A World Of Free Movement Would Be $78 Trillion Richer

[Kyle M]

Or maybe you really are just overly sensitive. Here is your response to another poster in this thread who said absolutely nothing insulting to you but you seem to go out of your way to take it that way.

Lol that last one was a joke.

P.S. - but I accept your apology

 

[Fractality]

The human genome is meant for a hunter-gatherer/primitivist epoch. Everything else doesn't work.

 

[Kyle M]

The human genome is meant for a hunter-gatherer/primitivist epoch. Everything else doesn't work.

With that philosophy, how would humans have ever evolved in the first place?

 

[Kyle M]

I think it is their rejection of standard econometric analyses and modeling that allows them to freely come up with their ideas without the reality check that comes from empirical testing.

What convinced you that economics is an inductive, hypothesis driven science rather than a deductive one?

 

[lvysaur]

The human genome is meant for a hunter-gatherer/primitivist epoch. Everything else doesn't work.

As of now, yes. Things may be different in the future.

With that philosophy, how would humans have ever evolved in the first place?

Evolution is a lagging indicator.

Hunter cultures were better in that they provided very direct, tangible rewards, and a greater sense of "belonging". Most people are at their healthiest when they are in a paleolithic-esque environment (high school, college, clubs, church).

The advantage of the paleolithic is that it necessitates these groups, thereby giving relationships much greater meaning than they have in modern, or even traditional agricultural societies. The disadvantage is that it achieves less; something necessitated by higher quality of life.

Mankind is not even fully evolved for an agricultural society (amylase alleles), much less a post-scarcity, modern industrial one.

 

[Queequeg]

What convinced you that economics is an inductive, hypothesis driven science rather than a deductive one?

I think economics like every other field of physical or social science benefits from both inductive and deductive reasoning. What is so special about economics that the Austrian's think you can't use modeling, quantitative analysis and experimentation?

 

[Queequeg]

There's a difference between protectionism from the get-go vs suddenly introduced, is there not? I can't imagine the average Japanese citizen had a great car to start with back then.

That's true but I imagine that a country that wants to support a local industry could gradually raise tariffs on it competitors or gradually begin to subsidize it so it doesn't shock the economy. Of course they could always do what China does and just gradually come up with one hoop after another for companies to jump through.

I am not advocating protectionism and blocking all free trade but in the case of a developing country I think it makes sense for them to try and develop their manufacturing base in certain specific areas. In the case of America it makes sense just to balance the playing field. Manipulated currencies, export subsidies, hidden tariffs, govt favoritism, draconian commercial agreements are all used against our companies while we more or less let everyone sell their products to us. If a country like ours is running a huge trade deficit then we really need to do something different with our trade policy IMO.

 

[Fractality]

With that philosophy, how would humans have ever evolved in the first place?

You make it sound as if we are in control of evolutionary outcomes or byproducts. Do you also believe evolution is inevitably progressive? One need only point to the massive ecocide our species has wrought onto this planet to refute that. When I state that the human genome is meant for a more primitivist world, I'm making a crude point that we have outstripped our utility to this planet. Our enormous modern brains have created a situation whereby we have to constantly quell an unconscious death anxiety. This has caused massive extinction of other species and will likely mean the end of ours as well. Before "civilization" we were much more in tune with nature and by extension, the universe. Regardless of where we evolve to from here, there is no doubting the destruction we have caused.

As of now, yes. Things may be different in the future.

Of course, no one knows where we will end up. But a drastic change is likely required. I'm curious as to what you envision the possible futures might be.

 

[lvysaur]

But a drastic change is likely required. I'm curious as to what you envision the possible futures might be.

I think we'll see agriculture 2.0. Under agriculture, society became radically unequal. When you look at Y haplogroup trends; diversities were much lower after agriculture happened, and this holds true all over the world. In other words, the moneyed men monopolized all the women (and likely everything else).

If you don't own the infrastructure in the first place (land, or military, or internet companies), you become a slave.

This won't happen suddenly; otherwise it would be stoppable, 80% of the population isn't going to put up with being displaced. It is already happening, and gradually. We're witnessing the bottom 10% or so of society becoming obsolete--it'll just keep happening that way until it reaches an equilibrium or the rate of obsolescence decelerates.

