[FRIAM] ill-conceived question

[Steven A Smith]

Nick -

I contemplate this question regularly.   "What means 'the economy' ?" 
The way it is bandied about in the public media and among most circles I
listen to, it is this big hairball of exchange of goods and services
facilitated by "money", both in the form of currency and credit.    Yet
it is treated as if it is our psychic  (spiritual?) as well as physical
lifeblood.  

This abrupt interruption of *much* of that activity potentially exposes
a LOT about how much of a "false economy" we live within.  

Among the things that humans really need/want/value, I suspect the
"economy" we have grown creates goods and services that are not of any
particular use/interest/value to most (if any) of the human
population.   Hard-line "invisible hand of the market"-eers will insist
that if it exists in our economy, that it *must* be of
interest/value/use to *many* (or at least some).  Invoking the idiom of
"follow the money", I agree that we *can* follow a chain of implied
value that leads from the most marginal or absurd to the common and mundane.

I defer to Abraham Maslow:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs for an
armature/prioritization of what human needs might *really* be.

During this shutdown, I suspect *many* are discovering (getting hints
of) what truly is important to them and if they are being
self-observant, what their greatest fears (and hopes?) might be.   The
trope "Guns, Germs, and Toilet Paper" erupted soon after the shutdown
and the abrupt/extreme shortage of disinfectants, personal paper
products, and ammunition/guns.

Returning to the core point:   For anyone without the currency/credit to
trade for the goods/services they DO need, this shutdown is already a
huge problem.   For those (like most if not all on this list) *with* a
decent reserve of currency/credit OR the kind of job or enterprise which
has it's own inertia or true value in this context (e.g. Inertial:
random professionals; True Value: Health Care Workers, Critical Retail
Workers, Internet Engineers...) there is not an immediate problem with
cash-flow, and may in fact never be a problem.  

Mangling Maslow:  we all need air to breathe, (fairly clean) water to
drink, enough shelter from the elements to keep avoid hyper (or hypo)
thermia,  and enough nutrients (and calories) to keep the metabolism and
growth/repair going.  

It seems that (so far) the basic infrastructure (power, water, natural
gas, coal, transportation, communications) is all staying solid... that
they are either robust enough to not be hurt by the disruptions or those
who maintain them have the motivation to keep them going in spite of the
challenges to doing so (much of the maintenance repair of such
infrastructure is inherently socially distanced?).   We may whine/worry
about our interwebs but even those seem to be holding up.   The power
grid is probably mildly stressed by shifting most of the use from
commercial to residential, and possibly is diminished (office buildings
under-heated/lit)?

I hear that the food depots around the country (first world?) are in a
multiple of demand of their normal level.  I don't know if the newly
impoverished are taking precedence over the previous or if they are just
joining their ranks, or if these services are coming close to matching
the demand.   I don't know if people are going hungry(ier) than they
were before... perhaps the flexibility built into our social fabric
(nuclear and extended families, friends, neighbors, social services) has
absorbed most of the shock.  Perhaps the congressional (in the US)
stimulus funding is trickling through to enough of the people to take
the ragged edge off for a week or a month.  Perhaps the PPP loans are
allowing *some* of the small (and not so small) businesses to keep
people on payroll.  Perhaps *some* of the unemployment funds in reserve
are getting to those who have formally lost their jobs (temporary or
long term).  

Meanwhile there is produce in the fields, milk in the cow (and storage),
and meat on the hoof that is not being processed and shipped to the
restaurants that are closed or not being processed because the people
who do that work are out sick, or afraid of coming to work where they
likely will get sick (lack of PPE, social distance, trust in co-worker's
health), or afraid of coming to work because they are NOT properly
documented through our foreign worker/immigration system or coming to
work sick (and therefore risking other's exposure) *because* they are
outside the legal system.     This is a breakdown of our *heavily
industrialized* food supply system, which probably hasn't hit our
transportation/distribution systems (yet).   Wholesale warehouse workers
and OTR drivers are probably *fairly* able to avoid exposure/infection
in their normal work. 

It seems (deferring again to Maslow) that if we have the (collective)
*will* to keep our food-production/distribution systems going, the basic
infrastructure going, the MAIN (only?) thing we *really* have to worry
about is keeping our *attitudes* and *priorities* under control.    We
*might* even be able to put those previously without shelter in shelter
(unused motels, second homes, recreational vehicles?) and those without
enough food with healthy food (the underfed in our country was a tiny
percentage and not from lack of food, but from lack of will to get it to
those who need it), and the heat/coolth, and the clean (mostly) water
that comes along with the shelter.  

Maybe I'm a "pinko/commie/flag" for suggesting it, but this economic
upset/reset is the perfect opportunity to renormalize what kind of
people/circumstances/behaviour we believe should not be allowed (or
deserve?) access to those bottom few levels of Maslow.    It can be (has
been?) argued that these people need to be incentivized to *participate*
in our model of productive society (economy) and that sacrificing their
(mental and physical) health and even their lives to the "greater good"
of a (manic?) consumerist-capitalist economy is just "collateral damage"
(for those old enough to remember the Vietnam War,  this term is
probably a trigger).

I'm not trying to suggest that I know how to "get there from here" or
even what *there* would *really* look like, but I think this global
shut/slow-down has circumstantially moved us a LOT closer to an
"economy" that includes making sure that *everyone* has reasonable
access to the basics of Maslow's "physiological needs".

My pessimistic homunculus (nod to Glen's term) thinks this doesn't have
a chance of happening and that in fact, just the opposite will happen.  
A larger portion of our population will (already has?) abruptly become
financially unable to participate in obtaining their physiological needs
"the usual way" (day-job, savings, credit, clever entrepreneurship), and
those who *are* able to meet their needs "the usual way" will conspire
to allow (encourage?) that. 

My optimistic homunculus wants to believe otherwise.  It wants to
believe that *many* of us will recognize that "but by the grace of
Gawdess" we could have fallen through the cracks of this pandemic and
through a sense of responsibility (or even shame or guilt - Gawdelpus
Forbid!) and maybe we can make sure nobody has to fall through those
cracks (tactical challenges abound, but strategically I think this is
trivial, even obvious?).

This demonstrates MY profound lack of understanding of how economies
work.   It is quite possible that pinning down the idea that *everyone*
can/should/might do their very *best* to make sure *everyone else* has
their Maslow->Physiological/Safety needs met  and letting the rest find
it's own level might not be possible.  it certainly doesn't make sense
to *many*, especially those who have locked down their own access to the
full hierarchy (many times over?) and think they need (yet much) more.

Right now the biggest threat within the agri-industrial complex seems to
be the meat supply.   Pork, Beef, and Chicken.   Eggs and Dairy may go
along with that.   Remember a few months ago I think we were listening
to roughly *half* the population screaming bloody murder that
GreenDealers like AOC might be planning to take away their bacon and
mcNuggets and Steaks.   It seems like maybe the very fragility of the
system that provides the bulk of those products is going to take that
away from them, whether POTUS45 throws down his War Powers trump-card on
the factory-farms or not.

ramble,

- Steve

PS.  Just saw that in Belgium, the public is asked to double their
french (freedom?) fry consumption to keep umpty-jillion metric tonnes of
potatoes from going to waste.  Hmmmmm?  "Let them eat Fries!"





> Colleagues,
>
>  
>
> I have asked this question before and nobody has responded (for clear
> and good reasons, no doubt) but I thought I would ask it again.  What
> exactly is this economy we are bent on reviving?  What exactly is the
> difference in human activity between our present state and a revived
> economy.  We can go to bars and concerts and football games?  Is that
> the economy we are reviving?  It seems to me that the difference
> between a “healty” economy and our present status consists possibly in
> nothing more than a lot of people frantically rushing about doing
> things they don’t really need to do? 
>
>  
>
> You recall that I invoked as a model that experiment in which 24 rats
> were put in a quarter acre enclosure in Baltimore and fed and watered
> and protected to see how the population would develop.  They never got
> above two hundred.  Infant mortality, etc., was appalling.  Carnage. 
> In the same space, a competent lab breeding organization could have
> kept a population of tens of thousands. 
>
>  
>
> Don’t yell at me.  What fundamental proposition about economics do I
> not understand?
>
>  
>
> Nick
>
>  
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com>
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>  
>
>  
>
>
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