NYT How Did We End Up in a Low Growth World?: $#^@!
The New York Times published one of their standard obscure, rambling articles entitled “We’re in a Low-Growth World. How Did We Get Here?” by Neil Irwin. The author rings his hands over the slow growth of the last 15 years and concludes that we (he) has no idea why we are in this situation, but if it does not change we are in for a gloomy 21st century. Click the link for the rest of the post.
They have no desire to ask the right economists. They are statists that refuse to see that government command and control, over regulation, and excessive taxes are inhibiting innovation, investment and business creation. They only listen to the Krugmans despite history.
Respectfully,
O.A.
Indeed. Your theory has merit.
Many seem smart enough to understand the facts presented; either they have cognitive dissonance or they are willfully, purposely, dismissing them for reasons that can only be considered nefarious.
Good to hear from you.
Regards,
O.A.
If you have a Mind and use it, you have a conscience that won't let you knowingly do harm.
So why does having a fully rational Mind mean that you have a conscience? Can you make that connection for me?
Here's an interesting discussion: http://www.academia.edu/1386623/Arend...
Your correct about the mind...however, the brain alone can not think rationally unless you consider survival part of rational thinking. It is debatable if the brain can reason beyond the simple function of physical things...ex, fixing your car or a leaky faucet.
Also note that just because we might see a mathematical relationship, doesn't mean is all came from one's head. All human behavior, thoughts and actions must be expressed through the body otherwise one could not observe nor measure them and it does not mean it all come from the body. There are a host of processed at work outside the body as well. It's not mystical...I posit that it is quantum physical and eventually we will prove that. Then the process begins again and again and again on through human "Inter-lectual" evolution. And you mathematicians will help us do that. Are you up for that...isn't it exciting to even just think about.
See Roger Penrose for his idea of consciousness being a quantum effect. Processes outside the body can influence thought when the force is strong enough. I, for one, find it near impossible to think when the background drums start up from the near by resort business on weekends. I happen to be one of those who cannot blot out reality and must find a hiding place to do my work when being drummed at.
I have never found any reason to believe that quantum waves in the real world are any more than an attempt to reify mathematics resulting only in fantasy mental worlds.
Try getting into the brain of an awake cat or dog and see if it has some kind of view of the world in a similar way that you do in a scene that you see consciously. I would suspect that it is similar due to the parallel type of brain activity. Whether that is awareness or not is unknown and one cannot even do that comparison in any other human brain. Can a machine have consciousness? Some biochemical machines do, I say that even though biology is deterministic with chemicals and structures acting by their identities. But large numbers of actors can seem to have a large randomness to them. Because of that some want to introduce outside influences just as they do for the origin of life by maybe something else did it leading to an infinite regress.
I do see and have experienced the effects of quantum wave exchanges, (entanglements). Not the "Secret" mind you but perhaps...and it's a big jump and only perhaps, "ask and receive". We are Not capable of manifesting stuff out of thin air but I do think it is possible to detect something in reality that has already happened or is happening beyond our view. That would be the effects of an entanglement. These entanglements are fascinating and obviously they exist and have some purpose. It's stuff like this that makes one ponder the possibilities of it being intentional. I think we can ponder these things, appreciate them, without going over the rails of rational thought. To think all is only consequential and just happened... seems to me to be just as far fetched as thinking there is a guy in the sky. There has to be some rational reason somewhere in the middle.
It is all smoke and mirrors due to the irrational belief that mathematics can be reified. A rational philosophy, such as Objectivism, would be extremely useful for quantum physics scientists.
Edge diffraction and slit interference do no show that particles have a wave nature, only that ensembles of particles do when encountering electric fields within the edges involved in the slits. Same with water waves going through slits where interference patterns appear. They do not show that water molecules have wave properties but show that ensembles of particles can form wave patterns.
You are always bathed in all kinds of stuff. The atmosphere probably gives the most force against your body with wave like pressure patterns. The gravitational field due the the rest of the Universe through the inertial effects actually out powers the Earth's gravity which seems pretty strong by keeping you from flying off into space. Then there are cosmic rays and radon gas which produces polonium with 25,000 rem alpha when near lung cells, and EM fields every where all having affects on human cells. Do you really think that forces extremely tiny when compared to those larger forces could have any influence on cells or the brain?
