What Are You Optimistic About?

[latefordinner]

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What you propose in #4, directly begets #5

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I'm not really proposing anything. I simply think it is inevitable. As a species we have far far overshot the viable carrying capacity of our habitat due to what has been virtually-free energy. As energy use declines, which I believe it must, so too will complexity.

I don't think it's a good thing, or a desirable thing - I simply think it is a given. However, I'm optimistic about what will arise out of that.

[Nielsio]

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Nevertheless, I would expect vulgar libertarians here to defend them, since the tandem carrot/stick WB/IMF approach over the past 20 years has been the primary reason for a lot of privitization and deregulation in developing countries.

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No-no. See above article.

[ConstantineX]

You want us to become poor, in other words. We will never become "enlightened" barbarians living in hovels. The Luddites of the 1800s too thought they were living in an age of unlimited consumption - "surely we have everything we need!"

I do agree with you that human consumption is insatiable. In the very long run, humans will transform the Earth, worlds, suns. If not us, *something*. I think we are going to "order" the universe - transform it using energy to a more ordered state, which we determine (if we are really determining [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]) My best science analogy is dropping a crystal into a supersaturated solution. That's what we're destined to do, in the VERY long run.

[latefordinner]

#1) Neither of those articles have anything to do with microfinance

#2) Both of them are mostly rhetorical, rather than empirical analyses of where development aid has failed vs where it has helped (if you want an actual good critique of development aid from a market perspective and how development needs to embrace market-based methods of both incentives and accountability try http://www.amazon.com/White-Mans-Bur.../dp/1594200378--come on what ACer could disagree with chapter titles like "The Rich Have Markets, the Poor Have Bureaucrats."

(if you want an even more damning and cynical view about the poosibility of either any market-based mechanisms or redistribution-based mechanisms as being viable development tools, try This one

#3) Whether you want to defend any form of subsidies or global wealth redistribution at all, it is an undeniable fact that through IMF blackmailing many developing countries have been forced to open their markets - I think this has been tragic, but certainly those of you that continually point to your maps of more and less economically free countries have the IMF to thank for some changes to "more economically free" over the past 20-30 years even though, in my opinion "more economically free" in the overaching dominant framework of corporate capitalism means "more plutocratic"

[ConstantineX]

I actually agree with latefordinner. Willy-nilly privatization via the IMF's blackmailing is not the best way to do things - it encourages cannibalism simply because their internal markets aren't the best place to spend their capital (i.e Mugabe is busily investing in Swiss banks while his people are starving). This has led to the resurgence of a field called developmental economics which is more concerned with the efficacy of certain programs than any ideological basis. I agree with this - the shocks from immediately opening markets can sometimes be too great for people to bear, as shown by Russia and many third world countries. I feel ACers are sometimes too concerned with the end results than the process by which they get there.

[ConstantineX]

AS surely could exist with an AC society. With enough members, however, all would quickly abandon it providing it wasn't coerced. It does not provide the proper incentives for meaningful work to be created. In the natural experiment "Survivor" didn't we see this? Didn't the tribes reward privledges preferentially to who the better hunter or gatherer was? I feel like this is so fundamental.

[latefordinner]

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You want us to become poor, in other words.

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No, what I want is for us to return to a philosophy of life that recognizes we are part of a system, rather than outside of it - I believe we can still do tremendous things within that space of recognition, but yes I believe that in 2000 years, if humans are still on earth, society will look much closer to what it looked like for 99% of our time on earth than for the past 1%

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The Luddites of the 1800s too thought they were living in an age of unlimited consumption

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#1) I would argue that the Luddites recognized (correctly I might add) that the Industrial Revolution was not going to benefit humanity, as neoclassical economists claim, but the further enrichment and entrenchment of the elite ruling class.

#2) Evidentally the ruling class realized it was a war, not against technology, but against them as well. ("Any person who breaks or destroys machinery in any mill used in the preparing or spinning of wool or cotton or other material for the use of the stocking or lace manufacture, or being lawfully convicted ....shall suffer death.") View similar parallels to the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act and the Green Scare of today.

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I do agree with you that human consumption is insatiable.

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no only in so far as the myth of "progress" remains intact. What gives me the most hope asbout the next 100 years is that this myth will be shattered, grim as that shattering will be.

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transform it using energy to a more ordered state

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thermodynamics FTW

[ConstantineX]

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I'm very optimistic about China, and to a lesser extent most of the Pacific rim. I do not think the Chinese will easily forget the bounties of globalization and free trade, having risen so fast from so low.

I'm also optimistic about robotics and genetics. I really think realistic robots will be able to change elderly life fundemntally in about 10-20 years. Genetics will allow us to more accurately ponder and identify what truly makes us inequal. It will lead to medicines that will usher an age of unprecedented prosperity. Look at 1900 till 2000 - can you imagine another 100 years? Secretely I speculate that in a couple of decades we shall become so individually wealthy these debates will have become academic.

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[ConstantineX]

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#1) I would argue that the Luddites recognized (correctly I might add) that the Industrial Revolution was not going to benefit humanity, as neoclassical economists claim, but the further enrichment and entrenchment of the elite ruling class.


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This is beyond me. By what (GOOD) metrics can you claim this?

I want to respond to this post at length later when I have time, because I've recently come across quite a few surveys that suggest most of your ideas are nonsense. It's quite telling that most of the new leftist rhetoric is about "inequality", as if it that was what matters.

[latefordinner]

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This has led to the resurgence of a field called developmental economics which is more concerned with the efficacy of certain programs than any ideological basis.

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Well there's still plenty of ideological debates within development economics - even more so at times because some heterodox economic theories are taken more seriously there than in other branches of economics -- but I agree that there is a lot of work being done in terms of experimental designs that look at small-scale interventions and says look, does this work, or doesn't it - with some surprising results that have reverberations at both ends of the political spectrum.

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I agree with this - the shocks from immediately opening markets can sometimes be too great for people to bear, as shown by Russia and many third world countries.

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Especially when the developed countries continue to heavily subsidize certain industries. For example, telling a developing country that they have to accept US agricultural products and slash any forms of regulation basically drives people into slave-labor type conditions in export-processing zones to provide cheap labor for US multinationals and also usually results in the powerful elite getting extraordinarily wealthy very quickly. You can complain all you want about the amount of rent-seeking and corruption that is part of international aid - and it IS a large part, bribes here, bribes there, unaccounted for millions over there - but it's nothing compared the wholesale theft of capital that has occurred in places like Russia that basically converted overnight.