Re: [Pen-l] Literary criticism and economics [was: It's the metonymy, stupid!]

[Sandwichman <lumpoflabor@xxxxxxxxx>]

That's what I was saying (pretty much). There is no shortage of concepts to replace growth. I would, however, impose a further stipulation: the replacement should be "at least as parsimonious as" the idea of growth, which puts sustainability on somewhat shaky ground. 

The rule of parsimony does not imply that an alternative to growth needs to be "quantifiable as a single number that increases in time." For one thing, GDP only qualifies as a measure of economic growth through a process of circular definition. Furthermore, if we are to accept Marx's argument, the process of monetization of transactions masks the underlying social domination. Keynes addresses the same relationship in terms of pathology. 

A brief detour into the history of statistics shows a unmistakable preoccupation with the quantification of deviance, disease and death: crime, suicide, epidemics, unemployment etc. What if the precondition of statistical quantification is either that the object of quantification expresses some form of social dis-ease (either its presence or absence) or, alternatively, it conceals an uncomfortable truth, such as the enforced subordination of labour to capital? Could there then be an unambiguous and *objective* index of health, well-being or happiness (with *objective* being the key constraint). I'm not absolutely sure the answer is "no", but there certainly is no easy and readily available answer.

On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 6:50 PM, raghu <mraghu01@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I don't understand this. There is no shortage of concepts to replace
the growth mania. Some of them are even fashionable e.g.
sustainability. Sustainability is a very well-defined and meaningful
concept and if it is more complex than GDP, that is only a virtue.

Isn't it a mistake to insist that the concept to replace economic
growth needs to be quantifiable as a single number that increases in
time?
-raghu.



--
"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the
support of Paul."

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Sandwichman
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