As Net Energy Continues to Fall....,

you are going to hear more and more debate about "free markets" vs. "government intervention". Obviously, this is a political question: so-called free market "special interests" (one dollar, one vote) vs. "common interests" (one person, one vote).

The Hansonian admonition for today requires that you exercise enough free will to remind yourself that economics like war is politics by other means, and yes, the end-game has nothing to do with truth, rather, it's about fitness. Those free marketers, who actually bother to rationalize their arguments, base them on three false assumptions and deliberate lies:

#1. "Wants" are the identical to "needs". So-called conservatives (it's boilerplate economic theory) deliberately lie about this because they want you to believe that Donald Trump "needs" another million dollar painting on the wall of one of his mansions just as badly as a welfare mother needs health care for her children. This amounts to a license for the rich to hog limited resources (on a spherical planet, all resources are "limited").

#2. People are "rational utility maximizers". Although even economists admit this is a lie, it still boilerplate economic theory. Economists MUST lie about this because if people are being manipulated by marketing, then the so-called "free market" is inherently immoral.

#3. The market is "efficient". This is central to economic theory, but it's also a deliberate lie (an "idiosyncratic redefinition"). Economists know that people who do not have economic training are going to assume that "efficient" is used in the same way that engineers use the word: acting or producing effectively with a minimum of waste, expense, or unnecessary effort.

But for economists, "efficient" means "efficient distribution" of resources: i.e., the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The reason economists use idiosyncratic redefinitions instead of coining new terms (like every other discipline) is to make them better liars.

Idiosyncratic redefinition allows economists to stand in front of your
local Rotary Club and appear to HONESTLY use words that mean one thing to them, while Club members think they mean something completely different. This is how economists avoid our innate ability to spot liars.

Far from being "efficient", the so-called "free market" is the MOST
INEFFICIENT aspect of our society. A back-of-the-envelope calculation by Tom Wayburn suggests that the so-called "free market" WASTES 90% of our natural resources. In other words, we could be self-sufficient in oil (and bring our troops home) by ending "the market" and reorganizing into a new type of "common interest" government instead of the "special interest" government we have had since inception (see the founding of America).

On a spherical planet, governed by the laws of thermodynamics, "the market" WILL end -- sooner or later, one way or another.

Is there anyone who doesn't understand these points above?

Comments

[TM Lutas]

What I need out of Donald Trump is for him to get his lazy ass off his couch where he's admiring the decor and go out and create jobs. Once an incredibly talented and productive man has enough to feed himself, his family, and pass down a legacy to the 3rd generation, what motivation is there to work further? Once you've created your first 50,000 jobs, why should you do it again?

The interest of the working man is that all excess labor currently idled by ignorance, bad law, and political brutality be put to work doing something so that there is no more ability for management to threaten to put some of that unutilized labor to work at your job unless you agree to this or that wage or benefit concession.

If getting Donald Trump, Bill Gates, or Jack Welch off their respective couches and continuing to generate further sustainable jobs far in excess than government has demonstrated that it can do requires that they get another overpriced art bauble or two, well, that's just the price of doing business.

Now I admit that you can put a gun behind Trump's ear and make him show up to work without the high pay. But don't think that his heart is going to be in it or that he'll put in the kind of performance that filthy lucre has wrung out of him. It's been tried, many times, and is always a miserable failure.

As for marketing, I'm not sure that I know of anybody who thinks that it's entirely ineffective. There is a different moral status between persuading somebody and manipulating them. Marketing as persuader is not immoral. Marketing as manipulator is. So where's the line?

Measuring market efficiency really isn't useful in a vacuum. If a market is 30% efficient from an engineering standpoint but its only systemic competitors are 10%, 5%, and 1% efficient, you can honestly say that the free market is efficient, in fact it is far and away the most efficient system even from an engineering standpoint. The internal combustion engine (an engineering problem if there ever was one) is massively wasteful, never more than 30% real world efficient and often sporting efficiency in the low 20% range. Until there's something better that is practical, we'll still use ICE in its most efficient variants.

Finally, there is no reason why the market has to be limited to this spherical planet. If the market can profit from asteroid mining, it will fund it, and the cheap launch and landing technologies necessary to that profit.

Eventually we'll all die from the heat death of the universe or the big crunch will take us no matter what economic system we choose. I wouldn't worry too much about the laws of thermodynamics in this lifetime, though.

[cnulan]

There is a different moral status between persuading somebody and manipulating them. Marketing as persuader is not immoral. Marketing as manipulator is. So where's the line?

You crossed it with this true believer's paean to market fictions. Sorry TM, these meme's don't wear very well in the face of ominous and omnipresent effects of declining net energy.

time for an intervention...,

Five Fundamental Errors of economic just-so storytelling...,

or just go straight to the motherlode and be freed from the immorality of fallacious manipulation...,