First of all, I'd like to welcome Marco. I would rather talk about what economists really think than about what I think economists think. Similarly I would hope that he would be open to what climate scientists actually think rather than what he thinks we think.
(For context, I have allowed some of my musings about economics to leak onto realclimate; see http://tinyurl.com/ybl2zf) On 12/14/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Regarding comment from Realclimate :"The biggest concern I have is that > economics is growth oriented, and the planet is finite." > > Start by changing the semantics, because at heart, economic scientists > truly believe that money is just an objective representation of human > values. This is exactly the question I raise. I think that money cannot possibly be an unbiased and noise-free measure of values. It does measure a certain class of behavior, but it is quite a stretch to say those are the same thing. It seems we have a very fundamental disagreement. I would like to examine this issue calmly and as politely as we can manage. > If you say that the science of human values is concerned with > the attainment of an overall increase in these values, you realise that > it matters little whether the planet is finite, and you can have "value > growth" even with a shrinking physical base. This is conceivable, but it doesn't mean it is true. Or as the banks through their MasterCard consortium are happy to admit in their advertising, "There are some things that money can't buy". In fact I continue to believe that it is highly unlikely to be true. It seems to me that on a finite planet a useful measure of well-being would not sensibly maintain a substantial growth rate forever. > Human value scientists I have not heard of this field, although, indeed, I would like something like it to exist. Is this field commensurate with economics? A subset of it? A superset? ... > On your other point re: long time scales, "religious" values seem to do > well in intergenerational timelines (societies with solid moral belief > systems do better in the really long term). I think this is why the > Alarmists' message is so effective at "converting" people to the cause. You are meandering. There is stubborn attachment to ideas and emotional manipulation everywhere. If someone you dislike argues irrationally, that does not give you license to do likewise. In fluid dynamics, we have a systematic method of making approximations. First we describe the entire situation in mathematical detail. Then we make an argument that certain terms are negligible. Then we proceed to derive results based on the approximation. Finally, we go back to the result and re-evaluate the neglected terms, to ensure that the approximation is consistent. This leads us to a concept of "regimes of validity" for certain laws. As a simple instance, it is very useful to consider the instantaneous picture of large scale atmospheric flow as frictionless, but for prognostication beyond a day or so the approximation fails and a more complicated system is necessary. As I understand it economists start with crude measures of the quantities of interest and then proceed with their analysis without even bothering to formalize the aspects of the situation that they are neglecting, never mind establishing bounds for the validity of their system. Admittedly, the hard parts of human values are harder than the hard parts of geophysics in some sense. We don't tend to make the mistake that the easy representation is the only possible representation, though. My concern is that is exactly what economics does. If one claims that money and values are the same thing, that simply reinforces my concerns that the whole house of cards is built on some very crude errors. Our concern here is that its regime of validity is limited by time scales. Specifically, the e-folding time provided by the typical discount rate seems to set a very clear maximum time scale; this doesn't prove that economics represents values well on shorter time scales but it seems to necessitate that it cannot do so on longer ones. Human values do not necessarily disintegrate at the rate enforced by the discount rate. Can anyone make a sensible argument to support the idea that money is an objective measure of human values, even on long time scales, or is it a matter of appeal to authority and revealed faith? I'm not unconvinceable, but as one of my students said recently, I'm spectacle. mt --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