In addition, I think we're going to see the continuing evolution of a "modern" type. I've said before that independent thinkers tend to be long headed, and intelligent/uncreative tend to be wide headed. This roughly corresponds to historical achievements across the globe, there's also been a consistent trend of "brachycephalization" in the last few thousand years, and very ancient skulls are sometimes dolichocephalic to the point where they don't even look human.

Independent thinking has exponentially less value the further civ goes on. IT is harder to put into practice in a complex techno society, IT is cheaper because there are simply more bodies alive, IT is cheaper again because communication between bodies is seamless (internet), and there are simply fewer actual ideas since many have been exhausted in a civilization with a long track record.

Instead, value comes from mostly brute mental work and persistence. Enter IQ and increased brain matter (brachycephaly). Independent thinking will be a privilege of those who have been able to afford it for many hundreds of years. Long heads and nobles are acutely linked even in the past.

 

[Kyle M]

I think economics like every other field of physical or social science benefits from both inductive and deductive reasoning. What is so special about economics that the Austrian's think you can't use modeling, quantitative analysis and experimentation?

I wouldn't say you "can't," just that most if not all attempts to do so as yet abuse math with silly premises. Nassim Taleb writes extensively about this, as someone who studied this math and models he has complete disdain for them. He is not fully Austrian but a fellow traveler as an Austrian leaning classical economist. One of the biggest problems is that, since value is subjective, you cannot quantify it. You can't say that person A prefers a hamburger to $5 at 1.2 utils. All you can say is that, if he buys the burger, he prefers it over the $5. Economists have to quantify a lot of things for strictly speaking don't making logical sense to quantify, I'm sure you're familiar with GIGO.

It's not unlike modern biomedical research where the faulty premises of how receptor biology works causes the results to be essentially flawed before they even start. No matter how sophisticated the assays and techniques are, and they are quite sophisticated in some situations, if you start with a faulty premise you cannot get good results.

Why is geometry, for example, not interested in measuring every square to see if the sides are indeed at right angles? Or measuring every circle to make sure the circumference is pie*R^2? Some parts of the natural world can be deduced as true from simple axioms, like geometry, and cannot be refuted by observation. If you saw a circle that didn't have the ratio of circumference to radius, you wouldn't say that geometry was wrong, you would say that isn't a circle. It's a tautology, admittedly, but in this case a true one.

So like in geometry, when price goes down the demand for something goes up. Now, if a naive student "measured" the demand for a product and saw that in this month the price went down, but sales were lower than last month, he might say "look I refuted that law." That would be a mistake, because he isn't taking into account other variables and cannot observe the counter-factual situation. If people had less money to spend that month, they might consume the item less, but they will still buy more of it that month than they otherwise would if the price was higher. The economy, and the world in general, is chock full of very complicated variables like that, which makes modeling essentially impossible as compared to deduction from axiom. That's related to the reason why biomedical research has to perform statistical tests to estimate significance, that procedure is an implicit admission that there are variables they do not and cannot account for.

So even though today's mathematical economists continues to increase in sophistication, as does today's biomedical assays, they can't get away from false premises. You can't outrun them with complicated post-data tools, GIGO.

 

[Kyle M]

Evolution is a lagging indicator.

Hunter cultures were better in that they provided very direct, tangible rewards, and a greater sense of "belonging". Most people are at their healthiest when they are in a paleolithic-esque environment (high school, college, clubs, church).

The advantage of the paleolithic is that it necessitates these groups, thereby giving relationships much greater meaning than they have in modern, or even traditional agricultural societies. The disadvantage is that it achieves less; something necessitated by higher quality of life.

Mankind is not even fully evolved for an agricultural society (amylase alleles), much less a post-scarcity, modern industrial one.

I think you see evolution as a series of fixed discreet positions, I see it as a continual process all the way from the individual cells and its contents adapting, to fitness expressed through reproduction, to societies/cultures and civilizations in higher organisms like humans. There is no line you can draw between on evolutionary state and another, it's a gradient.

It's also wrong to blame the current problems of society on agriculture or the market when other things exist that can be explanatory. I have chosen the institution of the state, monopolized coercive force, as one of the main problems that distorts modern life, but you might find something else compelling. I can't, and you can't, simply point to one factor though and decide that I "know" that is what is causing this or that problem of modern life.

