Libertarian Party blog: Congression Budget Office reports the current economic slump will end sometime around mid-2009

1. paulie cannoli Post author | February 10, 2009

   From wikipedia on Taoism:

   Sexuality

   See also: Taoist sexual practices

   From a Western perspective, the Taoist view of sexuality is considerably more at ease. The body is not viewed as a dangerous source of evil temptation, but rather as a positive asset. Taoism rejects Western mind-body dualism; mind and body are not set in contrast or opposition with each other. Sex is treated as a vital component to romantic love, however Taoism emphasizes the need for self-control and moderation. Complete abstinence is oftentimes treated as equally dangerous as excessive sexual indulgence. The sexual vitality of men is portrayed as limited, while the sexual energy of women is viewed as boundless.
2. paulie cannoli Post author | February 10, 2009

   Me, @

   https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2009/02/party-for-socialism-and-liberation-a-statement-from-leonard-peltier/comment-page-1/#comment-38883

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   Earlier, I said

   open source tends to be better at finding and correcting problems than a centralized alternative.

   The same, I think, is true of the economy, and is also how ?nature?/the environment works.

   To expand on this in a slightly different direction, this is also why I think anarchism can work.

   There is a tendency towards spontaneous order in society, and in nature. It works best when it is not centrally planned and organized.

   For instance, see I, Pencil.

   I think Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism, was as far as I know the first writer to address these subjects.
   He may have also been the first libertarian (at least in writings that have survived and been translated into the world’s most commonly used languages).

   More recently, some of the insights of Taoism have been rediscovered and given new life by recent developments in science, for example The Tao of Physics (full title: The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism) , a 1975 book by physicist Fritjof Capra.

   Also of interest in exploring this dynamic balance interplay of entropy and extropy in the creation of spontaneous order, “G?del, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (commonly GEB) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Douglas Hofstadter, described by the author as “a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll”.”
3. paulie cannoli Post author | February 10, 2009

   Steve Newton at Delaware Libertarian:

   http://delawarelibertarian.blogspot.com/2009/02/metaphor-and-public-policy-danger-of.html

   Warning, warning, danger, danger: severe geek alert.

   First, let’s take a short piece from one of my favorite philosophers that I love to read (often if only to disagree with his conclusions while admiring his writing), Daniel Dennett.

   This is an excerpt from Consciousness Explained:

   My explanation of consciousness is far from complete. One might even say that it was just a beginning, but it is a beginning, because it breaks the spell of the enchanted circle of ideas that made explaining consciousness seem impossible. I haven’t replaced a metaphorical theory, the Cartesian Theater, with a nonmetaphorical (“literal, scientific”) theory. All I have done, really, is to replace one family of metaphors and images with another, trading in the Theater, the Witness, the Central Meaner, the Figment, for Software, Virtual Machines, Multiple Drafts, a Pandemonium of Homunculi. It’s just a war of metaphors, you say — but metaphors are not “just” metaphors; metaphors are the tools of thought. No one can think about consciousness without them, so it is important to equip yourself with the best set of tools available. Look what we have built with our tools. Could you have imagined it without them?

   This is a critical point (about metaphors, not consciousness) that bears repeating: metaphors are tools of thought.

   They set the patterns with which we conceptualize things, especially public policy issues.

   Think about it this way: why do we have, in modern American political history, so many wars that are not wars?

   War on Poverty. War on Drugs. War on Terror.

   War is the most powerful public policy metaphor the government can use. It conjures specific mental images, emotional responses, and is particularly useful at mobilizing a sense of urgency, as well as “us versus them” thinking.

   It is therefore also one of the most dangerous metaphors the government can use, because questioning the premises or conduct of a “war” is–at least implicitly–equated with a lack of patriotism or social solidarity. In other words, war as a metaphor not only mobilizes for the cause, but creates convenient enemies by demonizing policy opponents.

   The Republican Party is the past master of this practice, but the Democrats have learned well at their feet.

