Re: Hyman's response to "infinite wants"

[Hyman Blumenstock <hystock@xxxxxxxxx>]

Gregoire de Nowell (ci-devant) wrote:
>
> The response went back to categorizing all economics in the same
> way, which of course, as McFarling points out, is inaccurate
> and sure to marginalize the proponent.

No matter the triviality of saying the same thing with different
inflections, the same thing is the same thing.  That "thing" is the
presumption that Supply can never meet Demand of what a "living"
entails, a total falsity.  On that one premise, all schools of economic
thought depend. If I'm wrong, please give me some other premise. Don't
come up with other picayune "wants" that do not involve that extremely
important "living," obviously just to desperately maintain validity of a
defunct philosophy.
>
> To come back to the automobile example.
>
> You have a bunch of folks sitting around considering an internal
> combustion engine.  They all know there are environmental problems
> with it.  Some are more or less reformists:
>
> 1.  Cars are a good idea designed to satisfy efficiently a real need
> so let's make them better through catalytic controls and what have you.
> (As a matter of fact, Honda has pushed conventional pollution to
> extraordinarily low levels on the Accord, meeeting the squeaking
> clean standards of the California Ultra-Low-Emission-Vehicle standard).
> Most of the deficit-spender types on this list wousld be the
> economic equivalents: make capitalism better able to meet universal
> needs by making sure that everyone has the chance to be productive
> (to have a job).

Cars were promoted while mass transportation was deliberately put down
to make way for cars.  All for the reason of that most evil "profit
motive."  Were it not for that, transportation would have likely
followed another path of development, with more mass transportation and
less cars.  It would have been realized by the more sophisticated of us
that the function of transpoertation is to transport the MIND, which can
now be done fairly instantly with the least expenditure of energy, by
Internet.
>
> 2.  Cars are intrinsically environmentally evil.  Even if they
> don't make smog (like the Accord) they have plenty of other problems:
> their fuel creates oil spills, they use up valuable land with freeways,
> they create a socially unjust spacial distriubtion of society.  So
> even if yo make a better car it still stinks.  Tear up the suburbs,
> build higher density housing, make cleaner cars, and move to mass
> transit.  This is a more "radical" position.  PKT correspondents
> to this position exist.  This goes beyond mere reform.
>
> 3.  Other people are intrinsically interested in finding out as much
> as they can.
>
> Then there is the guy runnning around shouting "The wheel!  It
> all comess down to the wheel!  Now that we KNOW how to make
> WHEELS, all transportation problems are solved."  This is the
> equivalent of reducing everything about distribution to food,
> air, and water.  I for one think such a list is woefully
> inadeqauate and would add to it, housing, clothing, education,
> and medical care.

Of the latter, name one function that is performed by a starving
person.  As Food is really ALL there is to Economics, the diversion to
Money as ALL there is to Economics, is a faux pas of classical
proportions.
>
> It is TRUE that the Wheel is important.  In fact, everyone involved
> in looking at the car knows that it is.  Without it, nothing would
> roll.  But that is not the central focus, even though, alas, it is
> true that there are people in the world with too few or no wheels.
> The transportaiton problem goes beyhond that.  So does the production
> and distribution of wealth problem.

Keep boiling it down to its profound fundamentals, and voila, we see
adequate Feeding as the cure all of all Social Problems.  I am not
joking.  The only "wealth" of consideration, is an adequate Food supply.
Everything else comprises the tools we would like to have to making
living more of a joy, which we can use to our heart's content, or share
on a time and place basis with others.
>
> It is FALSE that the people interested in alternative fuels and
> mass transit are the SAME as the people who design gas guzzlers
> for Detroit, EVEN IF THEY WENT TO THE SAME SCHOOLS AND HAD THE
> SAME EDUCATION.  For it is quite clear that they are doing something
> altogether different with their time.  Hammering them
> about the wheel does nothing to stop what is going on in DEtroit
> nor does it address the dialog in any constructive way.

What is going on in Detroit, and everywhere else, is PROFIT seeking,
instead of quality, a sure way to destroy a once promising civilization.
>
> It so happens, however, that I have the book for you
>
> Lappe, Francis Moore (1979).  Food First: Beyond the Myth of
> Scarcity.  N.Y.: Ballantine.
>
> This book makes some serious arguments about distributive
> inequality.  If you could talk like Lappe, you might actually
> get taken seriously.

I'll find and read that book, and comment on it.  It is a burden not
being able to communicate with forcefullness.

Hyman
>
> Greg Nowell