Foreword

When dealing with economics, we are confronted by a large array of interdependent static and dynamic variables. A change in one effects changes in all, which in turn affect the variable first changed, through its interdependence with the rest.

Cybernetics is perhaps most appropriate for the treatment of economic matters. An economic system, being the means whereby an advanced living organism maintains its life and develops itself, can be looked upon as an analog of a living organism. It is in the whole greater than the sum of its parts. It has a life of its own. It can suffer good or bad health, age, be rejuvenated, and evolve over time. It consumes and excretes, has strengths and limitations. It can to some extent adapt to circumstances, and conversely can up to a point adapt its environment to its demands.

In the following examination of the modern world economy, it will occur that the same topic is treated, or the same statement made, several times.

It is difficult to deal with economics by chopping it up into neat chapters that can be dealt with in sequence. The subject must be dealt with in pieces but with the entirety always in view.

Looking at it from many different angles brings the same components repeatedly into view in different contexts. The repetitive introduction of particular concepts or the restating of certain points becomes necessary when exploring the dynamic system by different routes, which reveal new sets of interrelationships and consequences in which the statements and concepts previously set forth play some part.

Many subjects will be mentioned in the course of a particular discussion, with a promise to discuss them in a later post, or a reference to a previous post. This is better than constantly breaking up a flow of thought with digressions and digressions within digressions.

Related posts:

1. Left, Right and The Environment Another misleading idea used to be that capitalism and communism represented opposite extremes, opposite poles of economic theory and practice. Proponents of communism used to believe, inter alia, that if only the world were communist...
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3. Capitalism versus Communism Continued - Towards a Better Economics To come back to the subject of capitalism versus communism, the real extreme, the true opposite polarity, would be between flat-earth economics and a new economics, round-earth economics. The latter not only assumes the earth’s...
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