One of the endearing features of Arthur Dahlberg's
Job, Machines and Capitalism was its incorporation of an elaborate diagram that illustrated his argument about technology, unemployment, war and shorter working time. A
Rube Goldberg machine is a comically complicated contraption designed to perform a simple task. Goldberg began drawing his cartoon machines in 1914 and continued until 1964.
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| A Rube Goldberg Cartoon |
The economic relationships Dahlberg tried to explain are indeed extraordinarily complex. It is doubtful that his diagrams helped readers to understand them -- unless the point Dahlberg was trying to make was that the relationships were extraordinarily complex. It should be noted that economists A.W. Phillips (Phillips Curve) and Irving Fisher both also constructed elaborate machines to model the economy.
6 comments:
Again, forgive me for being slow at learning but other than as clever though too complex for effective teaching cartoons why would these cartoons be important?
Forgive ME for being even slower but it will probably take me a few days to work out a satisfactory answer to your question. My sense is that Dahlberg had intuitively grasped a systems thinking* distinction and relationships between stocks and flows and was literally attempting to illustrate them.
*Arnold and Wade define systems thinking is "a set of synergistic analytic skills used to improve the capability of identifying and understanding systems, predicting their behaviors, and devising modifications to them in order to produce desired effects. These skills work together as a system."
"A Definition of Systems Thinking: A Systems Approach," (2015) Ross D. Arnold, Jon P. Wade
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ross_Arnold/publication/273894661_A_Definition_of_Systems_Thinking_A_Systems_Approach/links/5656054108aeafc2aabee827.pdf
The things depicted in these diagrams are analog computers. Some were actually built, and used to model economic processes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAZavOcEnLg
"...analog computers..." Yep.
My sense is that Dahlberg had intuitively grasped a systems thinking* distinction and relationships between stocks and flows and was literally attempting to illustrate them.
-- Sandwichman
[ Really a fine answer, that I would not have been able to work out otherwise. Now, in understanding, I am sympathetic.
Thank you so much for the explanation. ]
Also, the push against militarism is very important to me. I just want it to be transparent and clear as possible.
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