>>Only one thing will wipe humans from this planet and that is a lack of co-operation and a lack of desire to plan for and instigate a better future.
>>

Or a natural disaster of epic proportion, or a ‘lifebreaker’ asteroid hit from space?

Mind you, those damned Klikiss could come back and do us all in as well!

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Shunda,

You are right in your pine tree analogy except for one very powerful notion.

The pine tree is restained by a very narrow range of requirements to keep it alive (nuntrient, light, space, etc.) It is not adeptable in a very short period of time to change its requirements for life. It is not resourceful.

Human beings on the other hand are incredibly diverse and resourceful. We can change what we eat, drink, where we live, etc.

It is one of the reasons human are multiplying at a far too great a rate.

As a species we are infinitely adabtable to almost any situation using technology to overcome obstacles to survival.

Only one thing will wipe humans from this planet and that is a lack of co-operation and a lack of desire to plan for and instigate a better future. It realy has nothing to do with economics.

Just willpower to change. But whilst all would like to reach for the stars, most are mired in a malaise of conservatism to actually achieve anything.

I dont know how one changes the attitude of the human species to do better then they do now.

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BJ – so your a freidmanite? given TANSTAAFL was one of his favoured responses. The concept of opoprtunity cost drives a lot of current economic thinking and the issues of intergenerational debt is a significant issue. Equity across generations is important – this is one reason why I oppose the Stern review, the discounting methodology actually results in hurting future generations.

Owen makes a good point about the chaotic aspect of the economy – this goes to the heart of work by Hayek and why he was accurate in predicting the collapse of socialism.

Shunda – if your reading this – your current line of reasoning follows the work of Thomas Malthus who is an important economist, but Malthus did not include technological innovation, specialisation and efficiency improvement through the use of markets to trade resources to those who value them the most.

I understand your studying psychology (correct me if I am wrong), as a primer on economics and a fun read, over the summer season you should read the undercover economist by Tim Harford (www.timharford.com) and the Nudge by richard thaler. Nudge is looking at behavioural economics which is proving to be an interesting cross over between economics and psychology (www.nudges.org). If you have trouble getting hold of a copy at your library – post a note and I’ll see if I can help you.

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Please, if you are going to quote me, please be accurate.
I did not say “God created economists to make weather forecasters look good.”

I DID say “Economic forecasting was invented to make weather forecasters look good.”

The economy is a chaotic system and is nor predictable although it is deterministic.
Similarly the weather is unpredictable but is deterministic.

And the same applies to the climate although cycles within it are predictable (like summer and winter) just as cycles within the weather are predictable (like night and day.)

This is why Sternm’ predictions were junk and this is why the IPCC does not make predictions or forecasts but only plots scenarios. Of course journalists and doomcaster ignore their careful choice of words and always talk about the IPCC predictions – which they don’t make!

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I see the world economic situation of the last 100 years like a pine tree (don’t laugh)
A radiata pine is a relatively fast growing tree, it puts all the energy into the growing tips and does not resprout shoots from older wood very well if at all, it must continue to grow larger or it will begin to die.
In the early stages of the Pines life it grows rapidly so long as water, nutrients, and sunlight are available, ie plenty of abundant resources.
As the tree gets older its growth begins to slow although its demand for resources is still high because of its shear mass.
Then the pine tree quite abruptly begins to decline.
This is because pine trees have to keep growing to survive, and they develop an enormous bulk towards the end of their life. Ironicaly it is the bulk and lofty height these trees attain that begins their demise.
The shear difficulty of sourcing and then transporting enough resources up to the growing tips at such a great height, means that the tree basically grows it self to death.
The tree simply meets the limits of the available resources to feed all of the huge branches of the canopy. There is no contingency plan as the tree cannot sprout from old wood so removing branches to encourage new growth has little effect. This is why a radiata pine has a maximum lifespan of approx 100 years.