 

[Queequeg]

I wouldn't say you "can't," just that most if not all attempts to do so as yet abuse math with silly premises. Nassim Taleb writes extensively about this, as someone who studied this math and models he has complete disdain for them. He is not fully Austrian but a fellow traveler as an Austrian leaning classical economist. One of the biggest problems is that, since value is subjective, you cannot quantify it. You can't say that person A prefers a hamburger to $5 at 1.2 utils. All you can say is that, if he buys the burger, he prefers it over the $5. Economists have to quantify a lot of things for strictly speaking don't making logical sense to quantify, I'm sure you're familiar with GIGO.

It's not unlike modern biomedical research where the faulty premises of how receptor biology works causes the results to be essentially flawed before they even start. No matter how sophisticated the assays and techniques are, and they are quite sophisticated in some situations, if you start with a faulty premise you cannot get good results.

Why is geometry, for example, not interested in measuring every square to see if the sides are indeed at right angles? Or measuring every circle to make sure the circumference is pie*R^2? Some parts of the natural world can be deduced as true from simple axioms, like geometry, and cannot be refuted by observation. If you saw a circle that didn't have the ratio of circumference to radius, you wouldn't say that geometry was wrong, you would say that isn't a circle. It's a tautology, admittedly, but in this case a true one.

So like in geometry, when price goes down the demand for something goes up. Now, if a naive student "measured" the demand for a product and saw that in this month the price went down, but sales were lower than last month, he might say "look I refuted that law." That would be a mistake, because he isn't taking into account other variables and cannot observe the counter-factual situation. If people had less money to spend that month, they might consume the item less, but they will still buy more of it that month than they otherwise would if the price was higher. The economy, and the world in general, is chock full of very complicated variables like that, which makes modeling essentially impossible as compared to deduction from axiom. That's related to the reason why biomedical research has to perform statistical tests to estimate significance, that procedure is an implicit admission that there are variables they do not and cannot account for.

So even though today's mathematical economists continues to increase in sophistication, as does today's biomedical assays, they can't get away from false premises. You can't outrun them with complicated post-data tools, GIGO.

Once again I don’t find your argument by analogy very convincing. Geometry for the most part is not an empirical science. It is part of the field of mathematics and is therefore very different than economics.

Value is not subjective and is not that difficult to determine. Demands curves and their elasticity can be calculated quite accurately through quantitative analysis and experimentation.

I am also not sure why you are denigrating the value of experimental evidence in biology. Just because we don’t understand how everything works doesn’t negate the usefulness of experimentation. The same is true in the field of economics.

You are basically letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. All of the sciences have their limitations but the predictive power of economic modeling is all the proof that is needed to show the usefulness of quantitative analysis. Without econometrics and empirical testing, Austrian Economics sets the field back 200 years. A theory without evidence is called speculation.

 

[x-ray peat]

You make it sound as if we are in control of evolutionary outcomes or byproducts. Do you also believe evolution is inevitably progressive? One need only point to the massive ecocide our species has wrought onto this planet to refute that. When I state that the human genome is meant for a more primitivist world, I'm making a crude point that we have outstripped our utility to this planet. Our enormous modern brains have created a situation whereby we have to constantly quell an unconscious death anxiety. This has caused massive extinction of other species and will likely mean the end of ours as well. Before "civilization" we were much more in tune with nature and by extension, the universe. Regardless of where we evolve to from here, there is no doubting the destruction we have caused.

Of course, no one knows where we will end up. But a drastic change is likely required. I'm curious as to what you envision the possible futures might be.

There is no massive ecocide facing the planet. Species go extinct all the time. That is evolution at work. Human are part of nature and it is not logical to think that our achievements are anything but natural. They have not caused the destruction of the earth but rather served to help create a better quality of life for humans while leaving room for other species. Of course we can do better at this and are getting better at it by the day. The global warming bugaboo is a actually a scam so please don't argue that the end of the world is near without doing some research into alternative points of view on this.

Now I will admit that we are being slowly culled to reduce the population but that is a choice made by our owners and not some inevitable consequence of human society as a whole. See the thread on the dramatic drop in fertility rates as an example. I would however argue that this planet has the capacity to sustain a much higher population. Over-population is a 200 year old lie that never seems to go away no matter how many times it is proven wrong.

