a long time ago, Sandwichman wrote: >> There's entirely too much "you seemed" in your reply. I'm sorry, but I don't >> "seem" to say or mean anything. I say what I say and if you want to >> interpret that in some extreme, nonsensical way or another, that's YOUR >> business (or problem as the case may be).<<
I responded: >OK, you didn't "seem." You _did_ miss the fact that people (and not just I) use the phrase "you seem to have that opinion" in order to give you an out, so you can deny agreeing with stupid opinions. >It's not just a rhetorical matter, however: since I have an extremely hard time reading anyone's mind, I don't like to assert that anyone have such and such opinion unless I can find a direct quote which makes that clear. You didn't "seem" to miss this; you _did_ miss this point...< More recently, Sandwichman wrote: > Your inferences from what I said are so extreme and ad absurdum that tacking > on a qualifying "you seemed" hardly rates as a courtesy. It looks to me more > like you take it as a license. Why should I have to deny agreeing with > stupid opinions I never stated? Thanks but no thanks for giving me that > "out". I try to understand what you're saying, even though I cannot read your mind. As far as I am able, I try to present your opinions as _I understand them_. Maybe I need to have things explained in words of one syllable... Why can't you t simply say "no, that isn't my opinion; instead I believe in the following"? For example, you could say "no I don't think recessions are a good thing because they restrict working hours and help save the environment (as you, Jim, imply I am advocating); instead, I think that we need some sort of government plan that would allocate the restriction of work-hours in a fairer and more efficient way, while maximizing the environmental gain." But I shouldn't put words in your mouth: better, you could present whatever you think is the right approach. > But I will deny that I "reject statistics that don't fit with my > world-view." I reject statistics when I know enough about their construction > to have documented reservations about their truth status. What "truth status"? It depends on what "truth" you're looking for. If GDP statistics (the ones you talk about) are supposed to measure the net real benefits received by people and the environment, then they are definitely _untrue_ (as I've repeatedly said before, in different ways). Tom, we _agree_ on this point and we always have. On the other hand, if we see GDP as measuring the success of a commodity-producing society (i.e., one oriented toward selling items) from its own perspective, it's pretty good. The limits on its "truth" are relatively minor if we're trying to gauge the scope of commodity production. As I've said before, in Marxian terms GDP measures exchange-value, but not use-value. Perhaps imperfectly, but it's hardly a disaster from the point of view of the guardians of our economic system. As I've said before, it's tragically true that most people's survival and (subjective) happiness are highly dependent on the success of that commodity-producing society. As I've said, most of us live in the "belly of the beast," so that its health is crucial to us, until somehow we can change the beast. My argument was _never_ in favor of GDP. Instead, it was against what I see as a knee-jerk total rejection of GDP. The latter seems like the rejection of thermometers simply because they contain mercury, a deadly poison. If other varieties of thermometers are unavailable, such rejection would be a mistake. > And I > categorically deny your baseless claim that I am "perfectly willing to > accept the totally flawed and likely severely biased statistics about the > work load faced by working-class people." Where do you get the gall to just > MAKE SHIT UP about what I reject and what I accept? Oh, I guess it would > have been O.K. if you had instead said I seemed to reject or accept? Good. You've cleared that up. All government statistics are flawed. But I have never seen you criticize the work-hour statistics. They miss unpaid work-hours, such as those done by salaried workers or those pushed by employers to work beyond the paid hours, for example. They hardly measure the "disutility" suffered by workers (along with the utility enjoyed by those who can control the use of their work-time). However, I can't claim to have read all of your pen-l contributions, Tom. > With regard to GDP, the gaming I refer to is not in the numbers. I have seen > no evidence that the numbers are falsified. It is simply that the GDP > aggregates things that don't add up to a coherent picture of "utility". If you read the literature, you'll find that GDP was not supposed to measure "utility" (nor have I ever advocated the use of GDP to measure "utility"). Its original purpose was Keynesian, i.e., to measure aggregate demand (which is how I use it). It's the currently-dominant free-market school of economics that interprets GDP as measuring utility. Almost all politicians follow along, because they know that their governments typically do better when GDP does better. Exceptions to this rule include Robert F. Kennedy and Barack Obama, but neither of them has been US president for a long time. To my mind, as I've said before, it's not GDP that deserves criticism as much as the misuse of that number to measure such things as "utility." (An analogy: originally, Binet developed the IQ test to find the students who most needed special education services. The Stanford people (Terman, etc.) used IQ tests as the "measure of man," the be-all and end-all of human abilities, with their own way of thinking being the epitome of "intelligence" and with small differences in measured IQ being highly significant. If Stephen Jay Gould was right in his book THE MISMEASURE OF MAN, we can reject the latter interpretation (as we should) without necessarily rejecting the former.) > To > take the simplest example, increased congestion adds to GDP (see Fred > Hirsch's Social Limits to Growth). Can you explain to me in what way > increased congestion benefits even the "success of a fundamentally > exploitative, alienating, and undemocratic economic system" (other than > augmenting tax revenues). GDP misses these types of costs, as it does with all external costs (as I've said before). But to the extent that business revenues rise due to them, they are legitimately part of the measure of business activity (GDP). Congestion likely hurts the longer-term growth of a commodity-producing economy, however. That would likely be shown in a longer-term slowing of the growth of real GDP. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
