Forum Post: The Science of Economics
Posted 12 years ago on Jan. 17, 2012, 7:19 p.m. EST by jinzhao
(68)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
The problem with economics today and the reason for its failure, resulting in complete economic collapse, is its alienation from actual physical process that are normally studied by the physical sciences.
The divorce of science and economics was done intentionally as a propaganda program intended to convince us that our physical resources, industry/manufacturing, weren't really important to us.
As a result, we were left with an economics that was mostly limited to accounting and analysis of economic data without a deep understanding of their relationship to physical processes.
Leibniz, who also discovered calculus, was the first to really explain economics in relationship to physical sciences through his examination of heat based machines and their capacity to multiply human productivity. But you won't read about him in most economic text books today.
An example of economics applied as a physical science would be Kennedy's space program. Though JFK may not have been an expert in economic science himself, he did have such professionals working for him.
Together, they developed our space program which was among the most challenging physical science projects in our history, and paid off with results of ten dollars in terms of economic growth for every dollar invested into it.
Think of the social effects of such a program as well. Many of you are probably too young to remember, but in Kennedy's time, we felt proud to be Americans, and believed in accomplishments like the space program.
If we would have continued in this vein, think where we might be today.
Science ! What does science have to do with economics? Don't you know it's all taken care of for us by the 'invisible hand' of the free market?
That sounds pretty jaded for a citizen.
That was very clever. I'm dazzled by your brilliance.
Thank you.
No need to thank me. Just pointing out the obvious. You're brand of cleverness is rarer than a two-dollar bill.
So tell us about the real meaning of your name.
You already nailed it earlier. Did you get dazzled by your own cleverness?
I see, but what is it about you that causes you to describe yourself as jaded? Are you weary with the economic crisis, or with life as a whole?
People like you.
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And, today the Chinese are surpassing us in solar energy. Big mistake on our part.
Yes, I think some little villages in Tibet have really been helped by solar power.
But China is really making big investments in nuclear energy. What happened in Tokyo hasn't slowed them down a bit. I guess we will see how it turns out for them.
They are heavily focused on solar energy:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/12/how-china-dominates-solar-power
Are you English by the way?
I see the Chinese are big in the market, but I don't think that solar will become the major energy source of the future, it just doesn't seem dense enough.
I think it has applications in places, but it wouldn't be able to run trains or subway systems, like the Chinese have, or power big manufacturing processes.
Nope. I'm American. I guess we'll see.
I saw some Tibetan people using it to power solar cookers on youtube. I think they also have solar power plants:
http://www.pv-tech.org/news/qinghai_tibet_plateau_welcomes_plans_for_1gw_solar_power_plant http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/7431979.html
That is very cool. And, poor people all over the world use homemade solar ovens to cook in.
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it doesn't matter what the money is spent on. as long as its moving. thats the most important thing. money tied up in capital does not generate wealth until it is used to create new products. there is a limit to the amount of physical production that can be accomplished. also, with moving an economy to a more physical state, then where do the resources come from? where do you pump the massive amount of pollution? where does all the labor come from? (not everyone can work a job manufacturing) karl marx himself predicted that a society would move from cottage industry to wrokshops to machine-o-facture and then on to something else. we are past that stage. we couldn't A:produce enough to satisfy our demand because of the MASSIVE capital investment required and B the products that were produced would be so expensive that there is no way for them to be competitive in the market place.
Not to mention two absolutely bizarre theories in modern economics; that debt is unimportant (or even a good thing), and that, in investments, all risk can be 'hedged' to zero:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-collapse-our-corrupt-predatory-pathological-financial-system-necessary-and-positive
I think the key to investment is that it is made in improvements to physical processes in the economy, such as better transportation or better energy systems.
Those hedged investments are generally just bets that have no relation to progress.
I agree.
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