Friday, August 19, 2011

Economics and my understanding

To get to the question let us review a few notions. Some of these ideas come from The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers by Robert L. Heilbroner. We work for money. Our money buys things. Hence by the transitive property we work for things. Most of these things are unnecessary but a portion of them are. The necessary portion sates our problems i.e. our problems of food, shelter and clothing. In the past, society operated to quell our needs either via tradition, one worked like one's father, or by force (slavery).  This resulted in the malthusian trap. Capitalism, a new way to ensure our problems are met vs tradition and force, ensures we work by promising to give us things which we collectively work at.  The definition is argued but 3 things often agreed upon are  1)Organization of labour especially division of labour. 2)capital investment for higher production 3)protection of private contracts and private property by the relationship between the state and market. A clear faith based system as one knows that if the farmers all quit tomorrow, the food supply would be depleted quickly yet almost nobody stores a year supply of food in their shelter. We have become so efficient that we can provide to those who have no hand in making any thing. The problem, according to Keynes I think, is that it is a feedback system. With everyone producing, prosperity starts. People buy profit products (overpriced in the sense making them costs less than selling them). With everyone producing, more overpriced products can be bought. If one is good, many times is better. Greed and competition hurl the profit products down. Some profit products even become cheap, it costs more to make than to sell,and this cannot last. Some people must be told to stop producing, this in turn slows their consumption. This appears to induce a negative feedback. People consuming less, which leads to more unemployed workers=> lessening things again. The masses hoard money hence things are not disposed of as quickly hence we get a glut of certain things. This, too, leads to worker unemployment which again lead to lesser things in the end. What stops this cancerous cycle? Keynes thought possibly nothing. He then recommended that it was up to govt's to get us out of this deleterious cycle. The govt's must spend, even if its burying bottles of money for a group of people to dig up. This will stop the unvirtuous cycle and start another prosperous one. Joseph Schumpeter said what got us out of these vicious cycles was creative destruction. No better recent example is the Apple iPhone vs the Blackberry. New innovative products that before the consumer didn't have a choice to purchase like air conditioners, TV's, microwave ovens, PC's, cellphones etc. All products most common people own that JD Rockefeller (an extremely wealthy man of his time) didn't. Friedman, an empirical fellow, liked observational historical data. It showed that crunching the money supply caused recessions.

2 comments:

  1. The Malthusian trap is a theory originally proposed by economist Thomas Robert Malthus in the late 18th century. Malthus suggested that improvements in technology would inevitably lead to an increase in population that would put increasing strain on resources. This would lead to no change in quality of life, or a decrease in quality of life, as a result of those technological developments. He believed it was not possible to make social progress that would improve living standards and incomes, as any steps in that direction would just create more people and more social pressures.

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  2. "alacarteedu about 2 hours ago Votecurrently 0 votes0 Votes
    More First, and foremost, capitalism is an economic structure of free markets and profit motive (for both firms and individuals) with rule of law and property rights components but the course syllabus fails to mention these essential elements and the professors struggle in their video description. What makes capitalism so great is the balance between firms freely seeking maximum profit while individuals simultaneously do the same (by freely seeking higher income, by freely seeking lower prices for goods and services, etc). This 'price discovery' dynamic is a powerful and perpetual force that is the direct result of this healthy, unfettered battle between suppliers and demanders. It is the notion that you, for example, can freely negotiate with your neighbor to wash his car. You and your neighbor determine a fair price, your neighbor gets a clean car (presumably) and you earn fair pay (presumably). Both of you are better off without the need for a third party negotiator (like a government or labor union or even a mother or father) because a third party negotiator has little or no 'skin in the game'. If, of course, either your neighbor is unhappy (because his car was not cleaned to his satisfaction) or you are unhappy (because the task took far longer than you anticipated) then you have both taken the first of many steps in the 'price discovery' process. As other neighbors compete for car washing opportunities and still other neighbors seek to have their cars washed, the free market 'price discovery' process takes fuller shape and the market, eventually, becomes 'perfect' (an economic term where competition is robust and prices are stable, not perfect in the sense that everyone wins). If this basic (and essential) understanding of capitalism is not presented then students will never appreciate the tremendous benefits of capitalism like the freedom to innovate and the exponential increase in life expectancy and the dramatic increase in the quality of life that are hallmarks of capitalism. Only when students (and professors) fully understand and appreciate basic elements and benefits of capitalism will a history of capitalism offer genuine value. Simply crafting a syllabus that focuses heavily on negative aspects of American history through a foggy economic lens and an even foggier understanding of capitalism is a disservice to the community. No course on capitalism should ever start without a clear and simple definition of capitalism. There is really very little debate on the matter: Capitalism is the economic structure of profit motive in free markets under the rule of law and with property rights. And if you think a profit motive is evil, ask yourself if you were evil when you sought a raise at work or you 'greedily' sought to keep more of your money by selecting a sale item at the grocery store or you sought to sell your home for the maximum possible price. Do not be hypocritical and suggest profit limits on others but not for yourself. A truly free capitalist market will automatically put profit limits on both firms and individuals without third party intervention because you cannot obtain a ridiculously large sum of money simply to wash a car and your neighbor cannot get a clean car for a ridiculously small sum of money without eventual disruption of these price 'imbalances' by competitors. That's capitalism! "

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