It looks like the site is supported by donations, which I just did.
> How do we measure Coasean growth? I have no idea. I am open to suggestions. All I know is that the metric will need to be hyper-personalized and relative to individuals rather than countries, corporations or the global economy.
He seems to be pointing at a future where transaction costs between individuals are lower, so there's less need to organize people into Large Organizations. (See: Coase's Nature of the Firm: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm )
Fair enough, but I don't see companies going away, as you still need someplace to invest capital/pool resources to be spent, to create large-scale projects, whether they're created by employees or by freelancers.
Sort of on the same topic, this book talks about economic organizational models in the west vs the middle east, and how the former pulled ahead of the latter in part due to better institutions:
It's a bit long-winded at times, and repeats itself, but the subject is, IMO, interesting.
I think he's saying those sorts of investments will be fewer and further between.
tl;dr: I'm extremely pessimistic about the future. This sort of happy, dreamy nonsense gets on my nerves.
Before finding any uses for fossil fuels, we survived off of hydropower, an inifinite supply of energy. Predicting a doom and gloom because we'll run out of fossil fuels makes you forget that humans have survived for thousands and thousands of centuries without fossil fuels.
Further, stating that we'll run out of resources ignores the laws of supply and demand: if resources start to dry up, prices will increase, prompting people to find alternative sources for energy. Guess where the next growth industry will be, and where people will spend their money.
With economic growth, comes new and better ways of extracting energy (see natural gas and nuclear power, recent phenomenons). Humans are innovative, and we'll find even newer sources of energy in the future like we have been doing since the dawn of time.
Excuse me, this flies in the face of everything I know of. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. No source of energy even remotely comparable to fossil fuels in power density and convenience is in sight. Unless you discovered a way to build a fusion reactor?
> Predicting a doom and gloom because we'll run out of fossil fuels makes you forget that humans have survived for thousands and thousands of centuries without fossil fuels.
Logical fallacy. Human beings will still exist in the future. What's in question is advanced civilisation. Read about how Rome looked like when Carolus Magnus came there, 350 years after its fall.
> Further, stating that we'll run out of resources ignores the laws of supply and demand: if resources start to dry up, prices will increase, prompting people to find alternative sources for energy.
Typical armchair economist bullshit; this really makes me angry nowadays. People will find alternative resources given that some exist.
> With economic growth, comes new and better ways of extracting energy ...
Hello, second law of thermodynamics calling. Exponential continuous growth is impossible. You know, like "it will cease someday or another, whether you like it or not".
This recent post on the oil drum is a pretty good digest: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7924
While the author mostly hints at what could be next, his closing focus on human perspective is credible: finite resources of energy and diminishing returns on investment (whether of time, capital, productivity, etc.) will entail the weakening of the corporate mode of life, and will entail major re-evaluations of infinite-growth assumptions.
Our earth is just one of billions of planets in our galaxy alone.
How long do you think we have to get it right?
This opinion is extremely unpopular though because it requires so many lifestyle consumption changes for all of us.
It's like knowing you have a serious illness, but putting off a visit to the doctor's to confirm it, because then you'll have to take steps that'll impact your lifestyle (I.e. quit smoking / drinking / drugs).
Therefore, almost nobody will change lifestyle. But it doesn't matter, as we all die, and we are replaced by people with a different mindset/lifestyle.
E.g. smokers die of cancer, new generations smoke less.
The response you were hoping to get was...?
" its ok .. it upsets me as well " ?
He is only a few paragraphs in and he has drawn a causation diagram backwards.
Why would it be necessary? The West could easily get oil from iraq without any involvement of the Iraqi people.
I write "the west" because the US doesn't get much of its oil from the middle east and oil's fungibility is a US choice. Neither of those things are written in stone.
As a matter of policy, the US could decide that oil doesn't leave the western hemisphere and let the europeans, chinese, and anyone else who cared handle the middle east. The western hemisphere has more than enough resources to handle US needs and europe could decide to simply take the oil and ignore the people. There's not much that any of the middle eastern countries/peoples could do about that.
Granted, it took hundreds of years. Present-day imperialists lack that kind of patience.
Kind of skipped over the whole 'US was founded on the premise of keeping corporations from having citizenship rights'.
Korps in decline, I think not, rights of real people in decline, rights of corporations on the continued rise.
The American railroads that conquered the west were grossly inefficient. Their "success" was sustained almost entirely by malfeasance, corruption, and the unchecked abuse of eminent domain.
Taylor was a fraud at best and a liar at worst. Taylorism and its cronies are possibly the greatest curse on our age.
