Beth, would you mind giving some examples that are more concrete and explain a bit how they work. I'm not as familiar with the biology as you are. When I say our economy is demand driven, that's not the same as saying that there are drivers that affect it. Supply is a driver. That's a completely different issue. By demand-driven I mean that many of the participants on our economy depend on a demand for their services to survive. The simple-minded example is that bees depend on the demand by plants for their services. They are paid for those services in nectar. Fish that clean the teeth of whales are another example. Symbiosis in general is mutual demand driven. I would not call facilitation, amensalism, or parasitism a demand-driven relationship, though. The victim (or non-benefiting participant) is (by definition) not benefiting from the services of the benefiting participant and cannot be said to be demanding those services in the sense that I want to use demand.
Also, I don't see how the removal of a keystone species relates to a demand-driven relationship. Certainly the remaining species reconfigure their relationships, but why does that imply that there is a demand relationship? * -- Russ* *** * ** On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 4:51 AM, <beth.ful...@csiro.au> wrote: > G'day, > > Sorry been in the field. > > > Right. It's not what I was getting at. I started to think about this > > because I was wondering how to explain the lack of demand in our > > economies these days and why that is so devastating. Do you know > > of examples like that in natural ecologies? > > > > Other differences, which we haven't started to talk about are > > that economies have money, liquidity issues, speculators, markets, > > etc. That all comes about because there is trading, which depends > > on demand. Does any of that happen in biological ecologies? The > > closest thing to trading that I can think of is symbiosis. It's not a > > bad example, but it's quite basic compared to the sorts of markets we > have. > > There are quite complex communities and "demand" driven maintenance of > diversity that result from indirect effects of interacts, facilitation, > symbosis, amensalism and parasitism. I still think the main distinction is > that you are presenting the economy as being directly driven while the main > ecological examples are more indirectly driven by a mix of drivers or hidden > (cellular metabolism for instance is a case where demand drives response and > supply to a large degree). > > Lack of certain forms of demand in a simple economy see some sectors > atrophy, the same happens when you remove a keystone predator in an > ecosystem and you get competitive exclusion. One component of the system > replaces another because the driving force that favoured a sector has > dwindled allowing the competing sector to rise (in the ecosystem case its a > shift in predation is the mechanism, in the economic case its a shift in a > market mechanism). > > Cheers > > Beth > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Group "Causality in Complex Systems". > To post to this group, send email to > causality_in_complex_syst...@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > causality_in_complex_systems+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com<causality_in_complex_systems%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com> > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/Causality_in_Complex_Systems?hl=en?hl=en >
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
