Gail wrote:
gail> There is, however, so much confusion in this conference between
gail> work and employment...
And Harry replied:
> Gail,
>
> The reason for all production is wages.
>
> Sometimes, people seem to forget it.
And you sneer at at Pete for mentioning a "functioning economic
model"? That assertion is an economic model all by itself. I haven't
had any wages for -- lessee, maybe 25 years. No salary and I'm not
independently wealthy. Perhaps lots of folks would say I'm a slacker
for taking on neither the work ethic in the form of waged employment
nor the obligations of a good consumer but I've produced lots of
stuff, both physical and intangiblez, in that time.
For a few of your posts there I began to think you were down a pint
but now you're even capitalizing the word "Assumption" when you refer
again and again to your ex cathedra doctrine of the infinitely lazy
infinite acquisitor: "...come up with a couple of exceptions
to the Assumptions."
There are, just approximately, an infinite number of observations of
human behavior that are sufficiently valid to form the basis of
discussion and I'll grant that status to your two Assumptions (sic)
but not, by a very long shot, that of laws of human behavior. The
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the Ameican Psychiatric
Association is full of sets of usefully valid observations of human
behavior. Here's an exercise: For each of the entries in the DSM
under "Personality disorders", assess whether or not persons meeting
the relevant diagnostic criteria would enthusiastically embrace your
two "Assumptions" or not.
We'll have a meaningful, scientific grasp of human behavior when we
establish reproducible correlates between neural activity and
organization and consciousness -- a detailed explication of what is
often called the mind-body problem. It will not come soon. Marvin
Minsky has been quoted as having advised a student interested in the
subject to forego it on the grounds that the real discoveries were
sufficiently far in the future that the student's career could not
possibly be a stellar one. In my only slightly humble opinion, many
of our contemporary great minds have shingled off into the fog on
this. Others, such as neurologist Gerald Edelman and mathematician
Stuart Kauffman have developed intrigueing insights, albeit ones that
also indicate how far we are from a deep understanding of the matter.
While I find the mind-body problem ("There is no problem: minds are
what brains do." -- Minsky) one of the most practicaly challenging and
theoretically interesting questions extant, I don't think I want to
live in a world where we understand it well enough to make from it an
applied science in the hands of those powerful enough to pay for the
R&D. That sounds to me like technology of the ultimate totalitarian
fiefdom. It is marginally better today, to the extent that the
powerful manipulators base their efforts on bogus formulations that
humans everywhere are able to prove false again and again.
> We get our clothes from the tailor - or from Penny's or Marks and Sparks
>
> We get our meat from the butcher and our produce from the greengrocer.
>
> We get our milk from the milkman.
>
> Isn't this more sensible than keeping two cows - one to slaughter - growing
> 17 different vegetable, running up tee-shirts on the sewing machine, and
> spending a couple of weeks producing an ill-fitting suit?
Only if you don't know how to grow a tomato or have an earthworm
phobia; if you think trace hormonal contamination of milk is a
non-issue or you haven't the skills to to make things you need that
suit you better than the rubbish most vendors offer. Or if -- well,
there are *lots* of other ifs. Jeez, Harry, it's more complicated
than that. *Everything* is more complicated than that, for most
values of "that".
> What I said was that we don't try to analyze the "single complicated
> human" ...
Now that's a problem, isn't it? To make the kind of generalizatons
you do, you have to treat people as simplified economic units and
construct a model in which they're the components.
> We can see what a person does. As an economic scientist, or as a lay
> person, I can see how someone behaves.
If all the persons whose behavior you have an opportunity to observe
behave in accordance with your two "Assumptions", you need a better
class of friends and you need to get out more.
- Mike
