Message-ID: <s2e89bac.052@crs.loc.gov> Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 11:20:07 -0500 From: Jonathan Sanford <mailto:JSANFORD@CRS.LOC.GOV> Subject: Entropy and Economics? -Reply To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
Just one question, Jay. When you get out of school, do you plan to participate in a pension system and put away money in savings? Do you plan to have kids, buy a house, etc? None of that makes sense if the world is coming to an end, as far as most people are concerned, in 35 years. Why, in fact, bother to get an education and have a career?"....the economy is increasing entropy in earth subsystems and changing the emergent properties of our life-support subsystem so that in 35 years, it too may no longer be functional.
I guess you would say that development assistance to poor countries or efforts to stimulate economic growth in the more economically advanced countries will just accelerate our approach to economic entropy. Maybe, from a development policy perspective, we should encourage poor countries to stay underdeveloped. That way the party can go on longer for the rest of us. Might even last four or five decades if we keep the rate of growth low enough in our own and in developing countries.
Reminds me of an old fellow I know who is worried about world population. He said that he thought for a while that AIDS would be our salvation, but now he sees that too much research has gone into finding causes and treatments. There is still a chance of a big return of the Spanish Flu, though, so he's not giving up hope entirely.
Personally, I don't see it that way. I think efforts to avoid entropy, by your calculation, will merely accelerate catastrophy. I think that we need to make further efforts to find ways of employing, feeding, housing, treating, educating, etc. the peoples of the world. To avoid doing that, in the name of prevention of economic entropy, would be a major error and would work very much against our and their best interests.
Jon Sanford