Energy Nerd | Circular Economist
Guard against the Hardening the Heart…
Unfortunately, in this harsh world of mankind, humanity seems out of place, seriously misplaced. Sometimes I ponder over how right it is to have a word which has it’s roots from ‘human’ to describe something that is really not that human nowadays. The hardening of our hearts is a phenomena that seriously need some tracing back to understand why it’s really so hard for humans to be humanly and for the terms mankind and humanity to converge.
Propagator is temporarily backed up on this space in case there’s changes over at erpz.net as the deadline for hosting approaches. This shift is under test and may be used full-fledge in future for Vib’s blogging.
Getting too economics nowadays, and the philosophical mind slips into inquiry into behaviour that does little to question purpose of fundamental existence or the reason behind non-economic emotions. I scurried through some blogs and found how sentimental people around me are. Cool. At least for the hungry philosophical mind. Then economics mode set in and all sorts of question concerning the utility people obtain from being labeled ‘philosophical’ or more colloquially, ‘cheem’, or the kind of incentives that pushes people to thinking in ‘philosophical’ ways despite overwhelming social pressure that considers philosophical inquiry out of modern context or simply put in the most Westernized way, ‘uncool’. That, is supposed to be more of my concern – what exactly drives people to be philosophical? Innate curiosity about the world, pure divine inspiration, or just for the exclusive label forced upon by the society that has some form of mixed-blessing effect?
The last driving force seem the most powerful, though the second last may be as valid. The fundamental things that drives people is based on the incentives involved and thus the utility gained from the action. If the action of inquiry provides such high absolute utility, blogging these thoughts would have such low marginal utility that the action is unlikely to be carried out, so we can be rather sure that innate curiosity is insufficient to make people think philosophically, or at least, insufficient to allow us to perceive the philosophical-ness of a being. The fact that this property is detectable leads us to the next 2 plausible driving forces.
Divine inspiration is an attractive solution to the problem but it’s in no way a stable conclusion to this little problem we have over here. The fact is that people around me shares some similar properties about perception of social forces and they way of handling it leads us closer to the justification of social forces. However, in a bid to remove the ‘divine inspiration’ theory, we first have to present the empirical situation. The circumstances is such that many people are feeling sentimental, philosophical, emotional and they blog about it, and they convey if with such cliche statements that unless ‘divine inspiration’ is a mere software programme that behaves like a virus, that should not happen. The question naturally comes – if everyone’s having this divine inspiration, why not me; or perhaps now is the time? No. The answer is that there’s no divine inspiration to discuss, for everyone’s merely succumbing to this social pressure that innate desire to question seems to fuel. The word is ‘seems’, for it doesn’t. The forceful incorporation of humanities’ way of inquiry in Sciences have upset our youth’s way of thinking. We are ‘forced’ to think of something meaningful to ask about rather than having questions naturally arise from us when we have our encounters. That’s a clear example of pure information overload.
So, what the crap is this social force making people inquire about the natural world, the humanly interactions, and the things we perceive? It is a high level kind of social pressure, one that works it’s way not from interaction, or mirroring the rest, it works through imposing a barrier, that ‘exclusifies’ the author and encourage them to immortalize themselves, at least within their narrow scopes of perception. This sort of crap inquiry, pseudo-philosophy, may be capable of destroying our foundation of humanities, our roots in questioning about the world. Scientists, can never become the sort of philosophers who have asked the great questions we spent centuries seeking to answer, and the effort to make them so can have devastating results to the field of inquiry itself; for the wrong method of inquiry naturally leads one to the wrong solution and thus the wrong answer to the true inquiry. There’s a philosophy version of Alchemy and it’s brewing. Better whip out your Philonomics to clear the way.
2 Years (or was it 3?) ago, I rejoiced at the fact that I have a Kodak DX that allows me to capture 4.0 mega pixel photos and being a digital compact flash camera, I am happy to bring it around with me on overseas trips as well as gatherings or outings with friends. I was happy to be able to upload what I shoot and to me then, 4.0 mega pixel was a whooping lot of pixels and great resolution. So you can imagine what kind of country bumpkin I was.
A year back, I discovered SLR photography and decided that it was fun and one of the nice activities I am going to indulge in. I never own a SLR so despite using it for quite a long time in my months in Huang Cheng, I was happy to continue with it, so I entered Photography Society to play around with more lens and pick up more knowledge about cameras. Still, owning a DSLR is something I can hardly conceive. In fact, I promised myself to get a DSLR only when I saved enough of what I earned myself. Imagine my horror when I realised those young kids that are now becoming my juniors, those just a little older and are supposedly my seniors, are snapping away during festivals and events with their OWN DSLRs. I am angry for 2 reasons: They were blocking me (And I am supposed to be working for the school!) and they own those cameras they hold in their hands. As an amateur I am already okay with the slow, leisure shots but the high speed ones are really terrible for me, which is also partly the reason for bring angry with those freaks blocking me.
