From: Cordell, Arthur: DPP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>I would guess that if economics would (could?) internalize all
>externalities and would stop playing the economic growth game (which I
don't
>think is central to economic theory--a theory which deals with the
>allocation of scarce resources among competing uses), then Jay Hanson and
>company would have less of a problem with economics.
There is certainly plenty of things that economists could do to improve
their dicipline. For example, physics incorporated thermodynamics -- moved
from "production" to "circulation" -- over 100 years ago. But modern
economic text books (McConnell & Brue, 1999; Samulson & Nordhouse, 1998)
still do not index thermodynamics or entropy.
---------------------------
"Here, in a nutshell, is the preeminent problem of the nineteenth century:
How can labor, or indeed Nature, bring about the expansion of value?
Hehnholtz's answer was flatly that it could not: Nature was also subject to
capitalist calculation. In a masterful tethering of the economic metaphor to
the metaphor of the body in motion, he hinted that it would be nothing less
than immoral, fraudulent, and venal to question the law of energy
conservation. Nevertheless, Helmholtz's justification of the energy concept
bore only a tenuous relation to the physical theories of his time. Indeed,
as Breger (1982, pp. 244 ff.) indicates, Helmhohz elided the distinction
between the physics definition of work and its colloquial economic usage
numerous times.
"For Helmholtz, the world is a machine; man is a machine. Men work for men;
the world works for man; you can't swindle Nature; in the Natural state no
one is swindled. Even his fascination in later life with the significance of
variational principles only served to amplify the metaphorical resonances.
Nature works in the most efficient manner; the natural state of man is to
minimize effort and maximize profit.
"Innumerable writers took their cue from Helmholtz, and the latter half of
the nineteenth century was awash with further elaborations of this
metaphoric triad. The mathematician De Morgan wrote, 'The purse of
Fortunatus, which could always drop a penny out, though never a penny was
put in, is a problem of the same kind' (quoted in Dircks 1870, p. 148).
Across the Channel, Bernard Brunhes waxed eloquent: 'In nature, the course
of the exchange is uniform and invariable . . . Nature never pretends to
realize a profit on the transformations of energy which she permits . . .
The role of [modern] industry is precisely to produce artificial
transformations of energy' (Brunhes 1908, pp. 24-5, 198; my translation).
But the most explicit popularizer was one Balfour Stewart:
'It is, in fact, the fate of all kinds of energy of position to be
ultimately converted into energy of motion. The former may be compared
to money in a bank, or capital, the latter to money which we are in the
act of spending . . If we pursue the analogy a step further, we shall
see that the great capitalist is respected because he has the disposal
of a great quantity of energy; and that whether he be nobleman or
sovereign, or a general in command, he is powerful only from having
something which enables him to make use of the services of others. When
a man of wealth pays a labouring man to work for him, he is in truth
converting so much of his energy of position into actual energy . . .
'The world of mechanism is not a manufactory, in which energy is created,
but rather a mart, into which we may bring energy of one kind and change
or barter it for an equivalent of another kind, that suits us better -
but if we come with nothing in hand, with nothing we will most
assuredly return Stewart 1883, pp. 26-7; 34 ].'
"Economists, please take note of the period - Stewart's book was in its
sixth edition by 1883 - and of the profound shift of metaphor from
production to circulation. Nature, before the bestower of bounteous gifts,
had now become our niggardly paymaster." [ pp. 131-132,
MORE HEAT THAN LIGHT, Philip Mirowski; Caimbridge, 1989;
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521426898 ]
Jay
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