tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post3845152350646038905..comments2024-03-06T06:34:42.881-05:00Comments on EconoSpeak: New Scientist: The Folly of GrowthUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-14378619716331215832008-10-26T10:37:00.000-04:002008-10-26T10:37:00.000-04:00i think these are the bogus 'voluntary simplicity ...i think these are the bogus 'voluntary simplicity ideas' endorsed by 60's types such as economist t. leary ("drop out, tune in..") psychic e.f. shumaker, which along with communism and socialism have been abandoned by everyone except cranks. <BR/><BR/>i am for a pro-growth liberal economy. the banks should immediately start issuing vast sums of money to anyone, in proportion to their net worth of course to keep risks in float (where net worth is defined as current assessments, including all mortgage and derivative liabilities, plus one's personal share of the $700B bailout you will earn). Then people can invest in manufacturing and information technology used for growing advanced high quality tulips. Everyone will be involved in production, marketing, and aquisition of tulips, or in the orchestra playing the financial instruments where the value of the tulips emerges, through (bose-einstein) condensation of the signifiers. <BR/><BR/>A 16 hour work day in the tulip gardens will be standard and possibly compulsory, as part of revival of national spirit.<BR/><BR/>Of course, there will still be unemployment, because some unlucky losers will not have what it takes to produce value in manufacture, commerce or orchestration of the economy. Not everyone is a 'maestro' like Greenspan who can conduct a well regulated militia waging war on the environment and the poor. <BR/><BR/>I think growth rates of 5-20% are quite feasible in such an economy (so long as people assess values correctly and don't squander assets on 'tangible' goods rather than tulips. However, it may be as the mystic philanthropist Peter Petersen has pointed out, that social security may run out, and even the federal reserve, because there are only 10**80 particles in the universe, so if we keep printing symbols at high growth rates eventually we will run out. So, the author's point that growth is limited may hold in a few billion years, but we can, following Dean Baker, simply apply an arbitrary cutoff for benefits after people have aquired a certain number of symbols of affluence. <BR/><BR/>A microcredit program or safety net possibly could be applied to those unqualified to produce tulips, so they can learn how eventually and so earn symbols of effluent.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com