What a rant to make on Chinese New Year Eve anyway. Happy Pig Year!
It’s been a real long time since I logged into my blog because I have been really busy with school work, and all the orientation for the new-comers and so on. It’s been a long month of January, full of crappy and seemingly meaningless work. The first thing on the dashboard that caught my eye when I logged in was the sheer amount of spam comments I received – 241. Well, that’s a great record for having a blog, which is so obscure no one really reads it.
Spam have now becomes such a common occurrence that I would consider it a freaky day when I log into Gmail with the Spam Folder empty. I’ll probably be expecting to do some stuff in my email even when I am not expecting any mail – because I am pretty sure there’s spam for me to clear. Thus, even the clicking on the spam folder, and then the button to select all spam mails, and finally the button to ‘Delete Forever’, is considered extremely productive work. In fact, while I have typed all these chunk of stuff, a new lame spam has just entered the spam folder. And I felt I attained some kind productivity by deleting that one.
That’s life in the modern age.
Yea, I enjoy using laws of natural sciences to explain social sciences phenomena. I made an analogy about life from the kinetic energies of water molecules in a basin, I talked about equilibriums and closed-systems much like those in thermodynamics, and I discussed about really unrelated science theories and laws and apply them on human interactions. There’s one particular law in science that I am particularly interested in applying but never had a chance to. It’s the Maxwell-Boltzmann Distribution and I thought if there’s this day, when our income distribution follows that, capitalism would never have met its rival, communism at all.
I am not sure if it comes naturally to you all but the Maxwell-Boltzmann Distribution presents the idea that the smaller the pie to share, the stronger the tendency for some big guys to just snatch it away and stuff it into his mouth. Conversely, if the pie gets bigger, the tendency that it is shared becomes greater. Taking the ‘kinetic energy of particles’, which is the x-axis of the distribution curve as ‘wealth of individuals’ and the ‘probability density’ as the y-axis, and the temperature increments as total wealth aggregation, you will be able to visualize how we apply this distribution to the economics. I acknowledge that inequality will remain, and the beauty about this distribution that we have this hope, that while aggregate wealth increases, the inequality gap can be closed – or at least we are tending toward an asymptotic closing of the gap. Wishful Thinking.
Got introduced to this game and its solution. I generalized the solution to apply to any figures. And yes, I was the second player and the first variant of the game was played – so I lost, though it was out of luck rather than strategy (I wasn’t tabulating the numbers).
A and B are individuals taking turns to call out numbers from x-y (numbers ‘x’ to ‘y’, with x y).
In this scenario, the first player will have an advantage and there are focal points within the games that have to be considered by both players. These points are the numbers ‘m – (x+y)’, ‘m – 2(x+y)’ and so on until the number is one that’s between ‘x’ and ‘y’. The first player will be able to force a win by reaching these numbers starting first. For a change in game scenario such that the first who reach the ‘m’ loses, the second player has an advantage. This game formula is useful for similar variations.
I am not really happy with the current ending I have written for the article/essay entitled ‘Happiness Equation’. I thought there’s so much more space to develop, to delve into and uncover all the mysterious forces that’s dictating our happiness in this world of ours. I am thinking of expanding the writing into a bigger research and so I can have my citations together with more advance references.
I thought as a peripheral interest, I’ll reveal how all-encompassing the research will be. The whole issue and argument about equality and inequality stems from philosophical studies as well as natural sciences investigating the natural states of things. This time, because it involves more of human beings, there’s anthropological implications that delve into human nature and thus the ‘flow of wealth’ as a result of that. That would be very close to economics, which brings us into social sciences that involves mathematical models to predict capital flows and I might be probing into how ‘Trickle-down Economies’ is a scam (or at least do not occur in reality most of the time) and try to explain why so.
More empirical evidence relating perceived inequality and unhappiness is required to back this study because the entire research rest on this but I think I am very much right on track. And more importantly, the whole idea about ‘slacking’, literally – whether it is feasible on a large scale and whether it would be considered an ‘advancement’ for mankind – one that’s so preoccupied with development and production for the past few centuries has to be explored more in-depth. At this moment, game-theoretical models have to be evoked to explain the behaviours of individuals subjected this sort of ‘slacking’ pact.
