Revalue things - References and quotes Philosophy 2021 REFERENCES AND QUOTES COLONIALISM IN THE ANTROPOCENE: THE POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF THE MONEY-ENERGY-TECHNOLOGY COMPLEX “Building on Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen’s insight that economic processes enhancing utility simultaneously increase entropy, I have inferred that exchange values and productive potential must be inversely correlated, and that the accumulation of technological infrastructure therefore signifies the joint operation of thermodynamics and imperialism. The principles of thermodynamics clearly derive from nature, while the strategies of imperialism derive from society. However, mainstream economists are convinced that their accounts of growth and technological progress have no use for thermodynamics. In their worldview, nature is irrelevant for the constitution of society.” 10 “Neoclassical economic theory is an ideology originally developed in colonial Britain to justify and morally neutralize the exploitation of its extractive periphery. In its modern, neoliberal guise, it has championed ‘globalization’ as a modern euphemism for imperialism.” 12 “Monetary value is not an essence but a cultural veil obscuring material asymmetries by representing unequal exchange as reciprocal. Money cannot compensate for entropy.” 14 “Money cannot neutralize ecological damage in a physical sense. Monetary compensation for environmental damage can reduce contemporary grievances, but it is illusory to believe that ‘correct’ reparations could be calculated, or that they would somehow set things straight. The ecological debt of Britain, for instance, is as incalculable as its debt to the descendants of West African slaves. To raise the price of energy and raw materials, as Bunker suggested, would undoubtedly reduce the current magnitude of ecologically unequal trade (and the accumulation of technological infrastructure) in the world, but it would not make trade equal. Like the notion of making ‘correct’ recompense for past asymmetries, pricing resources high enough to neutralize the damage caused by their extraction would be tantamount to shutting down industrial capitalism.” 15 “He critically discusses a long and rather haphazard series of approaches to ‘how human beings have valued their natural world’, highlighting how unfeasible it is to reduce ‘a wondrous multidimensional ecosystemic world of use values, of human desires and needs, as well as of subjective meanings, to a common objective denominator’, that is, money.” 16 I A BLUEPRINT FOR SURVIVALReal value is not economic value. 21 I ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS – PRINCIPLES AND APPLICATIONS Economy is the allocation of limited resources among competing ends. Plows or SUVs? Difference between neoclassical and ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS – PRINCIPLES AND APPLICATIONS regarding allocation. What ends do we desire? Utility, and traditional economics wrongly equating welfare with what people want to buy and sell on the market. Market naturally misses important nonmarket goods. See THINKING IN SYSTEMS – A PRIMER on goals, < DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS: SEVEN WAYS TO THINK LIKE A 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMIST: SEVEN WAYS TO THINK LIKE A 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMIST on problem of utility and narrow picture of human beings. 3 Neoclassical economics believe human beings are insatiable why expanding growth is a desirable goal (end), with ever-greater provision of goods and service is thought to expand welfare. Market revealed desire ends. See THINKING IN SYSTEMS – A PRIMER on goals, < DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS: SEVEN WAYS TO THINK LIKE A 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMIST: SEVEN WAYS TO THINK LIKE A 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMIST on problem of utility and narrow picture of human beings. Limits of pareto efficient allocation. Problem with efficiency. 4 Economy the study of allocation of scarce means among competing ends. Policy presupposes knowledge possibility and purpose/means and ends. See THINKING IN SYSTEMS – A PRIMER on setting goals of a system 37 What are our means and our ends? We use up quality of matter and energy, the ultimate means. 38 Technology helps us to be more efficient not reversing the metabolic flow. Entropic dissipation. Nature 100 % recycler? Maybe but not human beings. 39 Is there an ultimate end? Ranking ends, what society should we have Ranking ends, what society should we have? “Ethics is the problem of ranking plural ends or values. The ranking criterion, the holder of first place, is the ultimate end (or its operational approximation), which grounds our understanding of objective value—better and worse as real states of the world, not just subjective opinions.” Concrete problems and policy dilemmas helps us to rank ends. 42 Ultimate mean and end spectrum. “...humanity ultimate economic problem is to use ultimate means efficiently and wisely in the service of the ultimate end.” 48 Philosophy and religion discuss ultimate end. Idolatry, treating economic growth as end because it is not really ultimate. Ranking ends, setting a priority of ends is a consequence of scarcity, is an ethical problem. Physics study ultimate mean. 49 “Ranking ends, setting a priority of ends from our estimate of our ultimate end, is a consequence of scarcity and is an ethical problem. Physics study ultimate mean and technics study the problem turning ultimate means for satisfying our intermediate ends. “Thus, the remaining segment of the spectrum is the middle one of allocating given intermediate means to the service if a given hierarchy of intermediate ends. This is the significant and important economic problem, or rather political economic problem, quite distinct from the ethical and technical problems.” “Economic value has both physical and moral roots. Neither can be ignored. Yet many thinkers are attracted to a monistic philosophy that focuses only on the biophysical or only on the psychic root of value. ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS – PRINCIPLES AND APPLICATIONS adopts a kind of practical dualism.” 50 Economic imperialism the neoclassical approach. 51 Problem of subjective wants as source of value and internalization of costs. See for example DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS: SEVEN WAYS TO THINK LIKE A 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMIST, PROSPERITY WITHOUT GROWTH, FIVE WAYS TO WELLBEING and SOME COSTS OF AMERICAN CORPORATE CAPITALISM: A PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLORATION OF VALUE AND GOAL CONFLICTS on being other than insatiable consumers Many costs come as a surprise and we have missed to calculate and continue to miscalculate them, carbon dioxide for example. Economic imperialists, calculating costs and Gosplan. Calculating cost of climate change, meteorology and negative or positive loops. 52 Market not the best allocator of all goods. 53 Some goods can’t be handled by the market. Question of scale not answered by market 54 Market failures. 165 Market failures and abiotic resources 193 Market failure and water. If economics rule (where value equals willingness to pay) rich can water their lawn while poor cannot afford water to their crops or flush their toilets while poor drink water contaminated by sewage. An example that economy concerns ends. Monopoly profits end up i private pockets. Public profits ends up in public profits 206 Market failures and biotic resources. 211 Doing makes you feel good 239 Importance of relationships. Damaging effect of comparing. Adapting to feel good and “set point”. 240 Doing good makes you feel good. We are not rational. 241 Use value vs exchange value. Exchange value has no physical embodiment. Use value is physical and follow laws of thermodynamics. 286 Limit to accumulation of use value but not to accumulation of exchange value. 286, 287 50 hammers in use value vs exchange value. Diamond and water paradox. Exchange value is determined by marginal utility. Use value is determined by total utility. Production for use value is self-limiting, not production for exchange value. 50 hammers in use values rust but 50 hammers in exchange value, money, do not. “Since there is no limit to the accumulation of abstract exchange value, and since abstract exchange value is convertible into concrete use value, we seem to have concluded that there must not be any limit to concrete use values either. This has perhaps led to the notion that exponential growth, the law of money growing in the bank at compound interest, is also the law of growth of the real, or material, economy.” See DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS: SEVEN WAYS TO THINK LIKE A 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMIST on interest and demurrage, THINKING IN SYSTEMS – A PRIMER on interest as idea 287 Internalizing cost is very, very hard. Internalizing cost is very, very hard. Problem of circularity of pricing scale and ecosystems. But should we really value ecosystem in monetary values? See 459, COMMON CAUSE – THE CASE FOR WORKING WITH OUR CULTURAL VALUES, DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS: SEVEN WAYS TO THINK LIKE A 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMIST The value of ecosystems life-supporting function becomes immeasurably high with increasing scarcity and would also lead to a constant revaluating of marginal value. 458 The absurdity of valuing nature and life in money. 459 Valuing is impossible because of our ignorance of the value of ecosystem provide. Timeframe and intergenerational distribution. 460 Valuing time, how we treat future generation is an ethical decision. 462 It is a reductionist belief that profit motive alone will maximize human well-being. Example of valuing democracy 462, 463 Democracy and human rights being on different moral spheres than economics. Fallacy of composition. “However, many nonmarket goods are fundamentally different from market goods in ways that make ‘scientific’ comparison not only makes comparison impossible but also undesirable. Putting dollar values on everything does not make the necessary decision more objective it simply obscures the ethical decision required to make those “objective decision” Ecologist economists on valuing ecosystem with infinite value. 463 Macro-allocation and problem of politician ignoring nonmarket goods. Appropriate choices requires appropriate amount of information and people lack information about the importance of nonmarket goods and services. 464 I MYTEN OM MASKINEN: ESSÄER OM MAKT; MODERNITET OCH MILJÖ Neoclassical economy used the concept of utility to dissolve the difference between exchange value and use value, equaling the value of a product with its price 128 Symbolic value can be used by its owner to make other people work for them (sea shells, precious metals, securities). 129 Local systems of symbols determine the symbolic value’s catalytic ability. Difference to fossil fuel which has production value. In the industrial societies the production potential is imported. Machines are an expression of global price relations 130 The acceptance of an erroneous price of exergy 192 I DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS: SEVEN WAYS TO THINK LIKE A 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMIST New idea of value 183
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