Re: "Infinite Wants"

[Hyman Blumenstock <hystock@xxxxxxxxx>]

Greg:

Your points are well taken.  However, force yourself to leave the
comfortable sanctity of the discipline of Economics, a well oiled
machine, but of Rube Goldberg propensities, with a specific purpose, the
care and feeding the homo sapien during a long extinct Agrarian era (in
our neck of the woods), and take a look at the outside world as Nature
created it, in the Post-Agrarian era.

Nature has provided all living creatures with a requirement to seek
nourishment from outside of its body, to be introduced as "in come" into
whatever orifice is appropriate.  This includes homo sapien, admittedly
the most sophisticated of the bunch as far as we know now.  As a
technical procedure, it seems absurdly simple.  The organism must take
action to procure that nourishment and introduce it into the incoming
orifice.  Nature then takes over responsibility, and the nourishment is
duly processed, and any waste is virtually automatically disposed of.
What more is there required than to seek a supply of that essential
nourishment, and to take in a sufficient quantity?  All organisms,
including homo sapien do precisely that.

How did the discipline of economics get into the picture and for what
purpose?  There was a time called the Agrarian era, when nourishment for
homo sapien was of such scarce supply, that not everyone could be
adequately fed.  Subjective human thought came to the conclusion that
having everyone being adequately fed could never come to be, and that
requirement might as well be called infinite, or more legally correct
virtually infinite.  Rules were established then on who was to get
adequate nourishment, and who was not, simply because there was not
enough nourishment to go around.  Barter, and then the innovation of
Money both determined who was not to get the nourishment.  From these
rules sprang up the discipline of Economics that formalized these rules,
and a complex bit of machinery was developed to effect these rules.

But the Post-Agrarian era came to be, a century ago, wherein Food became
abundant enough to feed the entire population.  Reversion back to the
simple, nature dictated approach of just making nourishment accessible
to everyone now -- no one had to be denied access any longer -- was
called for.  But what of that complex piece of machinery, called
"Economics, the Science of Scarcity" (of nourishment) and all its
experts who had spent decades of their careers in its administration?
Do attempts to destroy excess nourishment seem the moral thing to do,
just to preserve the validity of that piece of machinery?  How about the
morality of thereafter diverting attention from nourishment per se, that
seems to evade being restored to its Agrarian scarcity, and focusing now
upon Money that had been once been invented to act merely as a surrogate
for Food for the specific purpose of denying access to those deemed
least entitled?

Not only has the production of nourishment become adequate, but adequate
in spades, so much so that all the excess labor no longer needed just to
produce Food, was diverted into other GDP, which is therefore all Food
derived for this reason, and that has already also approached the limits
of the populations capability to consume or use, as is evidenced by the
rate of unemployment.  But that Rube Goldberg machine, Doctrinaire
Economics, is geared only to the assumption that man's capability to
consume or use has to be so much greater than we can ever produce, and
therein lies the crux of the problem.

How can people not well versed in the intricacies of that machine, and
who have long forgotten the original purpose of that machine, with the
hordes of hucksters of the philosophy of that machine occupying such
prestigious positions as on the Council of Economic Advisors, other
branches of government, and within every corporate entity, as well as
among the loftiest levels in all our universities, do anything but say
-- "It must be so if you say so."

If we get away from that machine, at least for a moment, to rethink what
Nature would most welcome, is to accede to the fact that it is an
extremely simple matter to see to the nourishment of all of us.  As
current efficiency is such that very few have to put in any effort to
produce our cornucopia of goods, then we must first assume that all
"cost" has been met, for anything else to be done, no matter how
grandiose the project. "Cost" is, after all, nothing but a concern for
the *feeding* of labor needed for some project, when there is not enough
Food to go around.

Then create enough projects beyond what is current GDP, not for
consumption, but for the advancement of human welfare and knowledge,
such as in Restoring the Environment, Space Programs, Pursuit of
Knowledge, Anything we can dream of, the purpose being the utilization
of every bit of labor we have available, whose reward will no longer be
the right to "live," that is all the machine is programmed for, but the
sense of Self Esteem we all require, or will also die without.

Your entire post involves only the inner workings of the machine. This
response is to accept your analysis of the machine within, but I ask you
to step outside and see the real world, and then determine how the
machine can fit into it.  The results can be Nirvana if the importance
of the welfare of the world is paramount, or hell on earth if we persist
in maintaining a machine totally unsuited to serve the world.

Hyman



Gregoire de Nowell (ci-devant) wrote:
>
> 1.  Keynes' GT is not based on the theory that human wants
> are "infinite."
>
> 2.  One of the major themes in the General Theory is the
> reverse of that thesis.  It is phrased thus: "the decreasing
> marginal propensity to consume."  What that means is that
> wants DO get fulfilled (for individuals) and that they
> cut consumption accordingly (resulting in "savings").
>
>clipped.
>
> greg nowell