msg from Stan Salthe
----------------------
Pedro --
>Dear John and colleagues,
>
>Thanks a lot for adding deep thought to my comments. I quite agree with
>your orientations and would make only a few further remarks.
>
>1. Going beyond the equilibrium approaches of neoclassical economics is
>fundamental. I would bring here the points developed by the Santa Fe
>group of economists and physicists last decade (Brian Arthur and
>others): dispersed interactive agents, no global controller, cross level
>hierarchical organization, continual adaptation, perpetual novelty, and
>out of equilibrium dynamics. Overall, they talked on the economy as
>another instance of "adaptive nonlinear networks". But my personal
>impression is that these very theoretical views were in themselves
>inspirational for promoting further deregulation of financial markets
>(Stu Kauffman and others were quite close to Al Gore and the Whitehouse
>circles). The invisible hand of selforganization!
A MOST interesting observation! I think the flaw in that
program (if it was one) is that when a system self-organizes it may
do so in ways that are not congenial to agents that exist at a lower
scale within that system (here -- people).
>
>2. Perhaps more foundational aspects have to be revised: value itself,
>plus the way transactions are produced (Lanham 2006 has posited a very
>bold view: we would trade informational "motives"...). A new theory on
>price formation could be more or less envisioned. But I would be more
>staunch on following the inspiration of biological schemes of
>organization to put into place "anticipatory dynamics" (not to be
>understood necessarily under dynamic systems theory). ATP energy
>currency plus the system of second messengers contain very curious
>systemic thresholds which the living cell has never crossed.
Here I detect in the background the view that hierarchies will
be in some way self-similar. This may be the case for some aspects
of a scale / compositional hierarchy (I don't know of any
demonstrations of that yet), but it's not likely for the
specification / subsumptive hierarchy. There are regularities across
levels in both cases (transitive relations), but quantitative one's
are not known. Since the subsumptive hierarchy is founded on set
theoretic format, the question could be addressed there. Are sets
theoretically in any way self-similar quantitatively? For the
compositional hierarchy, are there quantitative aspects that could be
self similar?
STAN
>
>3. If the following figures (just from my memory) are correct, financial
>anticipatory flows have grown dramatically in last two decades, from
>around 4 times the GDP (80's), to 10 times (90's), and close to 20 in
>last years. Unknown thresholds have been trespassed, and the capability
>to destructively amplify any serious fluctuation from real economy is
>daunting. The Energy crisis, plus the housing crisis, plus the mass of
>faulty credits in circulation have put on the knees both the real
>economy and the whole financial anticipatory wrappings. The inevitable
>closure of the financial on the real, and vice versa, means that the
>social "viscosity" of the system --our very lives-- will be put on a
>very tough stance. Is this but an anticipation of the even bigger global
>sustainability crisis?
>
>best regards
>
>Pedro
>
>
>
>
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