As for entanglements that might have a purpose, I doubt that anything in the Universe or at least objective reality has any purpose other than what humans might assign to it. The Universe is purposeless as such. If a deity existed, then it would maybe have a LOLROTF purpose due to boredom for it.
Just think of entanglements as games that bored mathematical physicists play when they give up their critical faculties for the fun of winging it over some beers. That doesn't mean that quantum physics is not a valid field of study but only that bad philosophy and interpretation can stink. Same with quantum mechanics as long as it is correctly considered to be a probabilistic theory giving probabilities for results.
I have no problem with science fiction. Just that it should be based on science. Things like time travel is another of those attempted reification of math things. The equations show time travel by greatly changing gravitational field patterns redirecting light cones. But light cones are not physically existing things but are patterns of where light can and has existed. But matter prefers to act in one direction and to place matter back to the state it was in the past is probably impossible. So there can be no resetting of reality except maybe extremely locally, say at the quantum level at most.
Gravity is an interesting but weak force by comparison...on some level it should be electromagnetic. I think that what we see as gravitational forces between planets, solar systems and galaxy's is actually a electromagnetic attraction or holding force between electromagnetic bodies. Seen some electrical experiments by Billy Yelverton of suspicious0bservers,org that show what our distance from the sun would be at different levels of electromagnetism.
"So there can be no resetting of reality except maybe extremely locally, say at the quantum level at most." yes, that is exactly what I'm saying...but to the larger point, no you can't change reality over all. but you can become aware of different parts of reality, possibilities that already exist.
I like Einstein's thoughts on entanglements; comprising opposites, opposite spin, charge etc
Makes sense. North/South, positive/negative, one not only depend upon the other and has an effect upon the other...if the Mind is part of the quantum field then why wouldn't it be able to take advantage of entanglements or even part of a family of entanglements.
I've been listening to a few of Penrose's talks and am stunned by his thoughts on there being something else going on...I see that something but have no clue what it is or how to express it...so I study on cause it's beyond ask and understand...just have to keep open to whats there to study and have a mind set to prove it wrong...Like Edison said, he didn't fail 10,000 times but successfully found 10,000 things that failed to work.
" I doubt that anything in the Universe or at least objective reality has any purpose other than what humans might assign to it."
Just as we exist and wish to continue to exist, not to mention existing to create and take part in existence so might the universe, cosmos, creation exist for the same purpose just by the laws that govern it. As to an entity? who knows but might creation be designed or have come together as in the proxy of an entity?
I've always thought that what goes on in our minds, brains and bodies actually mimics what goes on in creation...wouldn't Rand say it might exist to exist? or something to that effect. Conscious Man is beyond or should be beyond humanizing this observation.
The brain functions chemically with nerve signals traveling as chemical ions of sodium and potassium and ending at synapses where chemicals are released to begin another traveling ion process in an axons of other nerves. I doubt whether the EM field generated by the ionic activity does anything to moderate signals at other points in the brain. Probably sleep is more important to allow brain shrinkage so that cleansing fluids can remove any toxic materials from metabolism in the brain.
Just place a tentative question mark on any knowledge that you believe to be truth. Objective reality when observed will always have great treats for you to modify a view of reality.
Einstein's belief in an objective reality did not permit particles instantly influencing each other at a distance, i.e., once entangled the particles are separate entities and do not influence each other as to their states. I doubt whether there is such a thing as a quantum field. Without interaction with other matter, they retain their states until measured or action with other matter. An interpretation from one view of quantum mechanics, since the math is probabilistic, is that the particles must exist in a mixed state of the two particles which on observation will become objective. It is kind of like some climate scientists who seem to take math in the form of averages and reify them into some real influence on the climate.
You might be looking for something like in the book "The Body Electric" by Becker M.D. and Selden.
Guess we will have to continue on another thread. my reply box has gotten so small that I have trouble seeing all that I type. Hope there were not too many typos.
