----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Tobis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Newsgroups: gmane.science.general.global-change
Sent: Saturday, December 16, 2006 9:44 AM
Subject: [Global Change: 1068] Re: economics and anthropogenic climate
change: from RealClimate
"Michael Tobis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> 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?
Sociology. See, for example, Milton Rokeach _The Nature of Human Values_,
and _Understanding Human Values_. I enjoyed professor Rokeach's class at
Washington State U many years ago.
> 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
>
Money doesn't measure values. Money is a symbolic medium of exchange.
Exchanges occur when parties to the exchange find value in it. "Here kid,
here's five bucks. Run upstairs and shut off the bathtub so I can finish
this game and it's yours." Utilitarianism is one theory of value, the
Marxist labor theory of value is another.
Whether or not the exchange occurs at five bucks depends on the parties'
perception of value, with a general tendency to act in one's
value-maximizing self interest. If big brother turns his nose up at a fiver
and says "ten, you Tetris pig", then little brother may race upstairs to
shut the tap. Marx called little brother the reserve army of the
unemployed, which provides the capitalist leverage to lower wages and
immiserate the masses. Lenin probably would have just told big brother to
pull the plug on Tetris and confiscate the capital to allocate according to
need (and surely big brother would find a need to keep it for himself).
The utilitarian view would hold that the distribution of land (tub) labor
(running upstairs) and capital (the fiver) would tend to find a welfare
maximizing state, where welfare is the sum of utilities to the parties: if a
run-upstairs turn off tap collect five bucks utility plus a play Tetris lose
five bucks utility welfare state exceeds the value of a no-deal do nothing
tub overflowing play Tetris keep five bucks welfare state, then the exchange
of five bucks would symbolize the realized value of the higher welfare state
created by the value commitments of the actors (running upstairs turning off
tap, playing Tetris, and exchanging a fiver to commemorate the occasion).
And while all this class-struggle - slash - hedonistic calculus is taking
place, the sound of falling water compels the economist Tetris pig to jump
up and run to the tub, shut the tap and mop up the floor, then return to
playing Tetris.
The moral of the story? Tetris piggies need to fork over enough capital to
build 4,000 nuclear power plants if they want to enjoy the benefits of
electricity without overflowing the carbon sink.
-dl
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