<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div dir="auto">The economy is collapsing right now. It has positive side effects like clean air in L.A. and Beijing, but right now it is collapsing.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">-J.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div><br></div><div style="font-size:100%;color:#000000" dir="auto"><!-- originalMessage --><div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: Frank Wimberly <wimberly3@gmail.com> </div><div>Date: 5/2/20 18:47 (GMT+01:00) </div><div>To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> </div><div>Subject: Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question </div><div><br></div></div><div dir="ltr"><div>Nick,</div><div><br></div><div>I suspect that if people only did what they 'need to do' the economy would collapse.</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, May 2, 2020 at 10:34 AM <<a href="mailto:thompnickson2@gmail.com">thompnickson2@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div lang="EN-US"><div class="gmail-m_779372270617556982WordSection1"><p class="MsoNormal">Colleagues, <u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">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? <u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">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. <u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">Don’t yell at me. What fundamental proposition about economics do I not understand? <u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">Nick <u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">Nicholas Thompson<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">Clark University<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="mailto:ThompNickSon2@gmail.com" target="_blank">ThompNickSon2@gmail.com</a><u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/" target="_blank">https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/</a><u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"> <u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p></div></div>.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... .... . ...<br>
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</blockquote></div><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature">Frank Wimberly<br>140 Calle Ojo Feliz<br>Santa Fe, NM 87505<br>505 670-9918</div>
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