Needed: a Copernican Shift

I think we need a more earthy connection.

Scarabus,

Wow. Very fine reasoning.

That said, having identified a character flaw in certain individuals, what makes all this so awkward is that they are not bystanders. In their official capacity they are soothsayers prone to a Compartmentalization which really works only in the military, and for different reasons.

A social psychologist says, "Look it's pathological to insist on destroying a planet merely to maintain a means of social control through promissory notes earned and exchanged for needs."

A likely response would be a friendly, "And where did you study Economics?"

This is turf stuff. Turf stuff can result in the strangest compromises,

--that psychiatrists were so easily co-opted to conduct torture sessions,

--that lawyers fabricated laws that assumed torture and international covenants were irrelevant in Law,

--that military and intelligence agencies who were adamantly opposed to torture for its sheer unreliability - caved under pressure.

--that all of these professionals (a la Professor Stanley Milgram) surrendered judgment and conformed to stupid concepts "voluntarily" to protect or enhance their status suggests to me it's time to change the paradigm.

Are people imperfect? The founding fathers certainly thought so. Enough to enact a web of frustrations to entrap and confound anyone who sought to exceed a limit on power.

That limit has long been broken. Eisenhower warned about it and was in turn ignored. Rational people accept that other rational people can accept the damnedest sophistry as sufficient cause to do something stupid.

Like ignore the fact that an economic policy is Kamakzi.

I think we both expect the same results. They will look something like this. In order to avoid being harmed themselves by the bunglers who have led us to this impasse, wiser hands, people with wider bandwidth than one or two narrow disciplines, will be given a chance to make their pitch.

Should those people be economists? No. Because there is something too cold and narrow about their reasoning. It's like asking Borat, or Joe The Plumber,
"Hey, c'mere. I've got a problem reconciling the pre-socratic philosophers and quantum gravity theory - got a moment?"

I think the gulf between economics and other more proactive humanistic disciplines is not a matter only of character flaws, but the fear of being pounced on by others, differently qualified.

Some years back I asked a fellow I knew who was a psych professor why he hadn't written some, "I'm OK your OK" text and made a pile of money. His response?

"I've only got a PhD in psych."

My blank look inspired more detail. I paraphrase here.

"If I tread into the turf of Biologists, Chemists, Neurologists and Physicists, and I'm not careful in avoiding a step, inadvertently, on any one's toes, anyone of these disciplines could crucify me. See?"

It made sense. Ooops. Look! His academic reputation in ruins for a book panned by others, differently qualified. How would he recover? People issuing grants would know about it. People considering tenure would ponder it heavily.

So what happens as knowledge fragments into isolated facets of brilliant microscopic insight? No one sees the larger picture.

This is turn recapitulates a classic icon.

The Tower of Babel.

The article presents an undocumented, two-valued orientation. Earnest; heart-felt; but not really constructive.

There's no essential conflict between social scientists and global warming scientists. (Save the debate about which disciplines qualify as sciences. Separate question.)

Take the extreme case: global warming destroys civilization. How could economists possibly want that? No civilization? No economy. No economists. Sheesh!

The real questions are more practical and immediate. Do some compromised economists try to provide rationalizations for the greedy pirates who are raping the planet? Of course! But that's an indictment of character, not of an academic discipline.

Do some extreme environmentalists commit acts of terror? Of course! But that's an indictment of perspective and character, not of environmentalism itself.

Economists who can provide arguments to demonstrate that "green" investments are rational? What a gift to environmentalists! Environmentalists who can rally support for those economists? What a return gift!

I'm for going back to nature and forming tribes and living in the woods, with all the greed and misunderstanding of what community is anymore, If people don't want a civilized society by not paying taxes for being incredibly greedy and fortunate while our earth suffers for their extremes and not to mention the very workers that allowed for their good fortune go without the basics such as a roof over their heads or health care, then so be it. I can see my tribe conforming to the rule of nature and on weekends we go to the nearest gated communitee and pillage it and take their women or men whatever my members of my tribe prefer. A civilized and respectful social order my ass, it will never happen the pigs have gotten too fat and the greedy to greedy bring on the new age.

Hmmm very interesting article. As the world becomes more and more populated and resources become more scarce, a sustainable economy more in touch with nature is needed now more than ever.

"The larger the economy becomes relative to the ecosystem, and the more it presses against the earth's natural limits, the more destructive this incompatibility will be."
There are individuals who have come to this conclusion and they have been laughed at by conservatives, especially religious conservatives who see the earth and the ecosystem as simply something to dominate and mine rather that care for so that it continue to be viable.

"The challenge for our generation is to reverse these trends before environmental deterioration leads to long-term economic decline, as it did for so many earlier civilizsations."
I sincerely hope that our scientists and economists start to recognize the fact that the economy is really a a subsystem and work together before it is too late.

Thank you for this very interesting article.

"Economics? Why do they call it a Science, when it isn't one?"

Our economics-disconnect (from the earth and survival) is like a fractal, reiterating itself across a computer screen. You can watch an incredibly elaborate shape being formed, but if the variables it is composed of are inept and unbalanced it is worse than useless. It is just pretty, non representational, conjectural expensive Art.

The author of the quote atop this post is a physics wonk. He maintains that life, given all its simultaneous dimensions (and contrary to economic theories which he considers uniformly bizarre) is not a linear system. The universe is far from it.

Thus the formulas, equations and grandiose philosophizing about The Market, (what "It" wants and what "it" can do if we appease "it") is snake oil sophistry serenaded from the back of the POX NEWS covered wagon..

I hear this a lot from people whose career involves Actual Hard Science.

Why not? A science is judged by its ability to predict events correctly over time, otherwise instead of creating a valid theory that you can work with, all you've got is an untested and untestable "hypothesis."

It's not a bad thing to start with a hypothesis unless it's wrong and you're betting the planet on it being brilliantly successful. We do that.

Business has a neat near-scientific litmus test for new ideas - it's called Proof Of Concept. You want to thrill some money out of a wealthy investor or consortium - "OK! Prove your idea works. Show us, kid."

This is not required with Economics. First, whether it is Marxism, supply side, Keynesian, neo-junta-ism, or what have you - it is applied until it fails, miserably. It is like using a vacuum cleaner to apply jam to toast - "But it's all I've got to do the job!"

Once the worst happens, then the accusations start to fly. 'False Prophecy!' 'Intellectual Fraud' 'Voodoo Divinationism!' Oh, and "give back those damned Nobels for Economics!"

We have yet to face that we live in a superstition-bound cargo cult, an economic theocracy that is equally as primitive in outlook as ever humans were before us.

We can't bring ourselves down to a level that admits, with calm and poise, "I have no damned idea what's going on, or what's going to happen. All I can do is hope my best guess works when I need it to."

Were we to do that we'd be modest and smart. But we wouldn't be able to micromanage our fantasized world all the way to our conjectural Utopia.

Because humans seem always to have been dependent upon gross but flattering fictions we need to have some idea that we know what's going on, who understands it, and who we can lean on for the straight poop to keep us out of the quicksand. In short - folie a deux, or co-dependency.

So, when our ecomomist\sages stoop to inform us of how many market forces can dance atop a pinhead, we lower our heads to think, "Damn! I was right! It wasn't deregulation! Historically speaking It was Austerlitz and Napoleon! The Dolt! He did it for Josephine!"

http://www.mpdailyfix.com/2009/03/no_magic_beans_no_magic_formul.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-buzenberg/the-mega-banks-behind-the_b_197454....