Backatcha Bandit said:
Being only able to see 'economic' indicators as the sole measure of the 'value' of anything is akin to driving one's car using the speedometer as the only guide to where you're going.
mears said:
And how has the Iranian economy performed since 1979?
We're all on a bus. Mears is driving.
WORLD: Yo! Driver!! Where did you say we were going?
MEARS: <staring at speedo through a bog-roll tube> Shut up! I'm driving.
WORLD: But we're headed straight for that cliff!
MEARS: <glances in rear view mirror> What cliff?
WORLD: That one! The one with a hard granite bottom 12 billion foot drop with spikey bits all the way down!
MEARS: But look how fast we're going... and our rate of acceleration is accelerating! Isn't that great?
WORLD: Aaaaarrrggghhhhiiiieee
eeeeeeeee....!
Sorry.
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mears said:
What "indicators" are important, which indicarors do you look at?
Which "values" should I be aware of?
The one that springs most readily to mind is the 'value' ascribed to sustainability.
Economics does not account for the sustainability of an enterprise, as sustainability is the antithesis of 'growth'.
Sustainability doesn't feature on the balance sheets because it's such a complex 'indicator' that it's almost impossible to place a finite 'economic' value upon. You must surely agree - unless willing to suggest the Earth is not spherical, hence finite - that the 'value' of sustainablity should feature somewhere as an operator in our system for distributing resources.
By way of indication of some other 'values' that you can't put a dollar sign on (and hence you, mears, will be most likely unable to see) I'll point you towards another old bloke you've probably never heard of - Fritz Schumacher, whos point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold:
Shumacher said:
To give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure.
The sort of 'economics' he's talking about there are what he calls 'Buddhist'.
Prior to that paragraph he suggests that:
Economists themselves, like most specialists, normally suffer from a kind of metaphysical blindness, assuming that theirs is a science of absolute and invariable truths, without any presuppositions. Some go as far as to claim that economic laws are as free from "metaphysics" or "values" as the law of gravitation. We need not, however, get involved in arguments of methodology. Instead, let us take some fundamentals and see what they look like when viewed by a modern economist and a Buddhist economist.
It's an interesting read if you're having trouble working out the fundamental differences between the way you think and the way other people might think about the way they conduct themselves and the values that inform such conduct.
http://www.schumachersociety.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
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I'm not really interested in 'imparting humanity' on you, TBH, mears.
I know that you're interested in profiting for yourself, so I'm more interested in your ability to do simple arithmetic.
Bank-created credit is based on the nation's capacity to produce and consume in the sense that whilst it is not issued nor backed by the government, the government - being the largest debtor - guarantees a certain return in debt service payments from its revenue. An increasing part of local and national government taxation today is raised for the purpose of servicing the interest payments on local and national govemment debt. So whether you personaily borrow or not, you pay the interest on that fictitious rnoney. Likewise, when you take a bank loan, you pay at least twice: you give a guarantee of real wealth in case of default, and you pay a penalty (as interest) for accepting money as a loan which costs the lender nothing and did not exist until it was created as a loan to you. Heads you lose, tails you lose again...
http://pages.britishlibrary.net/smb/printusury.htm