   All of this came to me as I was reading this post by Robert Reich. It will come as no surprise that I do not agree with most of Reich’s economic views, but that’s not the point of this post. The point is that Reich uses a very common metaphor in his article: priming the pump. [Actually, Reich uses the configuration pump-priming because of the grammatical requirements of the sentence.]

   Priming the pump is a metaphor that pro-stimulus economists use to describe the process of injecting money into the economy to jump-start spending, which will then generate more jobs and production and …. so on ….

   It is a common metaphor, and I want to make it clear that Reich’s part in all this is simply that he used the phrase in a post I read just at the moment I was thinking about metaphors.

   See, the pump-priming metaphor is one that is intended to get people thinking of the economy as a machine, with predictable responses to specific kinds of stimuli [like introducing fluid into a pump mechanism to create the proper mechanical conditions for operation]….

   The metaphor implies several important things:

   That the economy functions like a machine…

   That those functions are well understood and can be manipulated or repaired with some certainty because cause-and-effect holds true…

   That economists understand and model the economy effectively on a regular basis….

   In point of fact, the economy is nowhere near being the simple mechanical system that the metaphor suggests.

   The economy is a complex, non-linear system [it may even be a complex adaptive system]:

   All good things come to an end and supremacy of the linear paradigm, characterised by utter certainty and predictability, was no exception. Einstein (1879-1955), Bohr (1885-1962), Schrödinger (1887-1961), Heisenberg (1901-1976) and Dirac (1902-1984) played a decisive role in pushing conventional wisdom within the natural sciences beyond the Newtonian limits that enveloped it centuries before. Later scholars working in different disciplines within the natural and life sciences demonstrated that uncertainty is an integral part of some phenomena; now described as being nonlinear.

   In a reversal of the earlier trends at the beginning of the modern scientific era, discoveries in these sciences helped to initiate a process of change that is gradually introducing a measure of realism to expectations in the context of prediction and control of socio-economic events.

   Nonlinear systems and processes do not present the familiar bell-shaped distribution associated with linear systems, where change is gradual and orderly and where measurements crowd together near an average value. On the contrary, Mandelbrot, and Gleick amongst others, discovered that in nonlinear systems change is more random and less predictable, and it involves discontinuities; rapid changes as opposed to smooth ones, and persistence; low for instance does not necessarily follow high.

   Over time, a group of nonlinear entities attracted particular interest. These systems are variously described as being complex, because they have numerous internal elements, dynamic, because their global behaviour is governed by local interactions between the elements, and dissipative, because they have to exchange energy with other systems to maintain stable self-organised global patterns. In addition, when the stable patterns are capable of evolution the systems are also depicted as being adaptive.

   For the purpose of this website discussion of social, political and economic phenomena will focus exclusively on their behaviour as Complex Adaptive Systems.

   Linear systems are found at or near equilibrium. A ball bearing on the rim of a bowl is a classic example; it quickly settles at the bottom and that is that. Nonlinearity, by contrast, is exhibited by systems that are far from equilibrium

   Complex Adaptive Systems are able to assume stable global patterns although they exist in conditions that are far from equilibrium. This is a key feature that merits a few words here. The second law of thermodynamics states that when an organised system is left alone it drifts steadily into increasing levels of disorder. A deserted building, for instance, eventually turns into a pile of rubble. After a while even the rubble disappears without a trace. Ultimately, a system cut off from the outside world will fall into a state of randomised equilibrium in which little or nothing of interest ever happens. Basically, disorder is a more probable sate than order.

   Put another way, for a system to remain in an organised stable state, it has to exchange (dissipate) energy, or matter, with other systems all the while. That is the only option open to it to avoid succumbing to the destructive power of the second law of thermodynamics. Without the nourishing rays of energy from the Sun, for instance, Earth would drift into complete equilibrium, and therefore nothingness. Continuous supply of energy from the Sun keeps the planet in a highly active state far from equilibrium. The energy is absorbed, dissipated and used to drive numerous local interactions that in total produce the stable pattern that we perceive as life on Earth. It should be noted that local chaotic agitation is necessary to produce an overall stable pattern. In other words, organised complexity emerges from a mix of chaos and order.