Why just single out liberals. All walks of life have the same problem. Religious practitioners, e.g., when in what I would call a religious state or a kind of trance state, can be the same as those liberals. Probably no one is exempt at times in their lives. Nor are most people unable to be irrational all the time.
What bothers me the most is getting to the bottom of just what 'conscious' is objectively. The word basically means 'with knowledge'. That presupposes what is knowledge. If knowledge is some kind of stored something about reality, then is it knowledge only when it is conscious or is it knowledge when both conscious and when it is stored? If it is just stored and not knowledge as sometimes assumed in so called dumb animals, in non-humans but is used non-consciously to guide action in those so called non-conscious beings like my cats, can the cats be said to have acted with knowledge of reality or are they just automatons going through the motions, Though Rand would consider it as action from inborn knowledge?
I like the exercise of finger movement which I think came from a book called "Action and Purpose" Now if you consciously try to move your finger your consciousness cannot do it. It can only give a kind of permission for the brain to signal the body to move the finger when ready to do so. Almost everything you do is not done through conscious effort. Even when I do math, the non-conscious mind kind of quarries the conscious mind with results which can be allowed as valid from some personal standards of truth or discarded with new orders to the subconscious mind.
As one who had maybe a dozen or so episodes of a sudden voice of my mother waking me with "LARRY" with no mother in sight. It probably was learned mental memory retrieval of when when I was young and my mother would come into my room and call my name to waken me to watch some important thing such as an atomic bomb test on TV or like another time late at night there was an accident of a motorcycle with young boy on the back that she know I was interested in observing. I recall that before I could read I would wait for my father to come home so that I could have him read me newspaper stories about accidents and fires. Those memories can become part of long term memory and in times before much thought had been done would be the norm for memories of everyday occurrences and since minds do poorly without use they will be active when necessary and if that means recall of junk that is what will become conscious. Todays minds do the same thing under the right conditions.
Interesting to note is that much of the worlds population has not reached that introspective stage of consciousness. There are some interesting statistics shown in the newest Julian Jaynes book.
The mind does not have interactions with the brain as such since the mind is an aspect of a functioning brain. The brain is part of reality and its functioning mind cannot control reality other than maybe regulating the functioning of the brain, i.e., the brain regulating the brain thus causing the body that it is in to affect outside reality. No need for the mind to be an added on thing that was added somehow to a complex brain. It is that old ghost in the machine belief.
And Yes, the mind has the ability to control the brain in some important aspects, particularly animal like instinctive behaviors and temptations. Bicameral man, much like islam, had/has no control mechanism except the fear of consequence from outside one's self...that's why they always think "God" is angry and they are being punished when something bad happens to them...kinda sounds like liberals, doesn't it, everything is the fault of something outside themselves.
Our mind was always there, it a consequence of our brains and every cell in our body responding to it's environment generating an energetic field outside our heads and body. Which I posit is actually part of the quantum field we call the ether.
Intelligence or IQ is only a collection of compartmentalized information and has nothing to do with morality or conscience unless some of that compartmentalized information includes those concepts. When one engages the mind (which also means our bicameral brain is integrated and acts as one), we can become introspective...which by definition is consciousness.
So, a high or low IQ means nothing, it's just a measurement of the amount and content of assimilated information. What makes a person smart and capable of rational thought is his level of integration of that information. Also, that information has to be accurate and not a lot of bull crap.
Here is a simple little problem in probability that nearly everyone gets wrong due to differences in abstract thinking.
A person is given a drug test for a certain drug and tests positive for the drug. Through statistical evidence through sampling, it is known that the test is 95% valid in positive results and sampling shows that 5% of the population uses that drug. What are the odds that that person having tested positive is guilty of using the drug?
Of course knowing probability theory might help, but higher IQ persons, even without prior experience will tend to not jump to conclusions and be able to get a reasonable answer, while those with lower IQs will not have a clue.
That is no reason to judge anyone by IQ or that IQ has anything about quality of life or anything else. Does make a difference as an indication for that nasty NSA whether someone can be able to think out of the box. I am 76 and I am starting to notice that I know the word (if a thing or action I can picture it) I am looking for but cannot bring it to consciousness without time and effort. Could be sleeping only 5 hours a night or change in brain function due to getting old. Time will tell. Does probably do a number on what little IQ level that I still have.