 

[x-ray peat]

I think we'll see agriculture 2.0. Under agriculture, society became radically unequal. When you look at Y haplogroup trends; diversities were much lower after agriculture happened, and this holds true all over the world. In other words, the moneyed men monopolized all the women (and likely everything else).

If you don't own the infrastructure in the first place (land, or military, or internet companies), you become a slave.

This won't happen suddenly; otherwise it would be stoppable, 80% of the population isn't going to put up with being displaced. It is already happening, and gradually. We're witnessing the bottom 10% or so of society becoming obsolete--it'll just keep happening that way until it reaches an equilibrium or the rate of obsolescence decelerates.

In addition, I think we're going to see the continuing evolution of a "modern" type. I've said before that independent thinkers tend to be long headed, and intelligent/uncreative tend to be wide headed. This roughly corresponds to historical achievements across the globe, there's also been a consistent trend of "brachycephalization" in the last few thousand years, and very ancient skulls are sometimes dolichocephalic to the point where they don't even look human.

Independent thinking has exponentially less value the further civ goes on. IT is harder to put into practice in a complex techno society, IT is cheaper because there are simply more bodies alive, IT is cheaper again because communication between bodies is seamless (internet), and there are simply fewer actual ideas since many have been exhausted in a civilization with a long track record.

Instead, value comes from mostly brute mental work and persistence. Enter IQ and increased brain matter (brachycephaly). Independent thinking will be a privilege of those who have been able to afford it for many hundreds of years. Long heads and nobles are acutely linked even in the past.

Sounds like a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome. What is happening is not inevitable or by chance but is actually the culmination of a long lived plan by the elites and can be traced back to Plato's Republic. It is called The Great Work to be precise. You should read Brave New World or 1984 again if you think that independent thinking by the masses is such a terrible thing. It is exactly what makes us human and has allowed us to achieve so much. Degrading the value of the individual and raising the importance of the collective is exactly how our owners want us to think. It's inevitable outcome is a world of stagnation and conformity. Of course the upside is that we will be far easier to control.

 

[lvysaur]

What is happening is not inevitable or by chance but is actually the culmination of a long lived plan by the elites

Then why has it been happening steadily in one direction for over 10 millennia?

As a society's power increases, inequality must grow. We just happen to live in a time where the absolute wealth is high enough that the inequality doesn't translate to a huge gulf in living standards, but inequality is still higher today than 1000 years ago.

 

[x-ray peat]

Then why has it been happening steadily in one direction for over 10 millennia?

As a society's power increases, inequality must grow. We just happen to live in a time where the absolute wealth is high enough that the inequality doesn't translate to a huge gulf in living standards, but inequality is still higher today than 1000 years ago.

Man's desire to subjugate and dominate their fellow man is as old as civilization and probably much older. The modern Western world however, is probably the most egalitarian society the world has ever known and especially more so than it was a 1000 years ago. In Europe for example, there was no middle class, only the Nobility and the Church representing the dominant class and the peasantry representing the subservient class. It was even worse elsewhere. It was only after the rise of the middle class merchants that the power of the ruling elite was somewhat restrained and representative democracies started to flourish.

However the Nobility and the Church didn't just give up after thousands of years of rule. We are now witnessing the purposeful destruction of the middle classes, so that we can move back into the golden age of Feudalism. The New World Order is just the Old World Order with Internet access. This of course is all done by design. They just don't want you to realize that there could be another future if we wanted.

 

[Fractality]

There is no massive ecocide facing the planet. Species go extinct all the time. That is evolution at work. Human are part of nature and it is not logical to think that our achievements are anything but natural. They have not caused the destruction of the earth but rather served to help create a better quality of life for humans while leaving room for other species. Of course we can do better at this and are getting better at it by the day. The global warming bugaboo is a actually a scam so please don't argue that the end of the world is near without doing some research into alternative points of view on this.

Now I will admit that we are being slowly culled to reduce the population but that is a choice made by our owners and not some inevitable consequence of human society as a whole. See the thread on the dramatic drop in fertility rates as an example. I would however argue that this planet has the capacity to sustain a much higher population. Over-population is a 200 year old lie that never seems to go away no matter how many times it is proven wrong.

“The Earth does not belong to us, we belong to the Earth. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”

How many other species are the human species worth?

“Extinction is natural. 99.9% of all species of plants and animals that have ever existed have gone extinct.”

