[PEN-L:32489] Re: Stallin Stalin 3 of 3

[Sabri Oncu <soncu@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Melvin:

> Speculative capital evolves on the basis of the mode
> of accumulation, which contains a life of its own and
> its distinct law system.

I don't really know who Albert Cohen is. Must be some philosopher
or writer of some sort. But I read an article by him about 25
years ago in some obscure journal. As I recall, he wrote that
article when he was in his eighties, shortly before he died.

In that article, among other things, he was complaining about how
unsatisfying "laws" were to his experience. I have many more
years to reach his age, if I can, but I am myself very
unsatisfied with many "laws" I have come across so far in my
life. Like, for example, the so-called Cataneo's Law, which is a
modified form of Fourier's law of heat conduction, or the second
law of thermodynamics in the form of Classius-Duhem inequality,
about which there is no consensus among thermodynamists, or many
comparable laws of viscoelasticity or plasticity, about which
there is no consensus among elasticians, or the "law" of market
efficiency, or Modigliani-Miller theorem, which is in some sense
a "law" which says that it does not matter whether you raise your
capital in the form of debt or equity, so forth. All of these
laws, possibly because they are human made, imply behavior that
contradict what is observed in one way or another.

The other day, I was talking to a young friend from Greece, who
is a PhD student in economics, and the topic was the so-called
dividend-discount model of equity pricing, which is also a law
because it is just a postulate.

We both agreed that it was garbage.

This is how I feel about most laws.

Not that I disagree with that evolution of speculative capital
contains a life of its own, that is, it is own laws, but I am not
sure if we really can write down what exactly those laws are. Who
knows! Maybe, we can approximate them as closely as possible for
all practical purposes. Then, maybe not.

Don't take this rant seriously. I was just taking a break from
some boring garbage I am working on.

Best,
Sabri