[FRIAM] ** this Wednesday** Lecture May 31 12:30p - Carlos Gershenson: A General Methodology for Designing Self-Organizing Systems

[Phil]

Carlos wrote:
I forgot from whom I heard the following argument:
The problem with understanding economics is that commodities are not  
a conserved quantity (such as energy), but it can always increase...  
Thus, it would be difficult to reach a point where we "ran out" of  
money, simply because the market generates new niches and  
opportunities that generate more money...

That's well enough said, and true enough with regard to the money.
It's essentially a corollary of Zeno's paradoxes.   Any arbitrary
measure can be increased without bound just the same as anyone can
potentially carry around an arbitrarily large sum of money in their
pocket.   Physical systems are built differently though, and you just
can't escape from the fact that real dollars represent real decisions
about the world.   As we multiply our dollars exponentially we multiply
our decisions similarly.   That we've been able to do that more or less
regularly, doubling productivity every 20 years for five or six
centuries, is indeed an astounding miracle.   It wouldn't seem to change
the general fact that growth structures inevitably give birth to
something else.
 

Phil Henshaw                       ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸
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