   A lot of jargon, but the point is more succinctly put here:

   It is now possible to describe the traits that set Complex Adaptive Systems apart from other systems:

   They have large numbers of internal elements that are lightly but not sparsely connected. The elements interact locally according to simple rules to provide the energy needed to maintain stable global patterns, as opposed to rigid order or chaos.

   They have active internal elements that furnish sufficient local variety to enable the system to survive as it adapts to unforeseen circumstances. There are vast numbers of microstates inside the systems arising from numerous local interactions. There is, therefore, a high probability that at any time some of the microstates at least will find the prevailing conditions conducive to survival.

   Variations in prevailing conditions result in many minor adaptations to the overall pattern of the system and a few large mutations, but it is not possible to predict the outcome in advance.

   Predictability in Complex Adaptive Systems is limited to global patterns rather than the chaotic local details. Fundamentally, specific causes could not be linked to particular effects.

   Pay particular attention to the emphasized sections of those last two sentences.

   It is not possible to predict the outcome in advance.

   Fundamentally, specific causes could not be linked to particular effects.

   There is a growing body of rigorous academic literature that discusses the implications of applying the study of complex non-linear systems to social sciences, especially economics.

   This study is increasingly indicating that economic systems as large as that of the United States cannot be manipulated through the implicit reliance on cause-and-effect policy as Keynesian economics requires.

   Interestingly enough, most of the individuals studying this topic, when they are economists, are not Keynesians.

   Or maybe I should say, are no longer Keynesians.

   Point being: priming the pump suggests a much stronger assertion of the ability to control the economy by centrally generated inputs (command economy) than is warranted by the realities of our best understanding of how such systems function.

   We need new metaphors for the economy, but we won’t get them from people who believe slavishly in the ability of the State to achieve specific, predictable outcomes in a non-linear system.

   Because to create them would be to admit that they really weren’t that sure what they are doing….

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   Steve Gordon at Gordon Unleashed:

   http://gordonunleashed.com/blog/2009/02/09/economic-enhancement/

   As reason (via Stephen Littau) informs us, all economies have “performance issues.” Our national case of electile dysfunction has led to a stimulus package that Robert Stacy McCain says simply “won’t work.”

   If we are going to continue with the sexual analogies, here’s a thought: Obama certainly isn’t going to stimulate me with a trillion-pound lady who has pork grease dripping off her chin.

   If history can be used to predict the future, tomorrow’s Playboy Playmates will be even trimmer than today’s are. It’s my belief that people are more likely to pitch a political tent for a svelte fiscal policy than for an overweight and bloated one.

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   My comments:

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   1.

   If we are going to continue with the sexual analogies, here’s a thought: Obama certainly isn’t going to stimulate me with a trillion-pound lady who has pork grease dripping off her chin.

   …but thanks for the mental image.

   If history can be used to predict the future, tomorrow’s Playboy Playmates will be even trimmer than today’s are.

   Pretty soon, I won’t know whether I want to bang them or snort them off a mirror with a rolled up bill.

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   2.

   See here about “priming the pump”

   http://delawarelibertarian.blogspot.com/2009/02/metaphor-and-public-policy-danger-of.html

   Maybe you can work that into some quip about pecker pumps. Or maybe thin seriously on the topic of “implications of applying the study of complex non-linear systems to social sciences, especially economics” – and relate that to the differences between male and female sexual response, with the Keynesian pump-priming view serving as a caricature of male shortcomings, or something like that.

   There’s gotta be something there, and you can probably think of a good way to write it up.
4. paulie cannoli Post author | February 10, 2009

   The CBO must be dreaming. I think this slump is barely getting started, and will go a lot deeper.

   And I’m usually an optimist.

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