Your are absolutely correct about judging someone on IQ alone, because it's clearly one's use of the mind and it's ability to integrate that compartmentalized information that would skew the results.
I'm laughing with you in your last paragraph...I tend to use the mind more than a reliance of my brain...my poor ole head has suffered much political and sociological damage over the years...never mind the toxins I've unknowingly ingested.
Example: Apple fibers will hold arsenic but when those fibers are eliminated from Apple Juice then your exposed to that arsenic...there is nothing in the juice anymore that will carry it out of the body. I think it was the owner of http://naturalnews.com that did this work. I have also followed and practiced the bloodtype diet for my blood type. It all makes sense when you look at how and why the different blood types evolved and need different foods to function well with no disease. I haven't had so much as a cold in over twenty years now...people can't stand it because I just never get sick...(Knock on wood,,,just a bit of humor.)
Suppose you tested the environment and did not find any traces of known toxic substances. Would that make you feel better? It might even have a placebo affect on you as a "I don't have to fear those nasty toxins anymore". Say the cut off level for a substance is one part per 10^12 and below that it is not possible to detect. But that would still not rule out the possibility of the toxic substance at, say, a level or one part per 10^15. So if you take a mole of the substance being tested, which contains about 610^23 molecules, then out of that mole of substance you could have 610^23 / 10^15 = 6*10^8 of the nasty molecules of the chemical in that sample. So a proportion of the cells in the body could be affected. No matter how careful you are, you daily ingest stuff that is bad depending on your consumption amount and are they are toxic depending upon the dosage. You have your favorite consumer sites and I like:
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/
and I hope Sandy is OK since she has been gone for a few years with no news as to why. As with any health consumer site or for any site that does not toe the line, there are many who believe she is wrong in her opinions about studies.
Take Hg which said to be an extremely toxic element. Toxicity depends upon the molecular structure that the Hg is bonded into. Hg is not particularly toxic to handle but the vapor when inhaled can do damage to the body. The toxic compounds are organic molecules such as HgCH3 from seafood and other such molecules containing Hg which are easily absorbed in the intestines. Pure Hg does not absorb well and some kid who in the primitive days of yesteryear when a thermometer broke and a kid was known to have ingested Hg, he ended up with his stomach pumped.
Anyway, you live in a possibly toxic and radioactive world with the advantage of knowledge about toxins and a radioactive environment. I would almost bet that you do not eat bananas due to the radioactive potassium 40 in them. And if they had lain on the ground before being shipped, better watch out for nematode larva eating away in them.
One reason I do not believe the blood type diet is that it originally was based on the type of diet prevalent at the time the blood type evolved. It was said the the O type developed in meat eaters before the A, B, and AB types evolved. But the O type is an abnormal blood type that came after the A, B, or AB types so according to the hypothesis for diet types, O diets should have less meat in them to fit the blood type.
You may just be one of the lucky (I don't like that word but it serves a purpose for not knowing the why of it) individuals who don't get sick no matter what you do. I am one who dwells upon body feelings and can make a cold into a several week thing. Since the government seems to have great control today, it would be interesting that it stop all flu vaccinations for, say, five years to prove that flu vaccinations are useful. If there is no large increase in deaths due to flu, then vaccinations do no good. If as they say and the deaths will skyrocket, then go back to vaccinations. But in any case there are those who say that they will fabricate the evidence in any case.
DaDamo points out that minute amounts of toxins are actually a teaching aid for the body, teaching it what is not good. But that doesn't mean we should be oblivious about foods containing much higher levels. Most of these toxins build up over time if your body and accompanying diet fail to get rid of them...simple stupid right.
Oh...I don't like the word either but I was Never Lucky...hyperactive and caught every disease out there...didn't keep me down but none the less...I got it...all that stopped when I just changed my diet. Did some old Indian cleanses later on...good to go bro.
You miss the boat on blood type, anthropologist test for blood type and 0 was the first, A the second, B from our nomadic period and AB about 2500 years ago. The diets are not based on foods of the time, that was only base line investigation. Dr DaDamo tests directly using today's foods and notes adverse blood reactions and agglutination...on and on and on...the boy is up to date. He gives all the parameters behind it all right down to what chemicals are used in the DNA of each...Don't dismiss it until you've read his work directly...not from some lamestream source that feels threatened. I suggests his Live right 4 your type...it gets into many of the other factors that aren't mentioned in eat right 4 your type.
It's a whole lot cheaper to be responsible and take care of myself...feels better Too...laughing
Intelligence and IQ are more than a "measurement of the amount and content of assimilated information." They are measures of how quickly and completely someone "gets it" when presented with new information and their ability to form concepts from it.
How someone gets it depends upon using the mind or using just a monkey see, monkey do type process. We see the latter in academics and science. One requires a mind to integrate ( which means the bicameral brain is now integrated also), thoughts and concepts versus a robot type response according to the teachings...man...do we ever see this a lot.
Thinking in pictures is big part of this. I myself see everything in pictures but even people that don't (a rare condition), still having access to the mind has allowed their brain to adapt using physiological survival techniques.
As I am sure your son can attest, The brain is quite an amazing thing by itself...but in conjunction with an energetic field, we call the mind: Nothing will be impossible unto it; according to the temporary limits on that connection.
You, if you are a you, does not require a conscience as sociopaths, who can rationally think just fine, demonstrate while psychopaths have some rudimentary conscience in that they can see that they may have done wrong but not worry about it. You can have a conscience and still knowingly do harm just by allowing emotion to take its course without inhibiting the action. The mind is still working, else you would not be aware of acting and not even be able to act.
Some people think that since the parts do not include some property, that if something is composed of the parts it cannot have a certain property unless the property is instilled into it by some supernatural means. But that view is just from those who find that life is not livable without at least pretending to have some kind of absolute knowledge of reality. Being human means that one will never have absolute knowledge other than of some axioms which cannot be further analyzed and lead to contradictions of observed objective reality when they are denied.
It's high time we move on from our limited understandings of the past. It is a natural process. This has been part of my work for 20 years and much of that work is making sure I don't get caught up in the "new age" quagmire or the status quo. we take what's valuable and expand it. As I said, this is the process.
Part of my work is figuring out what process are at work that has inhibited all Humans from becoming self introspective, (a new definition of consciousness)...and it does seem it can be purposely confounded and a chosen preference not to be as well but over all, something else is going on. We as a species have only had 3000 years to get this right and all of us, obviously have not.
I use the work of Julian Jaynes and the latest work of his peers. You can find this latest work in the latest book on Jaynes: Gods, Voices and the Bicameral Mind, edited by Marcel Kuijsten. The founder of the Julian Jaynes society of which I am a member.
Conscience vs. consciousness—all right, once more from the beginning:
1. Lifeforms are the only things that have a need to differentiate good and evil, because they can die, and their prime directive is survival and reproduction.
2. That which threatens their survival is evil; that which supports it is good, a value. Living beings have, over millions of years, evolved a diagnostic system that evaluates and judges, learning from direct and second-hand experience what is desirable and what to avoid. Learning the “right” things to do, and doing them, earns a positive feedback that translates into feeling good, gaining approval and happiness. The learning process can be painful, whether through ignorance, incompetence or contrariness. The lifeform’s diagnostic system’s feedback comes through emotions--unease, tension for unfinished assignment, even anger and self-hatred. It is a simple equation: action to achieve the internalized concepts of “good” = happiness. Actions (or lack thereof) that fail = unhappiness. “Conscience” is the monitor of those equations.
3. The sole purpose of life is its own reproduction. All else is fractals, bifurcations, supporting techniques to reduce danger, increase comfort and safety margins, secure future survival. When expanded, this built-in formula leads to wealth acquisition, power lust, control over others, gangs forming alliances against others, war and genocide—somewhat in that order. These tendencies grow like a cancer, fed by the growth algorithm. When groups form societies, they evolve protocols, agreements, laws and regulations, cultural traditions and cooperative preferences for their own kind. Families, tribes, clans, communities and larger conglomerations replicate this matrix of groups, all the way to nation states and continental unions. Some are aiming at a one-world government. The hierarchy builds on its core premise, extending the template layer by layer.
4. Humans evolved superior brains with which to improvise ever more effective and complex environments in which to secure the prime directive and its multitudinous offshoots. The brain’s capacity for abstract thinking opened the way to future planning beyond the stimulus or need of the moment, beyond animals’ instinctual “range-of-the-moment” responses. Abstraction and concept formation enabled language, knowledge retention and transmittal, and both reasoning and rationalization. All that can be subsumed as “consciousness”. Knowledge acquisition ultimately makes the mind aware of its own functioning—self-consciousness, cognition, introspection, self-direction, including recognition of the concept of good and evil and the ability to name them.
5. Still in keeping with the prime directive, and lifeforms’ inherent formula for economical energy investment, cooperation among groups and individuals emerged as the most “rational” way to conduct societies for mutual benefit. These practices also became identified as the “moral” ways of behavior, especially toward others in one’s group. As with everything else associated with human evolution, “moral” rules became enshrined in various power structures—religions, forms of government, philosophies, ethical systems.
6. About power structures—ideas, beliefs, forms of administration from chiefs and kings to houses of parliament—these grew by Darwinian dynamics or even like the law of gravity, with the largest and strongest taking center position and the lesser in orbit around them. Nature, however, is indifferent: the strongest is not necessarily the “best”, by whatever metric evaluated.
7. By whatever system a society seeks to exist and proliferate, the agreed-upon rules (laws, morals, ethics, etc.) as accepted by the members of the society determine what is regarded as good or evil, and to the extent that the members adhere to them, their “conscience” will give positive feedback and a peaceful resolution of demand and adherence. Deviation is punished by the group and should instill shame and guilt—a conflicted conscience—on the part of the sinner/criminal/deviant. Lawful behavior, as determined by adherence to the communal values, achieves the maximum good for the maximum number. The notion of the sanctity of the individual and of the value of individual rights is the rarest of societal ideas. In all other systems, the individual is merely a cog, a particle to be used, like worker bees that subordinate themselves to the demands of the hive.
8. This rare idea of the individual as the fundamental unit, as enunciated by a few philosophers that we would call enlightened (because we agree with them)--such as Aristotle, Locke, Rand—requires a highly advanced consciousness and specialized inventory of Reason. It is a tiny fragment in a world still ruled by groupthink, hive mentality, the memes of sacrifice and legalized plunder. “Conscience” is still only the machinery that monitors the values held by any particular group. In some societies honor killings are held as a value; members of those societies consent to even the murder of their own kin, even by their own hands. In some societies, even the young are so indoctrinated that they will cut off their own hands for some imagined transgress. How to instill “rational” values? Aye, there’s the rub. Objectivists have their work cut out for them.
9. The real obstacle is that along with everything else that has evolved—human genetic code, adaptive and immune subsystems, the most convoluted thought structures—ideas have taken on a life of their own, encoded in energy patterns that center on the brain and the body’s entire nervous system. Let’s call them memes as proposed by Richard Dawkins. They are just as aggressive in maintaining their existence and replicating themselves as any microbe and animal. They are just as resistant to eradication as every other lifeform. We may not be able to claim that they “think” or have a conscience; but they react with the same tenacity as we do in protecting our existence and clinging to behaviors that serve the prime directive. We can even posit a total selfishness to these memes; they will form alliances with like memes to strengthen their own position, and they resort to just the same kind of treachery and rationalization as we see in human behavior. I would go so far as to suggest that such human behavior, which is not in the long-range rational self-interest of people, is in fact dictated and directed by their resident memes, and their consciences are programmed by those same memes. Memes comprise our value systems.
10. We are still in the process of evolution. Where we go depends on whether objective mental disciplines (our psychoepisteology) can influence and mold the existing power structures that fortified themselves through millions of years of replication and mutation. It would be unconscionable not to work towards that higher goal of humanity’s place in the Universe.
It is a shame that many get stuck in a meme or level of awareness, it wasn't meant to be that way. With our evolving understanding and adherence of the physical and natural laws one should have or at least been taught to take the value of each and move on to the next. (Spiral Dynamics -Ken Wilbur) - for instance.
The physical laws enable existence to continue having just the right residence. disobey, ignore or substitute these laws causes entropy; too much equals max entropy ( communism ) and too little or none equals zero entropy, ( zero entropy would be the equivalent of democracy gone wild...anything goes) (ref, The article posted here: Democracies fail when they become too democratic [and I am only referring to the historical aspect and not anything else in that article] ).
It is obvious, to one that observes that those that fall prey to Power, control, criminality all without conscience are in fact...the great unwashed and therefore found wanting. Pretty clear that they have not achieved consciousness. (stuck in a very low meme of level.) They do not represent humanity at all.
On the quantum side of things, I see where conscious life, conscious beings, play a role in the survival and success of existence through our ability to create and participate in quantum entanglements and a evolving understanding and adherence of the physical laws on that quantum level.
What we, our value creators and our science must understand is that we just can't make it up on our own...there are rules and by following those rules as best as we understand them then, as has been said twice in our history, "Nothing shall be impossible unto us."
That is what scared the crap out of our rulers in Babylon and caused them to try and confound the process and that process of becoming introspective, conscious with a conscience was begun with our use, (spoken and written), of language. Julian Jaynes.
Government Market Interference
Interference at all levels from conception through design, production, purchase, after purchase use.
Bureaucrats score themselves by the only medium of production available to them: numbers of new regulatory rules produced. No thought goes into the impact of an ever-increasing regulatory load on the economy by those bureaucrats, but other parties estimate that nearly a trillion dollars are sucked out of the market by regulatory compliance burdens. If that won't create a low growth situation, I don't know what else can.
it is not just that government regulations and controls inhibit growth, it is that governments fail to do what governments should do, that is- protect property rights, specifically the intellectual capital that goes into inventions. So, a potential inventor is discouraged knowing that others are free to copy what is created.
The increasing regulatory burden on productive enterprise is slowing or discouraging the adoption of ideas. For example, the current regulatory environment has caused many people to avoid the medical device market, or the medical field altogether, even though it represents an area that most needs innovation.
From reading some of the comments to this post, maybe we should define the study of economics to 'the study of slavery'. And from what I see of economics and economists, they're simply rationalizations and attempted justifications for why I should accept that 'society' and others have the rights to take from me the ownership of my life, dressed up in foofaraw of mathematics, social needs, growth for all, fair taxation, egalitarianism, pragmatism, and other nonsense.
If any writing, text book, pronouncement, or policy of economics does not have as it's basic axiom my individual ownership of my life, it is complete and utter absurdity. Until we all understand that simple basis, we're just bandying words back and forth in completely unintelligible language. And that's particularly true of publications such as the NYT's.
I start from the same place in economics, however economics is how we achieve those goals - it is about knowledge.
I tire from the continual need to defend my rights to gain knowledge and manage my life instead of accepting the manipulation and management of others in the muck of the swamp of ignorance and fear of individualism that surrounds me.
Txs for the work you've put into this topic.
"If all the economists in the world stood in a circle, they'd all point in different directions."
saw many things wrong, It didn't seem to me to be
too bad in 1970. Then Nixon began his wage/price
controls. Then the government interfered more and
more in people's lives. But it was bad enough before, with LBJ's Great Society and FDR's
New Deal, etc. Violation of individual rights, and
laws passed with zero regard for such. So it was
bound to get into a quicksand, if it went far e-
nough.
Brother, you asked for it!
If he (Neil Irwin) did a little investigation and "real" journalism, this would not be the great mystery that he seems to think it is! Perhaps his blinders are starting to come off!
This includes intellectual property. Hollywood and similar trolls lock up both creative works and inventions for many decades to prevent later inventors from building on them, then pretend that they're creating value when they're really preventing a lot more creation than they're doing.
I would reform IP rights, reducing the right to veto use of a work by others (or derived works!) to only a short initial period (say 3-5 years), followed by a longer period where the inventor is only entitled to get paid and cannot veto anything.
Am I the only one here who has read Spider Robinson's Melancholy Elephants?