Is it possible that the world economy has reached a similar point?
The hunger for resources to continue growth appears to be more than was once easily available and there appears to be no contingency plan other than perpetual economic growth, which clearly cannot continue.
Are there any alternatives? or is the whole thing going to die and come crashing down in the next storm?
I don’t profess to be as knowledgeable as most on this thread regarding economics, so go easy on me!

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Pierre Trudeau, that magnificent commentator on the humam condition, was heard to murmer during a cabinet meeting in Ottawa “If you laid every economist in the world end to end you’d still never reach a promise!”

I have yet to see or hear of him being proven wrong in this observation.

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After you work out the part about it not being FREE then you have to work out the part about who pays.

The most common error I’ve found in that is that it isn’t us, its our kids…. or their kids who get stuck with the tab. That’s a common error usually made in favour of today’s wealthy. National and ACT together aren’t worth the powder to blow them to heck, (somewhat closer than hell), but the prince of insufficient light wouldn’t want ‘em even if we did. Their saving attributes are “not being Labour” and… hmmm… I can’t think of anything else

I AM a Green, though it isn’t always completely obvious

I have yet to write Mr English a letter about the LAQC and property. We will see how well he responds. Dr Cullen failed my final exam.

————–

I’d have to say that the run-of-the-mill “economist” in the USA up to about 4 months ago didn’t consider TANSTAAFL.

*I had a nasty run in with one of that ilk back when I was taking Economics 101. Thirty some years… the guy must be dead by now. I explained the applicable law to him and he told me flatly that it didn’t apply. I was too young and reckless to care about the consequences and the argument was just a little heated

Not sure what Friedman or Keynes thought either… (a consequence of my poor attitude in Eco 101), but I am sure that if that basic rule had been kept in mind the system wouldn’t be working up the courage to go over-the-falls again.

Yes… the market has every chance to slide a longish way further. The dollar however, is likely not going much lower. That will be for the $US and the Euro to do… relative to us. We still invest poorly, selling property to each other for ever inflating prices isn’t “investment” but it sure made a lot of bankers (in Oz) wealthier.

respectfully

BJ

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Bj,
so you dont get along with the likes of Hide and the national party then? but then again i suppose that the national party knows well the laws of scarcity, they just choose to place the payment at the hands of another, aka the citizen, more than can be said for Hide…
lol.

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Easy – there are no free lunches and no $100 notes on the sidewalk

(not sure if your talking to economists if they don’t think this).

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Truth

Von Mises doesn’t bother me at all, and as long as the Economist accepts the idea that there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, we get along fine.

BJ

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BJ – I suspect your just doing a wind up

Step through the looking glass – but then your an engineer and I suspect would like to redesign the looking glass – clearly flaws in the construction, poor quality silica etc etc. I find there is a closeness in the views of accountants, engineers (include scientists here) and economists but each thinks the other is missing a vital assumption or theory that makes there discipline superior.

But there is hope – some good engineers have gone on to become good economists

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Economists have always considered the economy includes the environment, always have and always will.

Which is why they have it BACKWARDS…. so often

Economics is a subset of ecology.

BJ

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Frog – Economists have always considered the economy includes the environment, always have and always will. Other like to segregate out portions of the economy e.g. environment, capital, labour as individual forms of specific study, but economics is all encompassing. I wonder whether you consider a cost-benefit analyst to just consider financial costs and not something that also includes intangibles and social benefits/costs. This might explain why you see economics just as a subsidiary.

The assumptions used in any model/forecasts matter – on that point economists are like weather forecasters – on the best information we have at this point in time there is a probability of x outcome – this does not mean that why won’t happen.

Economists accept people are subject to thermodynamics – but do environmentalists accept that people are subject to incentives and are part of the environment?

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Sorry Hayek – I’m with the scientists here, being one myself. The neoclassical economists use of the wrong mathematical and science models to “hold a mirror” up to the world do not make the models valid, no matter how good the math is. As I said in my post, we needn’t throw out the baby with the bath water, because a lot of good work has been done. Unfortunately, a great deal of work has been done on a foundation of sand and needs to be re-done. As Owen McShane said in a comment today – God created economists to make weathermen look good.

