I think that Sarah Frias-Torres is both right and wrong.
She's right in that the value of money (and stocks, mortgages,
seashells or any other medium of exchange) depends on belief. If I go
to the store and buy 20 bucks worth of groceries, the store clerk
believes that the twenty I give her will translate into 20 bucks worth
of some other commodity - her groceries, a pair of jeans, whatever.
The "illusory" or faith based nature of these instruments is made
evident by bubbles - A year's salary for a tulip bulb anyone?
Now, Sarah may say that "it's all illusory", but in the same post she
acknowledges the real consequences of failure in these beliefs. The
500,000 new unemployed suffer real consequences of the failure of
growth when orders fail to come in, factories are forced to operate at
a low percentage of their capacity, and when people withdraw
"illusory" money from the economy by failing to spend it.
Also, we did not "make up" the economy; our social systems and ways of
thinking co-evolved with it.
Personally, I am beginning to think that we have to treat the economy
the same way we treat food webs, as an interconnected of complex
relationships connected by exchanges of value as well as energy. The
economic web may never be fully understood, even (especially?) by
professional economists, maybe because we are embedded in it.
"And watching from outside I wish,
that I could wash my hands of this,
but we are locked together,
In this bitter-sweet embrace.."
(from 'I Love the World', New Model Army)
All the Best (Happy Christmas eh :) )
Andy Park
Quoting Sarah Frias-Torres <[email protected]>:
Brian and all,People talk about economy as if it was a living
entity. "the economy is fragile"... " we must revive the economy",
etc. It is all a mirage.Economy, economics, economic growth, is
artificial. It is a mirage. It is something we made up. It is not
real. Yet, we are more respectful of the economy than we are of the
planet we live on.The current "world crisis" is also a mirage. It is
a crisis generated by greedy banks and investors, those that traded
with "futures" and money that did not exist, and at the end, it has
impacted the pockets of the many hard-working people, which will
have to pay the mistakes of a few, with real money.The true crisis,
the ones I'm really scared about, are yet to come. When drinking
water becomes scarce, when basic crops (wheat, rice, etc) become
scarce due to a significant reduction of pollinating honey-bees,
major disease on the now almost clonal crops, or both; when ocean
acidification (due to global climate change) begins to impact the
marine food web, and I could go on and on.These are the true crisis.
The systematic shut-down of our life-support system.it is a
possible future, unless we stop thinking of ourselves as the center
of the universe, and start looking beyond our navels into the wide
world. The day we understand it is not "us" and "the environment".
That "we" are an insignificant part of the environment. That day,
we will learn to live sustainably.I hope the day arrives, but for
now, I doubt it will.Sarah Sarah Frias-Torres, Ph.D.
Marine Conservation Biologist
Ocean Research & Conservation Association
1420 Seaway Drive, 2nd Floor
Fort Pierce, Florida 34949 USA
www.oceanrecon.org
