Re: economists: no - systems engineers: yes

["Marasigan . Vicente" <vic@pusit.admu.edu.ph>]

On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, Jay Hanson wrote:
--------
> 
> You are right about everyone looking after their own interests, but
> not in the way that economists claim.   Keep in mind that modern
> economic theory is not science, it's politics. [1]   So if you want
> truth, forget the economists and rely on the scientists and systems
> people.
> 
-----------

Yes, economics is politics.  Economic thinking, as handed down to us
by Keynes and the 1944 Bretton Woods founders of the WB-IMF, is
concerned primarily with self-preservation amidst a mob-riot of vested
interests. In 1930, Keynes said:  "For at least a hundred years we
must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul
is fair;  for foul is useful and fair is not.  Avarice and usury and
precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.  For only they
can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight." In
Keynes' calculation, daylight will not shine until after 2030.

Before 1999, political economy has been "pre-systematic", i.e. not yet
systematic.  At the brink of a recession, people do not know what is
happening and why.  "When intelligence is a blank, the first law of
nature takes over: self-preservation."  (Lonergan, "Essay in
Circultion Analysis" to be published in two volumes under two
different titles by the University of Toronto Press, hopefully this
month or next month.)

Among the many triggers of global recession is the Y2K trigger.
Hopefully it will also trigger the promotion of systems-analysis and
the political will for human adaptation to its technical constraints.
This involves a quantification of the complex set of interactions and
the conditions for optimizing a dynamic equilibrium in the flow of
goods, services and payments to maintain/raise the standard of living
of the whole society.

----------
> 
>      THE ONE-AND-ONLY HUMANE SOLUTION: Global coercion. In principle,
> Step one would be to establish a global government of some sort with
> the authority to protect the global commons - our life-support system
> - as well as protecting universal human rights. 
----------
> 
> In short, the one big freedom that individuals would have to give up
> would be the freedom to destroy the commons (in its broadest sense) -
> the freedom to kill. And in return, they would be given a guaranteed
> income for life and the freedom to live almost any way they choose.
> 
------------

Fine. But please don't call this "global coercion."  It is too scary.
(I am scared stiff by the second wave of missiles televised over
Baghdad.  It measures the temperature of the fever arising from global
thirst for oil.)

Call it global law enforcement if you like.  I prefer the sound of the
words "democracy" and "rule of law" where laws are enacted by
systems-analysts and include the preservation of the commons in its
broadest sense.

Vicente Marasigan