Puts it into perspective, doesn’t it? We shouldn’t get upset about a few million extinctions today. It’s all part of the natural process of life on Earth.

By the same reasoning, we shouldn’t care about people dying young. Most people who have ever lived are already dead, and all of us will die eventually. It follows that extinction of the human race shouldn’t raise an eyebrow, either.

However, if it’s true that species alive today represent only 0.1% of Earth’s entire biological history, their extinctions are all the more tragic. After evolving at the expense of kabillions of other species, and passing genetic coding on through billions of years, any species alive today, including our own, deserves profound respect and reverence.

In a sense, all living things are at the peak of evolution. Sacrificing the very existence of any life form for something as superfluous and transitory as money is an outrageous crime against Nature.

Today’s extinction rate is estimated to be between a hundred and one thousand times the average for the eons, and virtually every species’ demise stems from the activities of one species.

 

[REOSIRENS]

Sounds like The Economist has a veiled globalist agenda. What a surprise...

The Economist magazine is so bias these days

 

[x-ray peat]

How many other species are the human species worth?
“Extinction is natural. 99.9% of all species of plants and animals that have ever existed have gone extinct.”
Puts it into perspective, doesn’t it? We shouldn’t get upset about a few million extinctions today. It’s all part of the natural process of life on Earth.

By the same reasoning, we shouldn’t care about people dying young. Most people who have ever lived are already dead, and all of us will die eventually. It follows that extinction of the human race shouldn’t raise an eyebrow, either.

However, if it’s true that species alive today represent only 0.1% of Earth’s entire biological history, their extinctions are all the more tragic. After evolving at the expense of kabillions of other species, and passing genetic coding on through billions of years, any species alive today, including our own, deserves profound respect and reverence.

In a sense, all living things are at the peak of evolution. Sacrificing the very existence of any life form for something as superfluous and transitory as money is an outrageous crime against Nature.

Today’s extinction rate is estimated to be between a hundred and one thousand times the average for the eons, and virtually every species’ demise stems from the activities of one species.

The 99.9% number is surprising until you realize that is how evolution is supposed to work; in other words, out with the old and in with the new. If those animals didn’t go extinct then the current millions of species alive today wouldn’t be here. To put it all in a different perspective, have a look at the chart below. We have far more species alive today than at any time in the past. Moreover, it looks to me that the 99.9% number is just one more "scientific" exaggeration.

wikipedia

Here is a paper that explains what is really going on with extinction rates.
http://www.iaees.org/publications/j...ss-exaggerated-versus-realistic-estimates.pdf

For the past 50 years, the public has been made to feel guilty about the tragedy of human-caused biodiversity loss due to the extinction of hundreds or thousands of species every year. Numerous articles and books from the scientific and popular press and publicity on the internet have contributed to a propaganda wave about our grievous loss and the beginning of a sixth mass extinction. However, within the past few years, questions have arisen about the validity of the data which led to the doom scenario. Here I show that, for the past 500 years, terrestrial animals (insects and vertebrates) have been losing less than two species per year due to human causes. The majority of the extinctions have occurred on oceanic islands with little effect on continental ecology. In the marine environment, losses have also been very low. At the same time, speciation has continued to occur and biodiversity gain by this means may have equaled or even surpassed the losses. While species loss is not, so far, a global conservation problem, ongoing population declines within thousands of species that are at risk on land and in the sea constitute an extinction debt that will be paid unless those species can be rescued.

I am all in favor of doing what we can to support wildlife and diversity and I agree that we have not been doing as good a job as we could, but the fear of human caused mass extinction is greatly overblown. It is very similar to global warming fear mongering and actually has many of the same people, the UN, behind the scenes pushing it for reasons entirely different than saving the environment.

Not surprisingly most of the scientists who are predicting another mass extinction blame global warming and increased CO2. Of course most of us here realize that CO2 is actually life giving and the fear of increased CO2 is not warranted.

 

[Kyle M]

Value is not subjective and is not that difficult to determine. Demands curves and their elasticity can be calculated quite accurately through quantitative analysis and experimentation.

Analysis and experimentation of what? Is a bottle of water worth the same to you as to someone else? Is it worth the same to you in your house as it is in the desert when you are dying of thirst? If value is not subjective, and everyone values everything to the same level, why would anyone ever trade?