Economics can do better, and it is – we just need to acknowledge that people are subject to the laws of thermodynamics as well. Then maybe the high minded economic models will actually mirror what is happening in the world. Currently, they don’t.

The “economy” is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment. Always has been, always will be and no economic theory will change that.

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Have to support BJ in saying that mises would not be regarded as neoclassical.

Katie – you might want to explore work from the London School of Economics as an alternative to the Chicago school – Robert Wade has a good book on regulatory economics which is well worth understanding (incentives matter even if you personally want to ignore them). The hard part about economics and markets is recognising that it is holding a mirror up showing what behaviour is – sometime we don’t like looking at what we see. So if you hop on a set of scales and don’t like the result, you can try an pass a law to say only weigh 55 kilos but that is not to change anything.

Bj – agree many different views on intertemporal time values – but Stern picked one most favourable to give the results he wanted (self- justification) without strong support for why this view was right. I support activity to reduce negative externalities (pollution) but I don’t think you should or even need to fudge the economics to get there. That path takes you into dodgy risk valuations which go to the heart of the current financial crises – that is everyone justified the numbers used to give them the results they wanted to see.

PS – money is just a medium for exchange is and we use it as a proxy for how much we value goods and services including art works, leisure time, clean air, fresh water and clear night sky. Again it is just a mirror.

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I just don’t think that Mises would be regarded as a “neoclassical economist”.

BJ

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I’m not a fan of the Chicago School of economists, or pretty much anything published in the USA in the past 20 years.

They f*d our world.
Why read up on a failed paradigm?

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If economics is a study of sustainability then it would have to abhor some of the basic assumptions of what currently passes for economics.

Mises at least, took a view that could be regarded as sustainable. Unfortunately his voice was seldom heard in the greed is good, what’s in it for me uproar. Mises view corresponds far better with the laws of thermodynamics than the nonsense of Keynes and Friedman… the others aren’t familiar to me at all.

As for the time value used by Stern, you have your opinion. My opinion is that the cost of doing nothing is so large as to not be measurable in economic terms and it is wrong to expect solutions to magically appear. The time value of the money becomes almost irrelevant in such a context.

Three or more degrees of warming and we won’t have a civilization.

Money does not measure everything.

+++++++++++++++++++=

“most of your members are anti-science luddites”

Right… and I worked for NASA for a decade, including calibration of some of the cameras on the Mars Exploration Rover and development of the next generation signal chain for the Airborne Visible Infrared Spectrometer….

…AND I am a Green.

…and I don’t know ANY of my friends in this party who could be characterized as “luddites”.

Did you do special exercises to get your foot in so completely?

BJ

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Katie – economics is the study of sustainability – something forgotten by many critics. Its the reason why economics is called the dismal science.

I recommend you have a look into some of the work of Posner on Law and economics. Also listening and note heckling might actually be a pareto improvement for everyone.

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If you’re interested, there’s a Symposium on Economic & Social Policy happening this weekend –

Saturday 22 November 2008
8.45am – 5.00pm, Lecture Theatre 1, Rutherford House, Pipitea Campus, VUW. (the Lambton Quay, beside-the-bus-terminal one)

Organised by Institute of Policy Studies, this is a free event, no registrations required; free tea & coffee provided, BYO lunch (now there’s true economists talking!)

Speakers include Geoff Bartram, Dennis Rose, Ganesh Nana & Kel Sanderson, Brian Easton, Bob Stephens, Michael Fletcher, John Yeabsley, quite a few of whom are academic economists at VUW; the rest are treasury wonks, or consultants of some sort to Government entities.
Not sure which hat Brian Easton prefers to be identified under!

I may trot down for some of this, if only to heckle because they are not discusing any sustainable options in economics (and put my feminist social policy & economics paper to work, finally!)

Where’s Prue Hyman on the schedule when you need her?

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