On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 11:58 AM, Eugene Coyle <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hans,
> You have opened up a rich area for discussion.  Tom Walker's attempt at
> the same opening fell flat. ( see [Pen-l] The Lovins Paradox: "this old
> canard" March 22, 2012 3:26:06 PM PDT)
>
> Not to worry. Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism linked to the blog post and
it has received a substantial amount of traffic.

I have come to expect falling flat because I am discussing paradox, leaving
many readers to conclude that I am talking in riddles. I try not to, but I
AM talking ABOUT riddles. Even more daunting, I am talking about the
relationship between two or more riddles and the futile attempts to "solve"
one of the riddles by pretending the other doesn't exist.

It may possibly add to the confusion to point out that there are not two
but three interconnected paradoxes: the paradox of resource throughput, the
paradox of work and the paradox of credit. As Charles D'Avenant wrote over
300 years ago, "Of all Beings that have Existence only in the Minds of Men,
nothing is more fantastical and nice than Credit..." I would add to this
fantastical quality by pointing out that political economy is itself also a
species of credit.

I am also making a technological argument, albeit using a broader
definition of technology in which leisure and social cohesion are no less
"technological" than a wind turbine or a solar panel.

-- 
Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)
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