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"What parts of economics seem Western and not objective to you?" I don't think the western part is relevant to the point I was making. I probably should have l
by jshen 5y ago
"What parts of economics seem Western and not objective to you?"
I don't think the western part is relevant to the point I was making. I probably should have left it out. I was inartfully trying to point out that our current system has only existed for a small portion of human history, but most of us have internalized it so much that we can't imagine an alternative.
Let's break down the other part of your question, and your last sentence.
"What parts of economics seem ... not objective to you? ... Economics is a set of methods for anticipating how people will respond to incentives."
I think this is the crux of our different perspectives. The current global economic system is one that creates incentives that are somewhat arbitrary. For example, the fact that economists freak out if a country like Japan stops increasing it's population exponentially. This is an incentive that the system we've chose, of many possible systems, has created some what arbitrarily. There is no law of nature or physics that forces exponential population growth, but our economic system as it stands is predicated on it. In fact, I would say it's quite the opposite, nature typically has constraints that stop exponential growth, but we've managed to break for of those constraints, at least for a limited time. My big fear is that it will only be for a limited time. A system based on superexponential growth requires infinite growth, to date that would require infinite resources. Maybe there is a way to break free of the physical constraints of growth (Ray Kurzweil's singularity), but I fear there is not and the arbitrary incentive of superexponential growth (or just exponential) will lead to very bad times ahead if we don't choose to change our current system.
Now, maybe human psychology is incapable of changing in response to clear impending doom, and economics is simply a statement of this. Our response to the pandemic has not given me hope that human kind can adapt to clear approaching existential danger. I.e. will we cut down the entire rainforest and destroy our ecology before we have enough physical incentive to change? And again, I do believe that our current system which demands superexponential growth is an arbitrary incentive that we can choose to change.
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoI agree almost completely. We certainly can't continue to be this voracious and expect happy times ahead. My only disagreement is in the concept of "the system". I mean, institutions are critically important, yes. But most of the system is just individual people doing their somewhat predictable thing. The major innovation of economics has been microfoundations -- our predictions come from what individuals are motivated to do by their circumstances and their personal values. The models economists use tend to attribute painfully simple values to people -- more often than not, simple personal greed and nothing else. The horror is that those models are accurate. Japan's a good example. What's so bad about the population loss in Japan? It's that the society is used to having more on a per-person basis than it can now expect to have. What's a government to do? Reduce pension amounts? Increase ages of retirement? Replace the shrinking hospital staff, not to mention the once-abundant family that used to visit their elders, with robots? Whatever they choose, the people will be really unhappy.
- jshen 5y agoYeah, I think we mostly agree, but we do have this one small disagreement. If I understand you correctly, you are saying that human nature naturally leads to a system that demands superexponential growth. Let me know if I'm misunderstanding. I don't think this is the case, but I could be wrong. The case I'll make is that many societies were going along just fine without a system like this, many for longer than this current system has existed before colonial powers invaded them (or missionaires "converted them) and imposed this system. I just got back from Hawaii, so I have the pacific islands on my mind. Their societies before european powers reached them were very very different, and human nature hadn't led to the same system with the same incentives. Our current system may be more akin to cancer, it starts in one small place then grows uncontrolled until it ultimately takes over everything and kills itself. Edit: having said that, I don't think we have to end up in this dire place, but it will require us to end the incentive of superexponential growth which I don't believe is some kind of law of physics that we can't change. To steal of Geoffrey West, we need a unified theory of sustainability.
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoI'm not sure I believe in any particular fixed human nature. There do exist some radically different conceptions of ownership out there, such as the demand sharing of certain tribes in Namibia. That is to me somewhat hopeful. The "system change" I would hope for is that a lot of people individually change what they choose to do. Top-down mandates could help. Making consumers pay the full costs of their actions rather than subsidizing damaging ones like fossil fuels or meat would be a reasonable start. The trouble with blaming colonization is it coincides (roughly) with the arrival of the ability to grow like we do now. People have been greedy for as far back as our written records illuminate. But before factory methods, mechanization, theories of management, institutions like the limited liability corporation, etc. there was only so much scale that any society's production could achieve. To stop increasing the scale of human production while so much of the world is still so poor seems cruel to me. It wouldn't if I thought redistribution was politically feasible, but I don't. I don't know, it's a hard problem. > will require us to end the incentive of superexponential growth which I don't believe is some kind of law of physics that we can't change If it were a law of physics at least we could pinpoint it. There's no single incentive for exponential growth, any more than one process could be blamed for Moore's Law while it held. There's just a lot of individuals facing a lot of distinct incentives, and they all want to do better than they did last year, and want their kids to do better than them, and they measure "better" in terms of things like how many calories they consume, how many miles they're able to travel, etc ...