{"id":68640,"date":"2024-06-15T15:31:44","date_gmt":"2024-06-15T20:31:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68640"},"modified":"2024-06-15T15:31:44","modified_gmt":"2024-06-15T20:31:44","slug":"280-not-what-youve-been-told","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68640","title":{"rendered":"#280: Not what you\u2019ve been\u00a0told"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"entry-header\">\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com\/2024\/05\/31\/280-not-what-youve-been-told\/\">#280: Not what you\u2019ve been\u00a0told<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><strong>A YOUNG PERSON\u2019S GUIDE TO THE ECONOMY<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Introduction<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Intended for an educational documentary,\u00a0<em>The Young Person\u2019s Guide to the Orchestra<\/em>\u00a0is a 1945 composition by Bejamin Britten. A similar title \u2013\u00a0<em>A Young Person\u2019s Guide to King \u00a0Crimson<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 was used for a progressive rock compilation album released in 1976.<\/p>\n<p>What we need now is a\u00a0<em>Young Person\u2019s Guide to the Economy<\/em>. The term \u201cyoung\u201d can be applied however we wish, and the main advantage enjoyed by those who are young in years is that they have less to un-learn.<\/p>\n<p>What passes for economic orthodoxy is, for the most part, a set of tarradiddles determinedly rooted in the agrarian economic conditions of the 1770s. Chief amongst these tarradiddles is that the economy can be explained and managed\u00a0<em>in terms of money alone<\/em>, such that natural resources in general \u2013 and energy in particular \u2013 need not be taken into account.<\/p>\n<p>This, given our control of the human artefact of money, leads to the proposition that we can look forward with confidence to\u00a0<em>infinite, exponential economic expansion on a finite planet<\/em>. This is an idea which \u2013 in the words of Kenneth E \u00a0Boulding, co-founder of general systems theory \u2013 could only be taken seriously by \u201ca madman or an economist\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The main problem with conventional economic theory is that it originated at a time when virtually the only energy used in the economy was provided by human and animal labour, and the nutritional energy which made that labour possible. We hear echoes of this era every time someone measures productivity by comparing economic output with<em>\u00a0hours of human labour<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Back in the 1770s, it was reasonable to conclude that labour (remunerated financially), monetary capital investment, ingenuity and financial incentive were the factors that drove the economy&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>#280: Not what you\u2019ve been\u00a0told A YOUNG PERSON\u2019S GUIDE TO THE ECONOMY Introduction Intended for an educational documentary,\u00a0The Young Person\u2019s Guide to the Orchestra\u00a0is a 1945 composition by Bejamin Britten. A similar title \u2013\u00a0A Young Person\u2019s Guide to King \u00a0Crimson\u00a0\u2013 was used for a progressive rock compilation album released in 1976. What we need now [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[31315,31103],"class_list":["post-68640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-surplus-energy-economics","tag-tom-murphy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68640"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68641,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68640\/revisions\/68641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}