Ah, clever! Thank you.
63 karma · joined January 6, 2009
This is going to sound like an ad hominem attack, but it seems to me that a majority of the singularity/futurist crowd are more concerned with impressing others with shows of intelligence than any other goal. They sound more like a bunch of male apes strutting around vying for alpha status, perhaps not surprising given that they are almost all male. A comment very much like mine (about the pointlessness of feeling compassion for crystal bugs) was posted on the overcoming bias blog but it received no replies/rebuttals. Rather the comments over there simply accepted the premises of the story without question. I have a great deal of respect for Elizer but his followers are frighteningly cult like.
Look, someone who doesn't have a job will lower his/her price until he/she gets a job. If you are really on the verge of starvation you will become willing to work for $1, and someone will probably become willing to hire you for that little. Just like any other market, price will fluctuate and equilibrate supply and demand, clearing the market. It's just that in the short run there is price inflexibility, so the market temporarily goes out of whack. In the long-run wage is only determined by worker productivity (which is function of amount of capital and technology level), and anyone who wants a job can have one, though it may not be as high paying as she wants.
I'll take the time to explain some of your complaints:
"spending causes prosperity": well, obviously if you don't spend any of your money obviously you don't have prosperity. If you borrow money to spend economics assume that you are rational and that it is because you prefer having a good time now to later. This seems more like a value judgment though, which most economics tend to avoid.
"conflation of trade deficits with indebtedness": well, if country A wants to consume something produced by country B, it can only do so in three ways: 1) give B something A produced, 2) give B a chunk of A (e.g., real estate) or 3) borrow from B. Since most countries don't like 2), trade deficits are settled using 3)
Most economics will say that a higher savings rate will be beneficial in the long run but if people suddenly saved more because of government policy there will a aggregate demand shock and the economy will go into a recession since the price level cannot easily adjust in the short run. (When people save more they have less money to spend and thus all prices become "too high" for them.)
Check out the book for more information. You will find that while economics may have flaws, it is internally self-consistent. It just doesn't take into account that most people are not rational :(.
You are confusing two different types of analysis. If you had taken a (more rigorous) macroeconomics course you would have learned that there are two types of analysis: long-run and short-run. In the short-run prices are inflexible due to unions, preexisting contracts, menu costs, etc. In the long-run prices can fluctuate and recessions are impossible (we don't worry about some recession that happened in 120 A.D. for example). Keynesian economics only deals with the short run, and only in the short run can the economy be trapped in a temporary disequilibrium. Even though the economy should eventually recover on its own in the long run it can cause a lot of pain in the process, which is why Keynesian economics advocates government intervention.
"I've long had a hobby interest in economics... The inmates are running the asylum."
Maybe a hobbyist shouldn't be suggesting that Nobel prize winners be put in an asylum ;).