Comment by AndrewKemendo
1 day ago
You’re describing positive-sum outcomes in subjective preference space.
I’m describing conservation laws in physical state space.
Preference gains don’t violate thermodynamics, but they also don’t escape zero-sum reality once you include energy, ecology, and time.
You’re doing what I’m complaining about separating Economics from ecology - there’s a very firm reason why climate changes the most important topic of our decade is because we have to merge our lived experience with the work experience and kill this embedded dualism that somehow human environments are different than the rest of the universe.
It’s like you’re trying to do control theory without energy constraints.
"Everything in economics is zero-sum because the resources on the plane are finite" is an unimaginative undergraduate-level position that adds nothing of substance to the discussion.
If you want to have a constructive conversation about pricing environmental externalities then by all means, but you need to drop this "I'm smarter than you" attitude if you want better reactions to your comments, especially if you're just going to aggressively post lukewarm takes and then insult people.
"Everything in economics is zero-sum because the resources on the plane are finite"
This is literally the position of the field of ecology and the field of cybernetics
I live day-to-day inside of that world because that is the real world
the fact that few others live live day-to-day inside the field of ecology and Cybernetics is precisely the problem I’m pointing out
the fact that you want to deny this means that you’re ignoring the intersectionality between climate change, social and structural dynamics, industrial production, financial production, Infrastructure and all this other stuff as though they are separate they are not separate
Is pure projection to say that it’s reductive for me to demand an accounting for all possible externalities in order to have a coherent system
I’m telling you to do 10 to 100 times more work in evaluating any of these actions structurally then is currently happening and you’re trying to induce that I’m collapsing the problem into some kind of single state variable and I’m saying no you need thousands of more variables to be tracking in your head at all time and on ledgers at all time then we currently do because all of these externalities have been dumped into the ocean and nto the atmosphere effectively
When the global food supply collapses and there’s blight and drought and famine because we overextended resource extraction without identifying the long-term effects of that literally no other argument is going to hold sway
>the fact that you want to deny this means
That's not an honest representation of what I wrote.
Thanks for signalling you aren't ready to discuss in good faith, bye.
Ah, so you indeed are doing the extremely reductionist view of economy that completely ignores services. And then calling capitalists wrong. While not even talking about the same subject as capitalists. This is lalala I can't hear you with extra steps.
I can’t believe I wasted my time thinking through that thoughtful response to you
Thats on me
I'm very open to a serious discussion. But only if it's actually serious. I don't consider reducing economy to thermodynamics to be serious.
Any statement about any economy is meaningless if you're ignoring services. Especially when discussing the totality of an economic system, such as the question whether capitalism is zero-sum. I am happy to hear actual arguments how the value of services always, necessarily, by definition comes at the cost of some environment somewhere. I'm not happy to hear arguments that dismiss existence of services entirely.
I was sure you were a troll yourself after that hole digging line. My bad.
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