he said that the way to go forward might be to mobilise people as though we were at war but without there being a war, just the mobilisation. Perhaps the urgency is there now big style.

You'll have to expand on the above - how can economies be co-ordinated to get smarter ? We've all come up with certain problems here - rockyracoon has put it forward that a lot of human drive is based on the incentive for profit so what do you do with the stock markets in a new economy ? Do you only allow the trade of ethical and green stock ? Money is a form of energy almost - it incentivises people to work. Because economies which have to adapt themselves to the ecology they depend on will have to radically alter certain essential features like the definition of work and productivity.

There's no question but things will have to slow down for a while if we want to, as a species, build a nest that doesn't fall out of the tree. You'll be talking about building a nest for 10 billion too unless you can find a way of eradicating half of them or more.

The problem I'd pose is the consciousness with which you'd plan your economy - when humans design systems of that nature they tend to be flaky enough. The whole strength of Capitalism is it arises naturally out of competitive forces within the human being and other needs - the instinct or inclination for gambling and betting. These instincts are more or less universal so an economy established on them has a sturdy base that's hard to knock. But maybe that's rocked now, though which is why I think the economics is important. After all it reflects what people are taking out of the ground and seas and what we're spewing into the air.

I'm convinced a new edifice will have to emerge spontaneously or naturally for it to be lasting - perhaps it needs to last twenty years til we get our tech fix sorted. Maybe it needs to last longer because we'll be dealing with a lot more bodies on the earth by then.

What natural needs and inclinations could be exploited in order for this to get some roots ? If gambling and greed underlay Capitalism, could another vice or strong instinct underlie the next system ? Does it have to be a vice - couldn't it be positive emotions or characteristics which look like vices. I'm convinced some of the solution is in not working and also in creating provision for more education which is usually a low energy, low pollution activity after all. Perhaps it should become acceptable that we work for some of our lives, we educate our selves for just as much time and a lot of our work too is done manually too it's done as a means to an end instead of being used to produce useless widgets in a sweat shop that have no value and serve only to add to polluting the planet.

Quote :

The problem I'd pose is the consciousness with which you'd plan your economy - when humans design systems of that nature they tend to be flaky enough. The whole strength of Capitalism is it arises naturally out of competitive forces within the human being and other needs - the instinct or inclination for gambling and betting. These instincts are more or less universal so an economy established on them has a sturdy base that's hard to knock. But maybe that's rocked now, though which is why I think the economics is important. After all it reflects what people are taking out of the ground and seas and what we're spewing into the air.

That's why I'm so keen on the idea that the way forward is simply to say "we don't care how it comes about, but you can't use more than x amount of resources, and you can't emit more than y amount of pollution - how you arrange that is up to you."

You could start doing that today. No societal revolution is required - you simply set a limit on the use of resources and the emission of pollutants. We actually have the latter already, and for certain resources (eg fish) we have the former as well. You progressively tighten the restrictions (to give people time to adjust) towards the goal state of actual sustainability.

How people and businesses solve the problems that are involved is up to them. If a business needs lithium, it needs to work out how to use less itself - the restriction on use means that prices will rise, so the incentive is there. You might need regulation to avoid the problem of lithium stockpiling (or futures trading), at least at first, because that would exacerbate the difficulties of transition. I would oppose any idea that we 'plan the economy' because that's not relevant to solving the problem, and has been shown repeatedly to be inflexible.

You let the world economic ant-heap go on doing its thing, but you restrict its environmental inputs and outputs to sustainable levels - because the latter is the point, not changing the ant-heap.

Resource Rationing ?

The trouble with rationing is there will always be a group who believe rationing means more for themselves. So then there would be a revolution.

Legislation and regulation is just adults pretending. Let's pretend we have very little lithium. Well I'm not playing because I want shitloads of lithium....

Only when there really is no more lithium can the game begin.

ibis wrote:

Quote :

The problem I'd pose is the consciousness with which you'd plan your economy - when humans design systems of that nature they tend to be flaky enough. The whole strength of Capitalism is it arises naturally out of competitive forces within the human being and other needs - the instinct or inclination for gambling and betting. These instincts are more or less universal so an economy established on them has a sturdy base that's hard to knock. But maybe that's rocked now, though which is why I think the economics is important. After all it reflects what people are taking out of the ground and seas and what we're spewing into the air.

