RE: What is wealth?
-Original Message- From: brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com [mailto:brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com] On Behalf Of David Hobby Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 9:22 PM To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion Subject: Re: What is wealth? Dan M wrote: After the discussion about money as a social construct, it occurred to me that that there is something more fundamental underlying this. It is whether wealth is concrete or just an abstract concept. Dan-- O.K., let me try. There is such a thing as concrete wealth. Wealth lets an individual do things that they want to do. So a person's individual wealth would be roughly defined relative to some standard as the ratio of the utility of what they can do to what they could do in the standard state. I think this is closest to what I think. But, I think that this is a fundamental and difficult enough concept to start slowly with some obvious examples. First, I was think of and will focus on the wealth of nations, communities, the world, more than individual wealth. Second, I see two layers of wealth, the first being more obvious than the second. I'd define wealth in terms of resources, first the resources that people absolutely need, and second, the resources that people want, but can do without. For the first, I'd argue for food, clothing, and shelter. I was thinking of medical care, but (for all practical purposes) doctors contributed minimally to the prolonging of life before the advent of modern, science based medicine. They could, for example, do virtually nothing in the face of the Black Plague. So, historically, a richer nation would have vast areas of fertile farmland that could be harvested year after year to provide food for people. That wealth could be stolen by force, but absent of that, the wealth existed there. So, Italy was far wealthier than a corresponding area in Siberia, because far more food could be grown. Second, and this is near to my heart...but I don't see it as inherently a bias, wealth is a function of knowledge and ability. The combination of the horse collar and three crop rotation tremendously increased the fundamental wealth of Europe. Why? The horse collar did because one horse could replace two oxen to plow land. Thus, the amount of food needed to be spent on feeding the plow animal decreased by more than a factor of two. This wealth, in food, was a true increase. With the same conditions, the same weather, there was far more food for people to eat. As a result, a given plot of land could support more human life. Since it didn't take more effort to use the horse than the pair of oxen (probably less), human labor was available for other endeavors. Craftsmen could exist, trading their wares for the surplus food. The nature and distribution of these wares is a subject unto itself, and the desirability of the output of this craft vs. that craft (particularly when aesthetics are involved) is somewhat arbitrary. But, the availability of human effort expended in something other than subsistence farming is not subjective; it can be objectively measured. Three crop rotation also increased wealth. In a sense, it is one of the purest forms of intellectual property, because that idea was a multiplier for the worth of the land. Far more food could be grown over decades using this technique than the older technique. This, the idea itself is seen as a significant contribution to wealth. I'll stop here for, hopefully, comments. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Calvin and Hobbes explain the bailout
Folks, Bill Watterson is a certifiable genius: http://budurl.com/5c72 Published more than a dozen years ago (I don't have my son's box set handy to check the exact date). I sure miss that comic strip. Dave ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: What is wealth?
-Original Message- From: brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com [mailto:brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com] On Behalf Of Olin Elliott Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2008 7:05 PM To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion Subject: Re: What is wealth? Wealth can be defined in evolutionary terms. Whatever enhances your health, your security, your status or your power in the group is wealth. In other words -- in a state of nature -- anything the possession of which improves your reproductive fitness. That is the ultimate basis of the concept of wealth, and all our elaborations and abstractions don't change that much. What about the facts, would they change things much? :-) I think there is some viability in the sociobiological argument that wealth increases the attractiveness of men as mates. But, if you look at the selfish gene as an embodiment of sociobiology, you see that wealth has had a paradoxical effect. Look at the wealthiest countries in the world. With the exception of the US, they have fertility rates below replacement, some (like Japan, Germany and Italy) far below replacement. The countries with high fertility rates tend to be poorer. Thus, wealth is anti-correlated with the probability a person's gene marker will be seen in a given member of the Nth generation after one's own (which is a standard measure of sociobiological fitness). Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: What is wealth?
On Dec 12, 2008, at 3:15 PM, Dan M wrote: I think there is some viability in the sociobiological argument that wealth increases the attractiveness of men as mates. But, if you look at the selfish gene as an embodiment of sociobiology, you see that wealth has had a paradoxical effect. Look at the wealthiest countries in the world. With the exception of the US, they have fertility rates below replacement, some (like Japan, Germany and Italy) far below replacement. The countries with high fertility rates tend to be poorer. Thus, wealth is anti-correlated with the probability a person's gene marker will be seen in a given member of the Nth generation after one's own (which is a standard measure of sociobiological fitness). In short, affluenza affects reproduction. Dave ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: What is wealth?
Dan M wrote: ... Look at the wealthiest countries in the world. With the exception of the US, they have fertility rates below replacement, some (like Japan, Germany and Italy) far below replacement. The countries with high fertility rates tend to be poorer. Thus, wealth is anti-correlated with the probability a person's gene marker will be seen in a given member of the Nth generation after one's own (which is a standard measure of sociobiological fitness). ... Dan-- Sad to say, that remains to be seen. Once wealth has been equalized across the world, then it's reasonable to count numbers of descendants. If the poorer countries wind up with huge population crashes on the way to global equality, then having fewer children who were better off financially may turn out to have been a good reproductive strategy. : ( ---David A Modest Proposal ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: What is wealth?
Dan M wrote: ... O.K., let me try. There is such a thing as concrete wealth. Wealth lets an individual do things that they want to do. So a person's individual wealth would be roughly defined relative to some standard as the ratio of the utility of what they can do to what they could do in the standard state. I think this is closest to what I think. But, I think that this is a fundamental and difficult enough concept to start slowly with some obvious examples. First, I was think of and will focus on the wealth of nations, communities, the world, more than individual wealth. ... So, historically, a richer nation would have vast areas of fertile farmland that could be harvested year after year to provide food for people. That wealth could be stolen by force, but absent of that, the wealth existed there. So, Italy was far wealthier than a corresponding area in Siberia, because far more food could be grown. ... involved) is somewhat arbitrary. But, the availability of human effort expended in something other than subsistence farming is not subjective; it can be objectively measured. ... Dan-- O.K., you agreed mostly agreed with me, and I mostly agree with you. Some of it is a matter of interpretation: We're both taking the usual meaning of wealth, and trying to clarify it. I had planned to get the total wealth of a country but adding up the individual wealth of its inhabitants (and of its institutions, too?). So starting with individual wealth made sense to me. Do you think that the wealth of a (inhabited) country would be different than the sum of the wealths of its inhabitants? I think that a country that has more than enough food for its people may be wealthier than a country where everybody has just enough. Even if they can produce the same total amount of food. Sure, people can be a source of a country's wealth. But starving peasants may not be worth that much, wealth-wise. So there's more to it then just food production? Unless you want to define free wealth and bound wealth. The free wealth of a land of starving peasants may be almost zero. Most of it being bound up in maintaining the large number of inhabitants. A suitable plague could release the bound wealth of the country by reducing the population. ---David The Dismal Science, Maru ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
