good morning,
> > > gav > > okay someone please explain to me how a profit-based > economic system (ie > capitalism) can be sustainable. ie how can we avoid the > boom - bust - war > cycle that has characterised capitalism in practice for the > past century or > so. > > mel > a profit based economic system (and ultimately they all are > in operation, which I'll get to in a minute) can be > sustainable > in much the same way as an atmospheric system can be > sustainable. After all it's not like an atmospher has > high or > low pressure, still or wind, clear days and world-rocking > storms. --a joke, but you see the point. i thought economic systems operated within human wrought parameters? unlike the weather. > > Animal populations do the same thing, oscillate. > Equilibrium > is merely operation in an 'average range' > sense...more an > intellectual myth than a useful reflection of the real, as > much > artifact of a conceptual snapshot in time as anything. > > Operational economy is a dynamic, emergent social behavior > as seen in its agregate. Economics is an intellectual > attempt > to model the economy to try and understand it. Don't > confuse > the two. so economics is not about stimulating, protecting, or resuscitating an economy? ie it has no practical point at all? > > Theintellectual attempt is a very young endeavor, but a > few > centuries old and there may have been significant boom-bust > cycles over millenia that crashed whole civilizations, > 'composting > and fermenting' them into fodder for the next wave of > aggregate > behavior by people. Like the life-cycle of stars. yes. i think that this is well-known. the romans conquered england; cortez south america; england decimated the aboriginals; the US decimated the indians, mexicans, vietnamese, iraqis etc. i find this stuff morally repugnant. call me squeamish i suppose. > > Best we not get too attached in the long run to thinking we > have > somehow escaped that same behavior. > > However, returning to my assertion that all economies > utilize > profit. The Rus merely used theirs to fund too-large a > military > for their profit-load, hence it's collapse. Chinese > (post 1949) > went through numerous cycles as they discovered their > economy was barely manageable for anything but four-out-of- > five years of farm surplus to feed their population. > > All the while the people kept working, individually, to > create > what was in aggregate a shadow economy based on trade, > barter, 'illegal' buying and selling, and that > "wild market" economy > was eventually recognized, (I'd love to know by whom) > as a more > vital part of the probable success of stability for China > than the > old five-year and great-leap planning could achieve. so can we avoid such damaging rollercoaster rides? or am i sensing you think these rides, war and depression included, are good and necessary? i would like us to evolve past war, greed, depression, the rape of the natural world. evolution......what do you think about evolution mel? > > > > > > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ Make the switch to the world's best email. Get Yahoo!7 Mail! http://au.yahoo.com/y7mail Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