That's why I'm so keen on the idea that the way forward is simply to say "we don't care how it comes about, but you can't use more than x amount of resources, and you can't emit more than y amount of pollution - how you arrange that is up to you."

You could start doing that today. No societal revolution is required - you simply set a limit on the use of resources and the emission of pollutants. We actually have the latter already, and for certain resources (eg fish) we have the former as well. You progressively tighten the restrictions (to give people time to adjust) towards the goal state of actual sustainability.

How people and businesses solve the problems that are involved is up to them. If a business needs lithium, it needs to work out how to use less itself - the restriction on use means that prices will rise, so the incentive is there. You might need regulation to avoid the problem of lithium stockpiling (or futures trading), at least at first, because that would exacerbate the difficulties of transition. I would oppose any idea that we 'plan the economy' because that's not relevant to solving the problem, and has been shown repeatedly to be inflexible.

You let the world economic ant-heap go on doing its thing, but you restrict its environmental inputs and outputs to sustainable levels - because the latter is the point, not changing the ant-heap.

Are your economics up to the same level as your environmental grasp, Ibis?
Collapse of fish stocks and the other indicators you show contradict what you just said. Would you give some concrete examples of how any of the major environmental pressure trends have been arrested in the past?

Capitalism and human needs are part of the same nature within which massive shifts, collapses and extinctions occurr, as well as growth and expansion. We are seeing that right now. Capitalism, and in particular resource competition, often leads to war. I think your description of capitalism as coming out of a human liking for Paddy Powers type activity is historically indefensible. Try Adam Smith on the division of labour for a much better explanation. The development of agriculture ( which theorists now suggest came as a response to climate change), from which came food surpluses and the potential for the division of labour and urbanisation would need to be looked at to understand its development. Capitalism is a historical phenomenon: it hasn't always existed and it won't always exist.

Capitalism's big weakness is that it is unplanned. Auditor posted an excellent little video on the Latest Discussions Page that points out that capitalism inevitably leads to overproduction as individual capitalists are in competition and expand without knowledge or consideration of the amount of product that other capitalists are making. There is an inherent push in capitalism for growth, as the rate of profit falls and capitalist go for growth to compensate. On the financial markets it is precisely this trend that has lead to the present financial disaster, in which the appearance is that a relatively small default on US mortgages has brought the whole thing to an agonising deflationary crunch.

Are you suggesting that the OP issues can be solved by tweaking environmental regulations and without a profound change in how society is organised economically?

Auditor #9 - Human conciousness is also part of nature: I can't see that we are in a position to be able to afford not to use all of our knowledge and intellectual capacities in trying to solve this. Capitalists have never held back from using theirs, but I think we are now banging our heads of the limitations of capitalism as a system.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Resource Rationing ?

The trouble with rationing is there will always be a group who believe rationing means more for themselves. So then there would be a revolution.

Legislation and regulation is just adults pretending. Let's pretend we have very little lithium. Well I'm not playing because I want shitloads of lithium....

Only when there really is no more lithium can the game begin.

That's an overly pessimistic view, and contradicted by the fact that we do, and have, regulated either the consumption, production, or emission of all kinds of things quite successfully. Sure you get a black market in restricted goods, but that's not as bad as unrestricted consumption.

cactus flower wrote:

ibis wrote:

Quote :

The problem I'd pose is the consciousness with which you'd plan your economy - when humans design systems of that nature they tend to be flaky enough. The whole strength of Capitalism is it arises naturally out of competitive forces within the human being and other needs - the instinct or inclination for gambling and betting. These instincts are more or less universal so an economy established on them has a sturdy base that's hard to knock. But maybe that's rocked now, though which is why I think the economics is important. After all it reflects what people are taking out of the ground and seas and what we're spewing into the air.

That's why I'm so keen on the idea that the way forward is simply to say "we don't care how it comes about, but you can't use more than x amount of resources, and you can't emit more than y amount of pollution - how you arrange that is up to you."

You could start doing that today. No societal revolution is required - you simply set a limit on the use of resources and the emission of pollutants. We actually have the latter already, and for certain resources (eg fish) we have the former as well. You progressively tighten the restrictions (to give people time to adjust) towards the goal state of actual sustainability.

How people and businesses solve the problems that are involved is up to them. If a business needs lithium, it needs to work out how to use less itself - the restriction on use means that prices will rise, so the incentive is there. You might need regulation to avoid the problem of lithium stockpiling (or futures trading), at least at first, because that would exacerbate the difficulties of transition. I would oppose any idea that we 'plan the economy' because that's not relevant to solving the problem, and has been shown repeatedly to be inflexible.

