On Wed, 20 Oct 2010, Keith Hudson wrote: > Harry, > > I'm starting a new thread because, where you wrote: > > <<<< > Your divisions are interesting for discussion but are useless in an > analysis of production. > >>>> > > . . . I agree. And so is yours. They're both the sorts of things one reads > in text books by way of retrospective summaries. They're "stop" statements > rather than "step" ones. Our argument was a bit of fun -- in my case at > Henry George's expense -- but it doesn't take us forward. Instead, there > are many other questions that need to be discussed, such as: > > How is the job structure changing? > What will be the next energy technology that can replace the burning of > fossil fuels? > How should children and young people be given equal opportunities? > What is the continuing role of the Internet? > How do present individual wealth disparities compare with those of the past? > Do national aggregations (e.g. a country's GDP) mean anything any longer? > What actually motivates consumers beyond simplistic notions of "greed" or > "envy"? > Does evolutionary biology have anything to contribute to economics? > What role will genetics play in future business? > What will be the effect of continuing job specializations? > Why has the financial sector become so large in recent decades? > Does the declining birth rate in advanced countries mean ultimate > extinction?
I can answer that one easily: of course not. People are responding to the obvious overpopulation of their environment. There are clearly no rich frontiers available to exploit, no empty land rich with bounty. (There are those who might try to mount arguments against this assessment, but they won't gain traction with the perception of the average individual). When populations decline to the point where sufficient resources are clearly available for offspring to thrive comfortably, higher rates of breeding will resume. The more interesting question is, will a steady state be rapidly achieved, or will there be ongoing oscillations. That will be great data for computing overall behaviour of large population systems - an underdamped feedback system. > Is money a valuable good in its own right or is it a piece of paper? > What consumer products, presently enjoyed by the rich, await mass production? Well watered, warm sunlit land. We'll be waiting a while. > When we know how to divide ourselves into two species who will be > motivated to do so? Those who are millions of miles, if not lightyears, away. They won't be consciously motivated, but it will happen anyway. > Will there be an economic benefit in becoming two or more separate species? > How do we put an economic value on the ecosystem? By building one for an orbiting colony, and discovering exactly how much it costs to get it to work. - Pete > > All of these are important modern questions which classical economists > could not even have asked, never mind answered. > > Keith > > > Keith Hudson, Saltford, England _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
