gav, <snip>> G > are u in the US? he is from canada and is very well known over here in australia. i would have thought that americans would be better acquainted with him....but maybe you guys have something against canada. they did burn your original whitehouse down after all (yay canada!!!!)
m With the agonizing, inteminable length of the political season maybe they just chose the wrong time to burn down the house ;-) I think sometimes the "High Pressure" of the US air waves pushes all other news away, except the occasional BBC programme. If you're not Osama/alQueda, you don't get facetime. <snip> G > i disagree. i think the idea that the environment is an economic externality is a perfect way to reveal the absurdity, the dangerous absurdity, of current economic theory in practice. m I don't know how UBC(?) does their course numbers, but in most US universities, of which I'm aware, Econ 101 is a micro-econ class which of course would by definition be inward looking, in the 102 course is where macro-econ is taught, that is an outward looking class. I'm not sure in macro-econ that there are any externalities. Well, alphaCentauri, maybe. (anyone out there able to fact check that?) <snip> <snip> G > i am a permaculture gardener and teacher. > the third world had sustainable subsistence > agriculture for thousands of years. m We probably don't have a way to know, but I wonder how much of the sustainability was due to shorter lifespans and higher mortality rates. G industrial cash cropping agriculture, imposed on the poor of the world through economic bullying by the first world, is a major reason behind soil depletion. m I can see how that might be a contributor, but from some of the Peace Corps folks' stories it sounds like some of the third world practices do a fine job of habitat destruction and soil depletion all on thier own, especially in laterite soils, a problem in the tropics. > G > permaculture projects around the world are reskilling the poor of the world in traditional and new sustainable agricultural techniques. m good to hear. G> > an excellent video is 'greening the desert', which is on you tube. this video shows how permaculture techniques can revivify seemingly dead landscapes in very short periods of time. m I'll check that out, thanks... > > ><snip> >G > china and france are relatively strong nations, who generally set their own agricultural agendas. the french, in particular, are admirable defenders of food quality. the chinese now do not produce enough food to feed themselves....for the first time they are having to import staple food items. m This is not the first time China has imported food. After some of the disasterous 5-year plans they received food from abroad. Canadian wheat, Russian wheat, Australian, too-I believe, and some times, US. Not sure of how much by whom when, but that was mid to late mid 20th C. > [mel-earlier] > > Through the eighties, American farm operations in the > > arid portions of the country pushed land to produce that > > would normally not support agriculture. They poured > > chemical nitrogen onto what was often all but bare sand, > > silt, and mineral soil--nearly lacking the loam-creating > > organic breakdown material that defines good soil. > > This threatened to ultimately leave soils effectively > > sterile. > > Today, one can often see the shift away from strictly > > high-soluble chemical fertilizer and the inclusion of more > > organic debris. Manure and composted material is > > 'chunked out of trucks and turned into the active > > later. >G > active what? organic sustainable farming is obviously a global necessity m sorry, typo. that should have read "...turned into the active layer." <snip> > G > very simple: the economy relies on the health of the environment: biodiversity, wilderness. we are losing biodiversity and wilderness at record rates and this is a result of the rapacious global system of trade, theoretically underpinned by the economic theories of the chicago school of neo-liberalism: the bastard offspring of adam smith. m Our modern world is so interconnected and inter-dependent at almost all levels that I don't think there are many who've thought about it who would deny the environment, biodiversity, or wilderness as part of that system of complexity equations...(obviously there are folks who have never "thought about it.") I think there may be some confusion (or maybe shorthand) in the last three lines of your paragraph. The actual aggregate behavior of people in markets is not dependent on the theory of economics, rather it is the theory that tries to explain the behaviors, just like the behavior of animals, plants, and their dependencies in the biosphere is not dependent on ecological theory. Theory merely reflects what it sees in the world, tries to explain it, and becomes an excuse to take action in the world. (Don't mistake governmental trade policies set by politicians for economic theory either, though they try to wear the mantle. ) Much like the effect of acting as if we know more than we do deepened the Great Depression, we must use caution as we act in ecosystems lest hubris there likewise cause cascading failures. <snip> >G > no in depth analysis required. as long as the environment is not factored into the equation then economics will remain a pseudo-intellectual excuse for raping the planet. m careful, there's a baby in that bathwater... > ><snip> >G > the economy is assessed in terms of growth. growth (like greed) is good, in neo-liberal economics. unfettered growth *in the real world* is cancer and it kills the host if not checked. very very simple. i uphold the rights of those at the political and corporate helm to kill themselves, sometimes i feel like encouraging it; but they do not have the right to take the bulk of the world - human and non-human - with them. m Economy is indeed looked at in terms of growth and with a growing population that can be just a measure of standing still, depending on the number. If you look at the numbers in the economy and use dollars adjusted to 1967 base numbers, you'll see that a lot of the growth is an illusion that covers up the long term effect of inflation. In real value, base '67, I made more money in my minimum wage job as a kid than the teens today make. Standard of living for many has actually fallen in those terms. Economic growth is not unfettered, but rather it is dependent. (Oh, the current dollar is worth 15-cents of the 1967 dollar, maybe less by this time.) We look at Bill Gates and say wow he's the richest American ever. No. He's actually 13th richest, value adjusted. In today's dollar John D Rockefeler would be worth $305 Billion. Six or eight times Gates' wealth. > > > In effect, rather than dividing economics from biology and > > environmental concern it might be more to the benefit of > > progress to utilize economics in a more complemental > > relationship. > > an economics that takes the environment as the real bottom line would be a step in the right direction. > You know what would be a fascinating, informative exercise... to re-write these last few posts in terms assigning/ abstracting the MOQ values of levels and Dynamic vs Static, much as one does in predicate calculus for formal logic. Any takers? As I re-read them these posts sound awfully SOMish. thanks--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/