You let the world economic ant-heap go on doing its thing, but you restrict its environmental inputs and outputs to sustainable levels - because the latter is the point, not changing the ant-heap.

Are your economics up to the same level as your environmental grasp, Ibis?
Collapse of fish stocks and the other indicators you show contradict what you just said. Would you give some concrete examples of how any of the major environmental pressure trends have been arrested in the past?

Capitalism and human needs are part of the same nature within which massive shifts, collapses and extinctions occurr, as well as growth and expansion. We are seeing that right now. Capitalism, and in particular resource competition, often leads to war. I think your description of capitalism as coming out of a human liking for Paddy Powers type activity is historically indefensible. Try Adam Smith on the division of labour for a much better explanation. The development of agriculture ( which theorists now suggest came as a response to climate change), from which came food surpluses and the potential for the division of labour and urbanisation would need to be looked at to understand its development. Capitalism is a historical phenomenon: it hasn't always existed and it won't always exist.

Capitalism's big weakness is that it is unplanned. Auditor posted an excellent little video on the Latest Discussions Page that points out that capitalism inevitably leads to overproduction as individual capitalists are in competition and expand without knowledge or consideration of the amount of product that other capitalists are making. There is an inherent push in capitalism for growth, as the rate of profit falls and capitalist go for growth to compensate. On the financial markets it is precisely this trend that has lead to the present financial disaster, in which the appearance is that a relatively small default on US mortgages has brought the whole thing to an agonising deflationary crunch.

Are you suggesting that the OP issues can be solved by tweaking environmental regulations and without a profound change in how society is organised economically?

Yup. The problem is over-consumption of environmental products and over-emission of environmental pollution. Deciding to fix that by introducing an entirely different (and failed) model of society and economy is like fixing a leak in your roof by moving the floor out of the way.

ibis wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

ibis wrote:

Quote :

The problem I'd pose is the consciousness with which you'd plan your economy - when humans design systems of that nature they tend to be flaky enough. The whole strength of Capitalism is it arises naturally out of competitive forces within the human being and other needs - the instinct or inclination for gambling and betting. These instincts are more or less universal so an economy established on them has a sturdy base that's hard to knock. But maybe that's rocked now, though which is why I think the economics is important. After all it reflects what people are taking out of the ground and seas and what we're spewing into the air.

That's why I'm so keen on the idea that the way forward is simply to say "we don't care how it comes about, but you can't use more than x amount of resources, and you can't emit more than y amount of pollution - how you arrange that is up to you."

You could start doing that today. No societal revolution is required - you simply set a limit on the use of resources and the emission of pollutants. We actually have the latter already, and for certain resources (eg fish) we have the former as well. You progressively tighten the restrictions (to give people time to adjust) towards the goal state of actual sustainability.

How people and businesses solve the problems that are involved is up to them. If a business needs lithium, it needs to work out how to use less itself - the restriction on use means that prices will rise, so the incentive is there. You might need regulation to avoid the problem of lithium stockpiling (or futures trading), at least at first, because that would exacerbate the difficulties of transition. I would oppose any idea that we 'plan the economy' because that's not relevant to solving the problem, and has been shown repeatedly to be inflexible.

You let the world economic ant-heap go on doing its thing, but you restrict its environmental inputs and outputs to sustainable levels - because the latter is the point, not changing the ant-heap.

Are your economics up to the same level as your environmental grasp, Ibis?
Collapse of fish stocks and the other indicators you show contradict what you just said. Would you give some concrete examples of how any of the major environmental pressure trends have been arrested in the past?

Capitalism and human needs are part of the same nature within which massive shifts, collapses and extinctions occurr, as well as growth and expansion. We are seeing that right now. Capitalism, and in particular resource competition, often leads to war. I think your description of capitalism as coming out of a human liking for Paddy Powers type activity is historically indefensible. Try Adam Smith on the division of labour for a much better explanation. The development of agriculture ( which theorists now suggest came as a response to climate change), from which came food surpluses and the potential for the division of labour and urbanisation would need to be looked at to understand its development. Capitalism is a historical phenomenon: it hasn't always existed and it won't always exist.

