Radical Policy Change vs. Professional Estimate of Future Effect

["John Gelles" <johng@xxxxxxxxxx>]

    All economists are condemned to offer either (a) professional
    guestimates of future effects of unchanged rules and policy or
    (b) professional guestimates of the future effect of radical change
    in rules and/or policy desired by their bosses or suggested by
    themselves to their bosses.

    Which is NOT to say they cannot be bosses themselves of an
    investment or lending firm or government operation, or that less
    than radical change is none of their business.

    The reason for couching (a) and (b), above, in the language used
    is more for simplicity than precision.

    So the ergodic paradox of living in an uncertain universe that must
    be assumed to be subject to momentum and habit to permit one
    act to follow another, is overcome all the time by decisions based
    on rules of thumb or rules with a good deal of logic (even of breath-
    taking statistical wonder) behind them.

    So what.  So what do our bosses (including ourselves) really want
    by way of economic results?  We want enough of the necessities of
    individual and group life to go around. And we want it to go around
    --not be stolen by alpha males or other scurrilous types.

    Along with enough output, fairly distributed, we may want a system
    that uses money, more or less as we know it, or a system that is
    very close to a rule based economy of the type that is found in the
    animal kingdom. Herd animals don't need money, but they do need
    to follow nature's rules for their survival. Conceivably, in time, we
    will have discovered enough rules to do away with money. But in
    the meantime, professional economists remain focused on money
    as a tool useful for the survival of the human animal.

    If we agree to the objective above -- to have enough things to go
    around -- its corollary become to have enough money to go around
    to make the fair distribution of output a likely future condition.

    All of which means that radical change is necessary--since we know
    that far too often there is not enough to output or money go around
    even when there could be if our only problem was production.

    All Keynesian economics is focused on finding the money that full
    production demands to avoid want, deflation and inflation. Keynes-
    ian economics accepts the fact that as the future unfolds its data
    must tend to govern not only quantities or new inputs forseen by
    an adaptive system, but also the rules it applies.

    Which means that Keynesian economics mimics much of general
    systems theory.  It's focus must be both on money (as a fuel for
    human motivation and effort) and on the details of engineered pro-
    duction of every need.  If mere demand created its own supply,
    every nation would be rich.  If mere supply created it's own
    fair demand every rich nation would have no poor people.

    Why on PKT do we read so little of the radical changes that
    might address the paradoxes embedded in the comments above?

    Why do we avoid the supply side and all the difficulty involved
    to motivate people to work hard, smart and fair?

    What about indexed money?  Can we really live well without it?

    What about commercial profit as the source of money revenues
    for non-commercial necessities, like defense, education, economic
    security?

    What about the human right to enjoy economic rights -- not just
    freedom of thought?

    What about glut in the literature, library, college catalog, internet
    and TV?  Is there a pruning science that can take advantage of
    hypertext and mapping to reduce the volume of text a professional
    must know?

    Will the archives of PKT ever be mined for knowledge?

        John Gelles