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Well another approach is to look at how things are doing in the real world and ignore the theories. Let's take trade and economic development. Several of the most successful countries in terms of development over the past 50 years have not followed the standard IMF patterns. Singapore is a good example, even China and India have been very protective of their internal markets and the degree of foreign investment they allowed.
On the other side, the biggest clients of the IMF and world bank have fared the poorest. This is primarily Latin America and Africa. Their standards of living have changed little, and much of the invested money has gone to waste. Many have had currency crises as well after following IMF advice. This include several countries in Southeast Asia as well.
There is a new book out about the (lack) of success in using the standard model to promote economic growth by William Easterly. I haven't read it yet, but I'm sure it pretty much echos his previous one. The inescapable conclusion is that the "free trade" model helps the big countries more than the small ones. The small ones know this which is why the trade talks are progressing so slowly.
Theories are fun to debate in the classroom (or in the blogosphere), but when they get in the way of progress it is time to move on to realistic programs. Policies not Politics ---- Daily Landscape
I'm not sure if the proponents of globalisation genuinely believe that a rising tide raises all boats. Perhaps some do. But the reality seems to be that economics is primarily a tool of social control, and not of asset management and collective wealth development.
So economics isn't about money or goods or trade. It's about power relationships between the weak and the strong. Until this fact becomes a central part of the discourse around economic theories, its relationship to reality is a side-issue.
There's no reason why a socially literate form of economics couldn't be developed. But what we have today has its roots in the evangelical and imperalist world view of the 19th century. And there's little room there for more humane values.
Creating a reality-based non-monopolistic economic structure is probably the most important thing that needs to be done. That's going to mean dismantling most of what's around now, which isn't going to be painless or easy. But it is essential, because without that connection to reality, basics like eco-debt and long term asset husbandry don't figure in today's calculations.
What we have today isn't interested in those externalities because they're not part of the social calculus that keeps the pyramid arranged the way it is now. It's almost like being back in the 17th century again, before any of that nonsense about democracy and revolution happened. Royalty isn't nationalistic or monolithic now, it's international, corporate, and partly anonymous. But the pattern of exploitation of both populations and natural assets is similar. If anything it's worse because mechanisation makes natural asset stripping far more efficient than it used to be.
That's because economics is ideological.
Yes and No. No and Yes.
Certain insights of economics are ripped out of context, qualifying phrases stricken, and deployed by media whores (MW) in the service of the paymasters.
Free Trade in the long run will benefit more people than tariff walls. (See Great Depression, History of; Smoot & Hartley Act, Consequences of.) Free Trade in the short run will cause economic dislocation as firms and workers are out competed. Both of these are true and neither affects & effects can be ignored. Och nu den svenska kocken bakar en Alaskan älg jägare. Bork! Bork! Bork!
Economics reduces to simple concepts like Free Trade, Inflation and Unemployment which are colouring book caricatures of the economic forces that really shape people's lives.
If I grow bananas in South America, the concept of free trade vs protectionism is irrelevant when I can't get a fair price for my product because the supposedly level playing field is skewed - sometimes by force - to give the big corporates all of the leverage.
Anomalies like this mean that economics is wrong in so many ways that if you stripped it down to essentials and left the elements that have some connection with reality - meaning everyday reality, not the reality of the super-rich - there would be very little left.
Worst of all is the way that economics promotes an implicit moral code of mindless speculation and accumulation. Shared prosperity isn't a bad thing, but whatever the PR says, the real goal of economics today seems to be personal wealth accumulated with total disdain for the greater good, and the limited selection of social metrics that are used in economics - inflation, unemployment and GDP - are so crude that they exclude all social responsibility.
It's surely possible to create economic metrics that live in the real world, and not in some superficial 19th century abstraction of it. But for now these fake abstractions are treated as if they're the most important thing on the planet - which is literally an insane state of affairs.
When someone talks about 'economic realities' supporting a reform agenda, are they doing economics, or polemic?
Do the Economist and the FT do economics, or polemic?
The underlying problem is that the concepts and measures used in economics lend themselves everso elegantly to one kind of political discourse, while making alternative views and metrics difficult to conceptualise, quantify and discuss.
Free Trade in the long run will benefit more people than tariff walls.
Not necessarily. That's the whole point of this debate. And since there's no such thing as free trade we don't actually know anything much about what it will do, only what it might.
Temporal Logic, a branch of Modal Logic, exists to abstract the impossible, the possible, the necessary. Such that:
P{x,y}
where y achieves, gains, or has the P referent through Time via x and P is a quality or a quantity - All XOR Some XOR None. If we get lucky, the quantity maybe first order - 'a' number assigned to 'a' variable, tho' it's much more likely to be a second or greater order quantity, such as a Complex Number, or a series of mathematical statements grouped into inter-related families of mathematical statements.
One result of this, using the Lowenheim-Skolem Theorem, is the (potential and unpredictable) bifurcation of model functions from D -> T to D -> T' where T' is who-the-hell-knows-what. ;-) One known occurance of this is the transformation, in Catastrophe Theory, of control to state or state to control variable(s). Time, then, can become a control variable in certain of these transformations.
Modeling (certain) Feedback Loops, therefore, we have to acknowledge the potential for Time to 'jump' between playing a role as a control or as a state variable leading to qualitative change of of the Fitness Landscape.
Note: I am not saying Time isn't constant. That would be ... weird. Och nu den svenska kocken bakar en Alaskan älg jägare. Bork! Bork! Bork!
I hate temporal logic. Nasty icky stuff.
It's just another dimension. What are we up to now? 18 +/-?
I know I owe the diary and I plan on finishing it Real Soon Now. Any day.
yup, yup, yup.
Of course if I tell you, you'll tell Migeru, he'll tell Sven, and pretty soon today will be tomorrow and yesterday will have had been next month. 8^p Och nu den svenska kocken bakar en Alaskan älg jägare. Bork! Bork! Bork!
(laughing) Och nu den svenska kocken bakar en Alaskan älg jägare. Bork! Bork! Bork!