Capitalism's big weakness is that it is unplanned. Auditor posted an excellent little video on the Latest Discussions Page that points out that capitalism inevitably leads to overproduction as individual capitalists are in competition and expand without knowledge or consideration of the amount of product that other capitalists are making. There is an inherent push in capitalism for growth, as the rate of profit falls and capitalist go for growth to compensate. On the financial markets it is precisely this trend that has lead to the present financial disaster, in which the appearance is that a relatively small default on US mortgages has brought the whole thing to an agonising deflationary crunch.

Are you suggesting that the OP issues can be solved by tweaking environmental regulations and without a profound change in how society is organised economically?

Yup. The problem is over-consumption of environmental products and over-emission of environmental pollution. Deciding to fix that by introducing an entirely different (and failed) model of society and economy is like fixing a leak in your roof by moving the floor out of the way.

As overconsumption of environmental products is inherent to the present system, trying to fix it without introducing a different system is failing to recognise that the floor has fallen out already. What is failed model you mention btw?

cactus flower wrote:

ibis wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Are you suggesting that the OP issues can be solved by tweaking environmental regulations and without a profound change in how society is organised economically?

Yup. The problem is over-consumption of environmental products and over-emission of environmental pollution. Deciding to fix that by introducing an entirely different (and failed) model of society and economy is like fixing a leak in your roof by moving the floor out of the way.

As overconsumption of environmental products is inherent to the present system, trying to fix it without introducing a different system is failing to recognise that the floor has fallen out already. What is failed model you mention btw?

No, there's no requirement in the current system to over-consume resources or to pollute. The current system does it because resources are under-priced (their price is set by the scarcity of a flow of supply, ignoring the fact that it's actually a reduction of capital) and the environment is treated as a free good to pollute in. The result of that is that capital flows to businesses that use as much of these under-priced or free items as possible, but if you price them properly then it flows to those businesses that use them most effectively.

The failed system is planned economies. They don't work very well, for reasons that are not curable with bigger faster computers. At the end of the day a market does a much much better job of matching needs to means than any planned economy has ever done - but it needs regulation to steer it.

ibis wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

ibis wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Are you suggesting that the OP issues can be solved by tweaking environmental regulations and without a profound change in how society is organised economically?

Yup. The problem is over-consumption of environmental products and over-emission of environmental pollution. Deciding to fix that by introducing an entirely different (and failed) model of society and economy is like fixing a leak in your roof by moving the floor out of the way.

As overconsumption of environmental products is inherent to the present system, trying to fix it without introducing a different system is failing to recognise that the floor has fallen out already. What is failed model you mention btw?

No, there's no requirement in the current system to over-consume resources or to pollute. The current system does it because resources are under-priced (their price is set by the scarcity of a flow of supply, ignoring the fact that it's actually a reduction of capital) and the environment is treated as a free good to pollute in. The result of that is that capital flows to businesses that use as much of these under-priced or free items as possible, but if you price them properly then it flows to those businesses that use them most effectively.

The failed system is planned economies. They don't work very well, for reasons that are not curable with bigger faster computers. At the end of the day a market does a much much better job of matching needs to means than any planned economy has ever done - but it needs regulation to steer it.

Then how come its doing such a seriously bad job right now on both the environmental, production and distribution fronts ? Resources are "under-priced" because in capitalism it is one capitalist against another and the necessity for capitalists is to maximise their rate of profit. There is no incentive whatsoever for them to budget resources. They are more successful if they quarry out a resource rapidly and then close down. To budget resources over time or on any other basis would require intervention and planning.

An excellent piece in New Scientist.
It reminds me of a New Scientist article last year with a graph of HDI to number of planets' resource usage and Cuba was the one country in the 'sweet spot'.

http://friendsoftheirishenvironment.net/index.php?do=paperstoday&action=view&id=10619




"We don’t need environmental evangelicals to tell us that
sustainable development is a good idea. Yet, if that is our goal, we
are heading in the wrong direction - with the exception of Cuba. So
says the first study to examine the ecological impact of changing
lifestyles around the globe."

Unfortunately it is a built in dynamic of the market system to ignore and to profit from, (and to lobby against attempts to prevent such profiteering) such externalities outside of the market exchange.
Speaking of technologies, I think there's a real imperative to make all breakthroughs and innovations immediately available to all enterprises, so there will never be any loss of static efficiency in tackling the problems, (not that a techno-fix will save us genuine one or not)



* Also check out the documentary on how Cuba survived peak oil. (note to reactionaries... this does not mean I'm a fan of the top-down coordinatorist elements of the Cuban system)

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil
http://globalpublicmedia.com/articles/657
full vid

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-66172489666918336


And finally, I don't believe it ibis, you've just linked to the 'infamous' Susan George
(she of being agin the treaty/constitution)

cactus flower wrote:

ibis wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

ibis wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Are you suggesting that the OP issues can be solved by tweaking environmental regulations and without a profound change in how society is organised economically?

