4 ms·

The economy is just a mechanism to have a predictable environment in which to raise children.

• emodendroket 9y ago
  In that case it's an exceptionally bad one.
  • icebraining 9y ago
    Compared to what?
    • emodendroket 9y ago
      Almost anything? Even the market's most ardent defenders would not claim it is a system of constant predictability. If it were predictable investing would be a lot easier.
      • icebraining 9y ago
        I guess it depends on how you see it. In the past, the system may have fluctuated less, but the bottoms went very low; the current economy (which is broader than "the market") may fluctuate more, but it's also better at providing a predictable baseline. In my European country, even less than a century ago, it was unpredictable for large swaths of the population whether they'd have enough to eat to survive next year. That's not true for the vast majority nowadays.
        • emodendroket 9y ago
          Even in the US, apparently, up to 12% of the population[1] is sometimes in a position where they have to skip meals, so even there, I'd say the depths someone can fall to are, potentially, very low. And a lot of what makes our current system at least somewhat predictable is controls restricting the unfettered operation of the market. A truly unrestricted market would be very unpredictable. All in all, I don't see predictability as a particular strong suit of markets, even with the most optimistic assumptions -- and I'd also say that, contrary to the original post, promoting stability is not the reason they came about. Enclosure was not a particularly stability-promoting maneuver, for instance. [1]https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/key-statistics-graphics.aspx https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo...
          • icebraining 9y ago
            You keep arguing about the market, when the topic was the economy as a whole, as I've pointed out in my last post. A multitude of markets are certainly part of the economy, but they're not "the economy". And those 12% are certainly terrible (although only 5% were significantly affected, if you read a bit bellow), but I'd say it pales in comparison to what people went through in a year of bad harvest in the past. That people having to skip a few meals is obscene nowadays is a sign of progress.
            • emodendroket 9y ago
              OK, fair enough. I had gotten some of the prior posts jumbled in my head, I guess. Still, we live under a market economy, which does not maximize for "a stable environment in which to raise one's children," although in aggregate it has made our society wealthy.
• ashark 9y ago
  The most striking moment to me in my IPE class was when the professor, after we'd covered how governments and, in democracies (by proxy), We the People, bring modern economies into being and choose, to some degree (other governments and a variety of natural factors have more than a little say), the shape they'll take, innocently asked, "so, why have an economy?" Yours is a better answer than what any of us came up with at the time.
  • emodendroket 9y ago
    Every society has to have some kind of apportionment and exchange of resources, which might be called an economy, so I find the question strange.
• pjmorris 9y ago
  That's a perfect statement. I wish the reality were as perfect.
• abvdasker 9y ago
  Is this a joke?
• irickt 9y ago
  To further generalize your statement: In life any set of relations may be the basis of continuity.
• mrep 9y ago
  The economy is not a mechanism. It's just a term we use to generalize about the production of goods and services. Capitalism, socialism, fiscal policies and such are mechanisms that are used to influence the economy.