Fwd: more squiggly lines

["William B. Ryan" <william_b_ryan@xxxxxxxxxx>]

--
William B. Ryan
william_b_ryan@xxxxxxxxxx - email
voicemail/fax - 1-866-678-3967 - toll free

--- Begin Message ---

• To: Keith Wilde <kwilde@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Subject: more squiggly lines
• From: "William B. Ryan" <william_b_ryan@xxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 12:35:05 -0500

---- Keith Wilde <kwilde@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> At 11:46 AM 07/24/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>
>>
> W.r.t. the circular flow of economic activity, Georgescu-Roegen identified
> it as a fatal flaw in standard economics (in his magnum opus on entropy
> and
> the economic process).

It is indeed a fatal flaw.

>
> >
> >?In the book by H.J. Muller that I have mentioned before, he makes
> this
> >generalization very forcefully in respect of Newton's cosmological
> physics--i.e.
> >that "Newton" was inevitable and that someone was bound to come up
> with
> >the same general principles very soon.?

Please send me the citation for Muller's argument regarding Newton.
I've lost the citation to the book which you sent earlier.

Is this the same H. J. Muller who won the Nobel for his work in genetics?

> >---
> >thinking.  That?s where it might have remained?for a thousand years?if
> >Newton hadn?t come along.
>
> OK, these paragraphs support your conjecture that Kelso's ideas must
> have
> been borrowed. You may well be right, and I have no particular interest
> in
> contesting that interpretation. I am more interested in the paranoid
> behavior of the Kelso disciples, and I do not see that the hypothesis
> of
> plagiarism gives me a great deal more explanatory power than the one
> that I
> have been working on.

I think that Liebnitz's calculus was borrowed and not an example of convergence.
 I also think that the inspiration for Kelso's ideas was borrowed despite
the Myth of Kelso.  I will reserve my opinion on Liebnitz until I read
Muller's book.  Of course I do not place Kelso and Douglas on the same
plane with Newton or Liebnitz.  Or Shakespeare or Bacon.  To do so would
be ridiculous.

The larger point is that I don't think that the progression of historical
development is the result of inevitable evolution in reaction to the
environment, but the result of specific events flowing from human free
will and capability, for good or evil, some of it the free will of maniacs,
some of it the free will of inspired genius, in the right place at the
right time, or the wrong place at the wrong time--that is not easily
nor is naturally duplicated.  A Newton might come along once in a millennium.

That they may sense or fear, as opposed to knowing, that their ideas
are not really original or especially unique might explain the paranoia.
 They have something of a love affair with the Myth of Kelso, and react
defensively to criticism as deviation from Revealed Truth.

What you have identified is the paranoia and you have made a good case.
 They certainly do react irrationally to criticism intended to be constructive.
 The way they have reacted to some of my comments, for that matter, is
truly bizarre.  The threat of lawsuits is incredible.  (They have threatened
to sue me, too.)  It is not exemplary of normal people in normal conversation,
but rather characteristic of religious fanaticism.

But what just then is the explanation?

>
>
> >--------------------<<
> >
> >Returning to the pipeline metaphor:
> >
> >1.  Do you see that if the volume contained within the pipeline is
> increasing,
> >that the instantaneous rate of flow entering the pipeline must exceed
> >the rate of flow exiting the pipeline?
>
> 	Yes, no problem.
>
> >2.  Do you see that if the rate of increase to the volume contained
> within
> >the pipeline is accelerating in respect to the rate of flow entering
> >the pipeline, the rate of flow exiting is decelerating in respect
> to
> >the rate of flow entering?
>
> It is not as obvious to me. It says that the volume in the pipe is
> compacting at a rate faster than the rate of accelerated speed of flow
> at
> the mouth of the pipe. Not being an engineer, I'm not sure that that
> result
> is an inevitable relationship. Perhaps you mean it only as an hypothetical,
> initial condition from which logic dictates a relative deceleration
> of
> outflow at the end?
>

I would object to the term "compacted" for it infers an increasing volume
contained within fixed dimensions.  It is an expanding pipeline that
has expanding dimensions.

I picked up this line of argument while researching Ezra Pound's personal
library held at the U. of Texas at Austin.  I found some notes from a
Douglas lecture given in 1919 where he drew on the blackboard an "expanding
pipeline" to illustrate his concept of the effects of falling income
and decreasing propensity to consume on effective demand.

[Incidentally, Pound was some years later spared the hangman's noose
because he was deemed not to be culpable of treason because of HIS insanity.]


As to the circular flow model, in financial terms it cannot work (I'll
avoid the entropic aspect for now).  See the diagram no.1 appended.
Outputs are inputs and inputs are outputs.  This can only work in the
special condition of steady-state, which begs the question as to how
the economy arrived at that special condition of steady-state, where
outputs equal inputs.  If either the consuming sector or the firms sector
is expanding--that is to say growing, inputs must exceed outputs for
the sector or sectors that are expanding.  It is not possible for two
expanding "nodalities" to interact in a closed loop.  Which raises the
additional question as to the source of accounting profit.  It is necessary
to postulate the existence of a third sector that makes it an open system.
 In financial terms it is necessary for there to be a third party to
every transaction.  We as individuals are not conscious of that third
party.

Douglas' alternative model is rendered by diagram no.2 appended, which
illustrates a network of differentially expanding pipelines.


--
William B. Ryan
william_b_ryan@xxxxxxxxxx - email
voicemail/fax - 1-866-678-3967 - toll free

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