Re: [biofuel] The Wealth of Nature
Hi Ed On Sunday, May 2, 2004, at 02:30 PM, Keith Addison wrote: Herman Daly's book Beyond Growth was required reading in the program I was in a few years ago, for the course in Ecological Economics (not your typical course or program!, especially in '99). I haven't read it. :-( But I've read a lot of excerpts and commentaries, as with the other eco-economists, and Georgescu. Reading books is slow stuff for me these days, a couple of minutes at a time tucked in here and there, a severe problem and I don't know what to do about it. It's very interesting reading..my copy kept me up late making copious notes in the margins! A real eye-opener. And, despite what we may think, Adam Smith did have a fairly strong notion of the need to maintain the social fabric of society - more than he's given credit for. Too much selective quoting, and quoting out of context going on with his stuff, too often, I think... So do I think. Often by people who don't seem to have read The Wealth of Nations (which I have read, ha!). It's amusing to imagine an argument between a reincarnated Adam Smith, given a few months to look around at today's world and another few months to recover from it, and say Milton Friedman. Or Alan Greenspan. Or any of their ilk. It certainly would be an argument. I'd put my money on Smith. I think he'd agree more with Daly et al. I don't think he'd like this, for instance: The Adam Smith Institute, the ultra-rightwing lobby group, now receives more money from Britain's Department for International Development (DfID) than Liberia or Somalia, two of the most desperate nations on Earth. ... The institute's purpose is to devise new means for corporations to grab the resources that belong to the public realm. [From another reference:] The brains behind these stunts is Adam Smith International, the global consulting arm of the UK-based think tank. The money came from DFID, which in recent years has channelled more than a quarter of a million pounds of its allocation to Tanzania through Adam Smith International. The use of substantial sums of UK aid money in one of the world's poorest countries to swing the public behind a World Bank-led water privatisation may be surprising to UK taxpayers. Also: Vijay Vaitheeswaran of The Economist in his new book, 'Power to the People' joins others in saying, in essence, that what's really needed is a marriage between Adam Smith, the father of free markets, and Rachel Carson, the mother of the environmental movement. They're not incompatible, despite all the neo-liberal cant to the contrary. I think it largely amounts to the eco-economists, and Schumacher. GOING back two centuries, economists have worried about what Adam Smith described as the tendency of chieftains in a market system 'to deceive and even to oppress the public.' Yes, that's what he really said. Something else he really said: Adam Smith commented in 1776 that the only trades that justified incorporation were banking, insurance, canal building and waterworks. He believed it was contrary to the public interest for any other businesses or trades to be incorporated and that all should be run as partnerships. I guess you could read canal building as public transport. You certainly can't read waterworks as World Bank/Bechtel/Adam Smith Institute-style water privatisation. Smith also said: It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased. He said businessmen always yearn to escape from price competition through collusion. This is an interesting piece, it makes your point: http://reactor-core.org/betrayal-of-adam-smith.html The Betrayal Of Adam Smith, by David C. Korten Excerpt from When Corporations Rule the World, 2nd Edition Smith strongly disliked both governments and corporations. He viewed government primarily as an instrument for extracting taxes to subsidize elites and intervening in the market to protect corporate monopolies. In his words, 'Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.' Korten's a good read, much influenced by the eco-economists. Compare this next bit from Korten with the quote from Tvo that I posted in the message that started this discussion, below: Smith believed the efficient market is composed of small, owner-managed enterprises located in the communities where the owners reside. Such owners normally share in the community's values and have a personal stake in the future of both the community and the enterprise. In the global corporate economy, footloose money moves across national borders at the speed of light, society's assets are entrusted to massive corporations lacking any local or national allegiance, and management is removed from real owners by layers of investment
Re: [biofuel] The Wealth of Nature
Hi Keith: Yes, Daly devotes an entire Chapter to Georgescu-Roegen's contributions, pioneering work in the field. As for Adam Smith, I remember thinking, upon a quick look at some of the things he actually wrote, how he'd be spinning in his grave at the way his name is associated with some very ugly ideas that have grown much too large in our present day society. Edward Beggs On Tuesday, May 4, 2004, at 10:46 AM, Keith Addison wrote: Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US Canada. http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511 http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuel/ * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] The Wealth of Nature
Herman Daly's book Beyond Growth was required reading in the program I was in a few years ago, for the course in Ecological Economics (not your typical course or program!, especially in '99). It's very interesting reading..my copy kept me up late making copious notes in the margins! A real eye-opener. And, despite what we may think, Adam Smith did have a fairly strong notion of the need to maintain the social fabric of society - more than he's given credit for. Too much selective quoting, and quoting out of context going on with his stuff, too often, I think... Edward Beggs On Sunday, May 2, 2004, at 02:30 PM, Keith Addison wrote: http://www.gristmagazine.com/maindish/harrisintro040803.asp The Wealth of Nature A three-part series profiling ecological economists by Lissa Harris 08 Apr 2003 In 1776, the year the Scottish economist Adam Smith invented free-market economics with his book The Wealth of Nations, the total population of the globe was less than 700 million people. The coal-hauling locomotives and steamships that were to drive the Industrial Revolution were still 30 years off. Free-market economic theory grew and flourished in an era of abundant natural resources, in which the commodities that were the most rare -- and thus the most precious -- were the products of human technology. Nature was so bountiful that economists could afford to leave her out of their calculations. Fast-forward to 2003. The world's population has increased nearly tenfold. We are awash in technology, but our natural resources are rapidly dwindling. No longer can we rely on the infinite bounty of nature to provide healthy soil, clean air, and potable water. Yet even as the value of the environment to society becomes more and more apparent, so also does the inability of markets to recognize that value. And it's easy to see why. Compared to pork bellies and Palm Pilots, most goods and services provided by the environment are peculiar and ill-behaved: They don't respect property rights, they may take millennia to turn a profit, they benefit those who pay for them and those who don't alike. Neoclassical economists -- the intellectual scions of Adam Smith -- have generally been content to treat the environment as a particularly vexing sector of the overall economy, developing a group of theories collectively known as environmental economics to sort out the thorny problems presented by goods that don't fit the market mold. But recently, a group of mavericks known as ecological economists have begun to hammer out a new paradigm that stands economic theory on its head. Rather than the environment being a subset of the economy, they argue, the market is a subset of the global environment, and all the goods and services we trade ultimately depend on natural resources and processes. Ecological economists, while still personae non gratae in most university economics departments and major economic policy-setting institutions, are slowly gaining in influence, both in academia and among the general public. In a special series, we profile three practitioners of the new science: * Robert Costanza, director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics and the man who became famous for putting a price tag on the biosphere. In 1997, Costanza was lead author of a paper that declared the value of the services provided by the world's ecosystems to be almost twice that of the combined GNPs of all the nations of the world. The study made international news, prompting headlines like How Much is Nature Worth? For You, $33 Trillion. * Joshua Farley, a researcher at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, and a staunch crusader for the new paradigm. In 1996, Farley prized a doctorate in economics from the clutches of a committee of old-guard economists. Now he is making it his mission to literally rewrite the book for the next generation, coauthoring (with Herman Daly) the first textbook in ecological economics. * Herman Daly, the founding father and reigning guru of ecological economics. A former insider at the World Bank who is now one of its sharpest critics, Daly is the co-founder of the journal Ecological Economics and author of over 100 books and articles, including Steady-State Economics and Beyond Growth. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US Canada. http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511 http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/FGYolB/TM - ~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL
