[LINK] Death of Moore's Law Will Cause Economic Crisis

[Tom Koltai]

Thank-you Steven, as Rants go, that was a most succinct and logical
sustainable economics explanation.
I would add that it might possibly be beneficial for all of the
professions to study "complete eco systems" and not just scientists.

In Europe, the study of Cybernetics is a part of any Economics Degree.

>From the Wiki entry on System Theory:

Bánáthy Quoteth:/ [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory]
The systems view is a world-view that is based on the discipline of
SYSTEM INQUIRY. Central to systems inquiry is the concept of SYSTEM. In
the most general sense, system means a configuration of parts connected
and joined together by a web of relationships. The Primer group defines
system as a family of relationships among the members acting as a whole.
Von Bertalanffy defined system as "elements in standing relationship.
/Quote


> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Steven Clark
> Sent: Wednesday, 23 March 2011 10:41 AM
> To: link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [LINK] Death of Moore's Law Will Cause Economic Crisis
> 
> <SNIP>
> <rant>
> 
> nothing can 'grow' forever. cyclical 'corrections' for are as 
> natural as extinctions when resources are overrun* (or 
> withdrawn**) or booms# when resources are in abundance. we 
> (as societies) refuse/struggle to accept that we live in 
> reality, which is bounded, rather than our imagination, which 
> is far less so; thus we keep getting surprised whenever we 
> hit an upper bound of what we can take from reality and 
> suddenly our houses of cards come crashing down.
> 
> most of our 'economic' systems are generative; they are 
> expected to make
> *more* stuff - cars, clothes, food, representations of units 
> of exchange (aka money). the last is the most pernicious. 
> it's imaginary, so so long as we can justify to ourselves 
> *how* we do so, we can make more and more of it. but we 
> discover, time and again, that even money is subject to the 
> laws of the reality in which is is imagined. entropy, and so 
> on, cannot be avoided indefinitely - indeed, it requires 
> 'work' to hold it at bay at all.
> 
> our economics is founded upon the assumption that growth is 
> good; worse, that growth is *necessary*. that is not true, 
> and it cannot be sustained without either sacrificing other 
> things, or being forced back to a lower state when the system 
> cannot sustain the current rate of growth. even money, though 
> imaginary, is subject to reality because it is represented in 
> the real world. (there are only so many electrons one can 
> devote to the futures market before it detracts from other 
> local effects - but more pragmatically, human attention 
> directed towards creating new ways to make more is human 
> attention distracted from other concerns/interests. there is 
> only so much the futures market can *do* of
> itself.)
> 
> anyway, in short: the inevitable tailing off of the slope of 
> moore's graph is only a disaster-in-waiting if we refuse to 
> accept that this is natural, normal. and even if scientists 
> and technologists find a way to side-step the top of the 
> curve, it'll be lurking again in the next approach.
> 
> sustainability ought to me more than just reducing kJs and 
> kTs. it ought to be a whole-of-system approach to *what* and 
> *why*, not just *how*.
> 
> i have argued since my second year as an undergraduate, (some 
> decades ago now o.O) that economists and accountants ought to 
> spend at least half a year of their basic training learning 
> fundamentals of ecology and studying at least a basic 
> ecosystem. they talk a good game, but most really don't 
> relate /viscerally/ to the concepts of growth and decay, 
> resource limits, renewal and interconnectedness [not the 
> spiritual kind, although that awareness-of-other would be a 
> good thing(tm)].
> 
> they don't understand how parasites fit in, nor how immune 
> systems attempt to detect and destroy them, and how both try 
> to adapt to evade one another. nor how those very processes 
> have *built into them* the foundations of their own failures. 
> everything is mathematical models, which are fine so far as 
> they go. ecologists and other biologists use them too. but 
> when you confuse the model for the reality, you're 
> delusional. sadly, to quote alan cooper "the inmates are 
> running the asylum".
> 
> sustainability, aka awareness of environment ('environmental 
> awareness' has been captured with a narrower meaning), is a 
> good foundation - not an/the end point one would hope - for 
> thinking about almost anything.
> 
> </rant> :D
> 
> -- 
> Steven
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