The Derivatives of Wealth
The terms derivative and differential are used here in their mathematical sense, denoting rates of change.
Gross national product and living standard are treated as measures of quantity of wealth. In fact, they are not the quantity but its first derivative or first differential, the rate of wealth-throughput. … Read more
Production?
Structuring, or realising, wealth into goods and services is currently called production or output, as though wealth were being created. In fact, this structuring or realisation is part of the process of throughput of wealth.
The use of goods and services, now called consumption in the sense of being opposite to “production”, is really a subsequent process in the throughput chain whereby wealth is degraded into waste matter and heat whence it may be renewed. … Read more
Notes on Evolution Not Revolution
First, it will be noted that things that common sense tells us are always good, such as efficient government or nuclear disarmament, or always bad, such as strikes or cartels, may actually be bed sometimes and good other times depending on the circumstances. … Read more
Ends and Means
Good Trends, Not Good Conditions
It is not the intention in this blog to establish a perfect world of perfect conditions. Such a thing has been imagined and described by many in the past, but it must always remain an abstract possibility in the indefinite future. … Read more
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. … Read more
When the Boom comes
During the 1970′s and 1980′s governments and people generally in the more perfluent nations were waiting for an economic “upturn” or “recovery” to reduce what had become chronic high unemployment. The underlying assumption was that the high throughput-increase rates, the so-called “economic growth” rates of the 1950′s and 1960′s, were normal and that the more sluggish throughput-increase (TI) rates of latter years were an abnormal phenomenon that could be expected to speed up in time through this or that brilliant policy initiative or going back to the early economics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; or by eliminating (depending on your point of view) businessmen, unions, migrants, taxes, civil servants, or computers; or just by waiting. … Read more
Another review of 1988 Edition of ‘Economics for a Round Earth’.
By Diana Massam, Secretary, Environmental Communicators’ Orgnanisation (UK)
In ‘Economics for a Round Earth’, Charles Pierce challenges previously accepted economic ideals and methods of management, as fundamentally flawed and outdated. He proposes drastic changes, but stresses that these can only be achieved as a series of progressive trends. … Read more
Copenhagen – a Predictable Failure
The predictable failure of the Copenhagen conference to produce an agreement on international action to slow or stop global warming, supports what I argued in an earlier post – global warming cannot be stopped. There is too much momentum behind the human component of its cause, and we lack the economic and political systems, and the international institutions, to get effective international action. … Read more
Stopping Global Warming – Better Communication Needed
In Australia the federal government is trying to implement an Emissions Trading Scheme to combat global warming. Opponents of this scheme argue that it will cost jobs.
Surely the whole point of trying to slow and stop global warming is that if such warming continues unchecked, it will cost millions of jobs, and lives, worldwide, because of the destructive effects of changing climates and rising sea levels. … Read more
If you can’t teach them, beat them.
It is suggested that a society that brings up its children as described here, is not a life-loving society that nurtures its children. It is a cannibalistic society that devours its children. Continue reading