Re:

[Hyman Blumenstock <hystock@xxxxxxxxx>]

I may have well presumed wrongly that that phrase based on about human
wants being "infinite" or "insatiable" was universally accepted. I
certainly appreciate your patience.

Perhaps I should ask instead a seemingly negative but perhaps more
positive question.

Is there any school of economic thought that is based on this?  "Is not
the Post Agrarian era one wherein at long last, practical, fulfillable
human wants (not pie-in-the-sky wants) are potentially met (if we just
set our minds to doing the possible) as fully as the entire population
of the earth could each individually, expect to cope with?"  Would not
then the very title of the discipline, "Economics, the Science of
Scarcity" have to be appropriately changed? That has been the theme of
all my messages.  You indicate that there are some schools of economic
thought along these lines, do you not, as you indicate that I am in
error in not being aware of them?

Is the query then valid, that if it is possible to fulfill practical
human wants, why are so many people, now an ever increasing condition,
forced to live without that fulfillment?

Perhaps the elitist theories of Veblen, Keynes and LaRouche have some
logical basis, if one considers the history of man out of the aboriginal
jungle.  Therein lay scarcity, wherein the most powerful of the group
would grab all he could at the expense of the least powerful.  Could
this not become a habit, that when Food became abundant a century ago,
that grabbing all the Food would be counterproductive to the powerful,
who, as a practical matter, could no longer use any more Food than he
could practically eat or store without spoiling or becoming infested.

Money is a concept wherein the storage of it is as easy as an entry into
a ledger, and perhaps that might explain why we became so obsessed with
Money this last century, Money that must be kept in scarce supply so
that the traditional elite could maintain their elitist position.
Perhaps it would explain such organizations as the Concord Coalition
that insists on "balancing the budget" by curtailing any money
expenditures upon "entitlements," so as to surely maintain that Have,
Have-Not dichotomy, when it has been possible, without any economic loss
to any Haves, to bring all the Have-Nots up the status of Have.  Perhaps
this will explain why I've been often castigated and ridiculed as having
an obsession with Food, when everyone knows that it is Money that is of
supreme importance.  Would not the modern obsession with (scarce) Money
be the common factor upon which all versions of economic philosophy
depends?

Hyman


Bruce McFarling wrote:
>
> On Tue, 28 Oct 1997 00:23:14 -0500, Hyman Blumenstock <hystock@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
> >I seem to have difficulty in drawing attention to the validity of
> >the phrase "Human Wants Are Virtually Infinite" that I presume is
> >the core model
>
>         How about this: "Human Wants are Virtually Infinite",
> "Effectively Infinite" or "Actually Infinite" is bullshit that
> helps to undergird a number of schools of thought in economics.
> Institutionalists have been criticising this nonsense since
> Veblen, and they haven't gone away -- though the mainstream
> schools of thought in economics have long since stopped
> listening.
>         The *reason* you have difficulty attention to your
> critique is that you write as if 'economics' consisted of a
> single school of thought, and as if it is possible to find
> out anything about Post Keynesian Economics by reading
> mass-market Principles of Economics texts.  Mainstream
> economists ignore you because they firmly believe in that
> bullshit.  But at least you act as if mainstream economists
> exist.
>         The reason that you have trouble getting people paying
> attention to your question above is that you presume that all
> economists have the same core model.  Which is the same as
> presuming that Post Keynesian Thought does not exist.  The fact
> that your position implies that there is no such thing as
> Post Keynesian Thought would not attract much attention among
> mainstream economists, but among Post Keynesian economists and
> others gathered to talk about Post Keynesian economics, it is
> a bit distracting.
>         As for LaRouche, it was a useful reminder that, as
> much as Keynes elitism demands a bit of caution when we
> are reading his theory and policy recomendations, there
> are much worse elitist propagandists about, whose success
> requires widespread lack of critical reasoning skills among
> the population of our society (whichever society that may
> happen to be).
> Virtually,
>
> Bruce McFarling, Ourimbah, NSW
> ecbm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx