It would be helpful to keep the following in mind when discussing economic theories (some of which have been quite bizarre).
1. There is an obvious long term trend of economic growth. https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&tdim=true&dl=en&hl=en&q=world%20gdp#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gdp_pcap_kd&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&ifdim=region&tdim=true&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false 2. There is a long term trend of population growth. Economic growth was removed as a limiting factor around 1800. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth 3. Technology will not result in a post-scarcity economy. Manufacturing, computation, and automated services will be cheaper. Land, raw materials, energy, and waste disposal will get more expensive as long as there is population growth. 4. Human labor will get more expensive as long as there is economic growth, resulting in greater pressure to automate. 5. A purely competitive free market economy will result in money flowing from the poor to the rich. 6. Happiness = log(money) (approximately). Thus, group happiness is maximized when everyone has equal wealth. 7. Centralized economies that distribute wealth equally result in everyone being poor because there is no incentive to produce things that other people want. 8. People vary in the degree to which they are greedy or have a sense of fairness. People will disagree over the extent to which we should take from the rich and give to the poor. 9. Competition between countries will select policies that work. 10. Trade between rich and poor countries helps both, but helps the poor countries more. 11. Economic growth in one county helps all countries that trade with it. 12. There is a long term trend of increasing trade between countries. https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&tdim=true&dl=en&hl=en&q=world%20gdp#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ne_trd_gnfs_zs&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&ifdim=region&tdim=true&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false -- -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