Yup. The problem is over-consumption of environmental products and over-emission of environmental pollution. Deciding to fix that by introducing an entirely different (and failed) model of society and economy is like fixing a leak in your roof by moving the floor out of the way.

As overconsumption of environmental products is inherent to the present system, trying to fix it without introducing a different system is failing to recognise that the floor has fallen out already. What is failed model you mention btw?

No, there's no requirement in the current system to over-consume resources or to pollute. The current system does it because resources are under-priced (their price is set by the scarcity of a flow of supply, ignoring the fact that it's actually a reduction of capital) and the environment is treated as a free good to pollute in. The result of that is that capital flows to businesses that use as much of these under-priced or free items as possible, but if you price them properly then it flows to those businesses that use them most effectively.

The failed system is planned economies. They don't work very well, for reasons that are not curable with bigger faster computers. At the end of the day a market does a much much better job of matching needs to means than any planned economy has ever done - but it needs regulation to steer it.

Then how come its doing such a seriously bad job right now on both the environmental, production and distribution fronts ?

Because natural resources are grossly underpriced compared to, for example, labour or capital. Imagine a business that needs, say, tin, and produces acid water waste as a byproduct. If the environment is valued at zero, it's not worth expending either labour or capital on cleaning up the waste, and a business that does so is penalised. If tin is under-valued, because the economy values it as if we could go on producing the same amount year after year, then it's more "efficient" for the business to use more in its product if that means a reduction in the use of labour or capital.

The incentive effect in the current economic system are what makes it work so well - but they apply well only within a framework of prices. Where bits of reality are left unpriced, the incentive system produces perverse incentives - such as those outlined above. One solution is to ensure that things are properly priced, so that the incentives are no longer perverse. There's a whole field of study in respect of this - environmental economics - which formed a fair chunk of my MSc.

Holy cow. USA is miles off. That's a very interesting graph.

Any idea how HDI is measured Pax ? I presume its based on loads of economic/technology stats. ?

ibis wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

ibis wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

ibis wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Are you suggesting that the OP issues can be solved by tweaking environmental regulations and without a profound change in how society is organised economically?

Yup. The problem is over-consumption of environmental products and over-emission of environmental pollution. Deciding to fix that by introducing an entirely different (and failed) model of society and economy is like fixing a leak in your roof by moving the floor out of the way.

As overconsumption of environmental products is inherent to the present system, trying to fix it without introducing a different system is failing to recognise that the floor has fallen out already. What is failed model you mention btw?

No, there's no requirement in the current system to over-consume resources or to pollute. The current system does it because resources are under-priced (their price is set by the scarcity of a flow of supply, ignoring the fact that it's actually a reduction of capital) and the environment is treated as a free good to pollute in. The result of that is that capital flows to businesses that use as much of these under-priced or free items as possible, but if you price them properly then it flows to those businesses that use them most effectively.

The failed system is planned economies. They don't work very well, for reasons that are not curable with bigger faster computers. At the end of the day a market does a much much better job of matching needs to means than any planned economy has ever done - but it needs regulation to steer it.

Then how come its doing such a seriously bad job right now on both the environmental, production and distribution fronts ?

Because natural resources are grossly underpriced compared to, for example, labour or capital. Imagine a business that needs, say, tin, and produces acid water waste as a byproduct. If the environment is valued at zero, it's not worth expending either labour or capital on cleaning up the waste, and a business that does so is penalised. If tin is under-valued, because the economy values it as if we could go on producing the same amount year after year, then it's more "efficient" for the business to use more in its product if that means a reduction in the use of labour or capital.

The incentive effect in the current economic system are what makes it work so well - but they apply well only within a framework of prices. Where bits of reality are left unpriced, the incentive system produces perverse incentives - such as those outlined above. One solution is to ensure that things are properly priced, so that the incentives are no longer perverse. There's a whole field of study in respect of this - environmental economics - which formed a fair chunk of my MSc.

What were your recommendations for price fixing ?