[MD] growth and sustainability

[gav]

good morning,


> 
> 
> gav
> > okay someone please explain to me how a profit-based
> economic system (ie
> capitalism) can be sustainable. ie how can we avoid the
> boom - bust - war
> cycle that has characterised capitalism in practice for the
> past century or
> so.
> 
> mel
> a profit based economic system (and ultimately they all are
> in operation, which I'll get to in a minute)  can be
> sustainable
> in much the same way as an atmospheric system can be
> sustainable.  After all it's not like an atmospher has
> high or
> low pressure, still or wind, clear days and world-rocking
> storms.  --a joke, but you see the point.

i thought economic systems operated within human wrought parameters? unlike the weather.

> 
> Animal populations do the same thing, oscillate. 
> Equilibrium
> is merely operation in an 'average range'
> sense...more an
> intellectual myth than a useful reflection of the real, as
> much
> artifact of a conceptual snapshot in time as anything.
> 
> Operational economy is a dynamic, emergent social behavior
> as seen in its agregate.  Economics is an intellectual
> attempt
> to model the economy to try and understand it.  Don't
> confuse
> the two.

so economics is not about stimulating, protecting, or resuscitating an economy? ie it has no practical point at all?

> 
> Theintellectual attempt is a very young  endeavor, but a
> few
> centuries old and there may have been significant boom-bust
> cycles over millenia that crashed whole civilizations,
> 'composting
> and fermenting' them into fodder for the next wave of
> aggregate
> behavior by people.  Like the life-cycle of stars.

yes. i think that this is well-known. the romans conquered england; cortez south america; england decimated the aboriginals; the US decimated the indians, mexicans, vietnamese, iraqis etc. i find this stuff morally repugnant. call me squeamish i suppose. 

> 
> Best we not get too attached in the long run to thinking we
> have
> somehow escaped that same behavior.
> 
> However, returning to my assertion that all economies
> utilize
> profit.  The Rus merely used theirs to fund too-large a
> military
> for their profit-load, hence it's collapse.    Chinese
> (post 1949)
> went through numerous cycles as they discovered their
> economy was barely manageable for anything but four-out-of-
> five years of farm surplus to feed their population.
> 
> All the while the people kept working, individually, to
> create
> what was in aggregate a shadow economy based on trade,
> barter, 'illegal' buying and selling, and that
> "wild market" economy
> was eventually recognized, (I'd love to know by whom)
> as a more
> vital part of the probable success of stability for China
> than the
> old five-year and great-leap planning could achieve.

so can we avoid such damaging rollercoaster rides? or am i sensing you think these rides, war and depression included, are good and necessary?

i would like us to evolve past war, greed, depression, the rape of the natural world.

evolution......what do you think about evolution mel?

> 
> 

> 
> 
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