tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post3510872833448234493..comments2023-09-28T08:13:11.489-07:00Comments on Only In It For The Gold: Tim O'Reilly Gets ItMichael Tobishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08229460438349093944noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post-67996567246737672732009-01-11T15:51:00.000-08:002009-01-11T15:51:00.000-08:00Hank asks:is "recession" actually about the right ...Hank asks:<BR/><BR/><I>is "recession" actually about the right level of economic activity for the limited planet, reflecting less strip-mining of what's left? This looks like a downward trend overall:<BR/>http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/cbo_gap.png </I><BR/><BR/>No. Lower than that to correct the overshoot. We're way over - how much depends upon whose papers you prefer.<BR/><BR/>The other thing about the monetary levels is that a lot of the "Wealth" we "Lost" was fake money anyways (but what does that say about the situation?).<BR/><BR/>Best,<BR/><BR/>DDanohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03709762632849004871noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post-18525982315302958552009-01-11T12:40:00.000-08:002009-01-11T12:40:00.000-08:00Hank,I have a hard time with Krugman's graph, whic...Hank,<BR/><BR/>I have a hard time with Krugman's graph, which nominally spends a lot of time at substantially over 100% of potential. This would make most non-economists uncomfortable.<BR/><BR/>So I don't know what to say to that, or to Krugman's argument about deflation. It seems to me almost as handwavy as the idea that there will be a normal "recovery" from the present event, which Krugman justifiably points out is essentially baseless.<BR/><BR/>To your large point, I agree that growth as currently understood cannot go on forever, that the sustainable level is likely already exceeded in some sense, and that therefore in the long view a contraction is necessary and healthy.<BR/><BR/>I have proposed the name "the great relaxation" for the present event, to accentuate its beneficial aspects. Someone else has come up with "the great unwinding" which seems nicer to me.<BR/><BR/>Google has interesting things to offer under the "unwinding" rubric. Check out <A HREF="http://www.valuenotes.com/AGoel/ag_Globalmarkets_07feb05.asp?ArtCd=34714&Cat=F&Id=347" REL="nofollow">this article, from 2005, from India</A>, for instance.<BR/><BR/>"Unwinding" is apparently financial jargon for cascading credit crunches, but it also has connotations of kickin up your heels, puttin Jimmy Buffet on the boom box, and mixin up a margarita or two.<BR/><BR/>Everything you know (about economics and finance anyway) is wrong. Might as well relax and enjoy life while you still can.<BR/><BR/>A little less ambition would suit us all well.Michael Tobishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08229460438349093944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post-51959915266834843592009-01-11T08:14:00.000-08:002009-01-11T08:14:00.000-08:00I wonder if the "output shortfall" shown here is a...I wonder if the "output shortfall" shown here is a measure of the overshoot problem -- is "recession" actually about the right level of economic activity for the limited planet, reflecting less strip-mining of what's left? This looks like a downward trend overall:<BR/>http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/cbo_gap.png<BR/><BR/>from:<BR/>http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/10/risks-of-deflation-wonkish-but-important/#comment-99007<BR/><BR/>Seems to me the whole 'financial leverage' notion of multiplying money by lending it out at compound interest has always been utterly incompatible with life on Earth, otherwise any bank account opened a few centuries ago would be worth more than the planet is.<BR/><BR/>This must be something economists deal with, if only by "in the long run we are all dead" argumentation.Hank Robertshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07521410755553979665noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post-4178602259684429402009-01-11T06:48:00.000-08:002009-01-11T06:48:00.000-08:00Thanks John, lists of Lomborgs errors are always u...Thanks John, lists of Lomborgs errors are always useful.<BR/><BR/>Hank, the general consensus seems to be that given the foreseeable future of technology, space will be out of reach for 99.9999% of humanity. Secondly, the times involved in such activities as sticking ion engines on objects is in the order of decades, thus no CEO or politician will be able to claim that they have made things better before the next election.<BR/><BR/>Thirdly, we don't quite have the technology for spiffy ion engines just yet. <BR/>But you are entirely correct regarding extraction and how we need to get smarter and more long term. <BR/><BR/>I can sort of imagine an ecological accounting method, whereby the complexity in a region, number of species, robustness of the ecosystem, and so on is recorded and measured with the aim of preventing extinctions and increasing the total complexity of global ecosystems. <BR/>There would be a few problems with it I am sure.guthriehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17992984293423290387noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post-72653759076686069352009-01-10T20:12:00.000-08:002009-01-10T20:12:00.000-08:00Take a look at e3network - Economics for Equity an...Take a look at <A HREF="http://www.e3network.org/" REL="nofollow">e3network - Economics for Equity and the Environment</A>, starting with<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://www.e3network.org/EconomistsStatementonClimateChange.pdf" REL="nofollow">Economists' Statement on Climate Change</A>.<BR/><BR/>One of them is Frank Ackerman, who published a nice <A HREF="http://ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/rp/Ackerman_CoolIt.pdf" REL="nofollow">analysis</A> on the errors in Lomborg's Cool It!, from an economist's view. That's a free copy of something published in Climactic Change.John Masheyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17786354229618237133noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post-37460776215893156002009-01-10T17:28:00.000-08:002009-01-10T17:28:00.000-08:00Thank you Michael. Utterly sane.Most of the money...Thank you Michael. Utterly sane.<BR/><BR/>Most of the money the last 50 years or so was imaginary claims on "a future not our own" -- debt with nothing to secure it but the cornucopian myth.<BR/><BR/>I'd still, faintly, hope we-the-species gets into space. I don't know why we're not placing tag-and-release packages on anything that comes near enough to Earth to touch with a transponder. I don't know why we haven't built a second generation of those that incorporates an ion engine and enough telecom to slowly, over decades if needed, tweak them into a useful stable position.<BR/><BR/>Except investing in space isn't like investing in a new world, a new continent. There's no easy pickings. No big trees to turn into ships. No clouds of passenger pigeons for market hunting for meat pies. No salmon so thick people get sick of eating them. Not when we go into space. Only the need to invest for the multi-generation long term.<BR/><BR/>The little bit of amateur botanical restoration I've done in my copious spare time, and the little bit of preservation of old forest, are what I hoped decades ago to somehow leave going making wildlife for the longer term. <BR/><BR/>The economy has no easy way even to find people to hand them off to who can be trusted to leave them alone for another lifetime after mine. Everything's biased toward stripmining nature, even the little bit that's left.<BR/><BR/>I wish we were smarter.Hank Robertshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07521410755553979665noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post-88619360197952592232009-01-10T13:27:00.000-08:002009-01-10T13:27:00.000-08:00To me the more cogent Sterling line was this:Commu...To me the more cogent Sterling line was this:<BR/><BR/><I>Communism, capitalism, socialism, whatever: we’ve never yet had any economic system that recognizes that we have to live on a living planet. Plankton and jungles make the air we breathe, but they have no place at our counting-house. National regulations do nothing much for that situation. New global regulations seem about as plausible as a new global religion. </I><BR/><BR/>because this is the crux of what we face (and what I was getting at in commenting on Stavins' silly comment): our current systems cannot fix the situation we are in. <BR/><BR/>We see this in our economic system, one that fetishizes the economy, but our mainstream economists can't grasp the simplest human-ecosystem interactions - and yet they make policy. Disastrous policy. <BR/><BR/>Sigh.<BR/><BR/>[/rant]<BR/><BR/>Best,<BR/><BR/>DDanohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03709762632849004871noreply@blogger.com