Wednesday, January 13, 2010

The "Burdens of Proof" of Ecological Economics

Once again S blows my mind by lending me these amazing textbooks on the condition that I read them. So, I read them. Anyway, today I got a book on Ecological Economics. That's like manna from academic heaven to me. Well, there is this essay in there by a professor out at UCSB (citation below), and I think it's very interesting; it essentially sets out a list of ecological assumptions that need to be proved. What's so cool about it is that he really "hit the nail on the head" with these assumptions: he mentions so many economical principles that I take for granted. Without further ado, here they are:

The "golden rule" (akin to the rule of entropy according to this essay): "There are no free lunches"

Subsequent rules:
1. The economical world available to the current human population is limited to earth.
2. The first law: We can never do merely one thing
3. The second law: There's no one to throw away to
4. The third law: Population x per capita impact = total human impact on environment
5. Scale effects, though sometimes compensable, are inescapeable
6. Cultural carrying capacity is inversely related to standards of living
7. The maximum is not the optimum
8. "The greatest good for the greatest numbers is nonsense"--> I love how he describes this. So I will quote it: "The theory of partial differential equations tells us that we cannot maximize for more than one variable at a time. Since the time honored utilitarian ideal is mathematical nonsense, it must be practical nonsense, also... we must decide whether we want to maximize the total number of human beings on earth, or to maximize their average-- not their total-- well being."
9. Attempts to create perfectly reliable machine human couplings are inescapeably self-defeating.
10. Thou shall not transgress thy carrying capacity.
11. Every shortage of supply is equally a longage of demand.

I really think that's a great, concise way to sum up a lot of economic assumptions: Credit to the master below:

Hardin, Garrett. 1991. Paramount Divisions in Ecological Economics. Ecological Economics. Colombia University Press. pp. 48-57.
Posted by Anonymous at 4:17 PM

2 comments:

  1. Pericles v. 2.01/14/2010 10:01 AM

    TANSTAAFL! ("There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!")

    Re: #8. Why is maximizing the average is ok, but not the total? Seems like that would be the same constrained optimization problem, except one is a per-person value and the other isn't.

    Re: #9. Does he just mean this is the sense that diminishing returns on reliability kicks it at some point?

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  2. Anonymous1/14/2010 10:21 AM

    #8. I think what he means is we either maximize the number of humans or we maximize the quality of human life for a given (or less than carrying capacity) number of humans. So I guess if quality of life x person = person value and sigma person value = quality of human life then we can either maximize the number of persons to the point where quality of life can be reduced and we will still achieve a decent value for quality of human life, or we can maximize quality of human life for a reduced number of persons?... that is how I took it, at least.

    9. I think this has to do with the Yerkes Dodson law of arousal. That is, if a human and a machine are working together, the amount of perfection in the machine decreases the amount of perfection needed by the human. As a result, humans are less "aroused" by the work and perform less effectively. So a machine human coupling ultimately makes the human aspect of the coupling less capable, resulting in a less effective overall coupling.

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