A major component I need to sort out is the inequality that results from Capitalism, all at least the kind of economic system that’s used at a universal at this point of time. Das Kapital may have the answer to my queries but I need a deeper understanding of the differences between the system described by Marx and the system that’s currently being implemented in different nations. This is a great ‘Introductory to Macroeconomics’ project.
After reading and thinking about quite a couple of issues that seem to cross morals, philosophy and economics, I thought it would be nice to try and explain, in economic terms, the way our incentive system may have changed (more than ever, by circumstances and training) and thus the forces dictating how happy we are. This is probably the longest academic piece I have written on this blog; I spent about 2 hours getting this essay/article’s argument right, so intellectuals, enjoy.
***
In the 23rd December The Economist issue, the featured article was about Happiness and measuring it to replace existing measures of standards of living and thus the way in which we think and perceive ‘advanced economies’. It highlighted the existence of positional goods and explained why people did not stop working (and start slacking) long after they manage to get past the subsistence level. That, directly puts the blame of the post-modern unhappiness on inequality.
Inequality has lingered around eternally, and in most system, it is self-correcting, being perpetuated as cyclical conventions – wind is brought about by unequal pressures within a closed system (thus inequality is eliminated when the wind blows), a hydropower plant is possible because of unequal potential energy in water present on different heights (which is why the water flows down and generate the electricity), and even our economic cycles, can be explained by some unbalanced supply demand interactions that occurs at a macroeconomic scale. In other systems, it does not correct itself but relies on purely artificial mechanisms installed to facilitate the process – without progressive tax, at least theoretically, the rich will remain much richer than they could have been and poor would not enjoy much subsidies, in other words, it seems inevitable that inequality must prevail in many cases. You won’t expect money to flow from the rich to the poor by itself because of the gradient unless the everyone in the world are blessed with the ability only to make wealth but not to retain them.
In human’s case of equality, there’s a huge internal conflict that makes things difficult to solve. There’s 2 basic laws in the idea of equality: (1) All equals are equals and (2) All unequals are unequal. That may sound abstract but a simple analogy provides us sufficient insights into this internal conflict present in the whole idea of equality itself. The first law suggests that we should all pay the same fares for the public bus, but the second law suggests that those with lower income or spending power should enjoy lower fares. It is a problem of identity overlap: When both persons are taking the bus, they should be considered equal in that aspect, but when looking at their financial status reveals otherwise, they are not equal in some other aspects. This forces the first law to contradict the second law in entirely different contexts that simply must be packaged together and this leaves things unsolved – and keeps debates alive.
So we’ll believe, for a moment that equality is impossible. Consider also that equality is not necessarily good – for inequality ensures order. If all are equal, will you have the incentive to rid your boss and grab his properties? Would you be grabbing policemen’s pistols and shooting those you hate? Because of inequality – you are a civilian while he is a policeman (a matter of both status, how you are viewed by the law and perceived by others), that prevents you from really doing what you may have done unless you are indeed a nutcase. More importantly, inequality keeps the economy running. While capitalism allows most people to gain access to better goods as time passes is because it also worsens the gradient between the rich and the poor everytime things get better. That’s to say that as you just realized you can have a shelter over your head and rejoice about the merits of capitalism, the guy originally just 10 times richer than you is now 1000 times richer than you, owning 10 shelters that are 10 times better than yours and in locations with 10 times more accessibility to the vital nodes of the place (wherever it might be) is thinking of throwing a huge party to celebrate capitalism. Technological advances can close such gaps as fast as they increase the capacity for the gaps to expand – the reason you are getting better off is either because someone else is worse off, all those who are already very well off are even better off than ever.
So perhaps, do we rejoice at Inequality that keeps order and shall prevail? Hardly, for as I have demonstrated in the first paragraph, it is inequality that has the highest potential to bring about unhappiness. John Kenneth Galbraith mentioned in ‘The Affluent Society‘ that given the riches that we enjoy at this age relative to the past, we have greater capacity to enjoy life than ever, to put down our hammers and sickle, keyboard and mouse to ‘Stop and Stare’. It is, however, inequality – the perception that you can be even better off since there are those out there better than you that keeps you going on, though you would gladly slack off if everyone else makes a pact to do so. Then again, you may have the incentive to cheat once the pact takes effect and so would the others and the whole collusive behavior collapses. We are all reacting to the whole system such that once our position to shifted, perhaps higher, we are automatically displacing some lower down the list – the others respond by attempting to go back to their position, and the whole order of things disrupted, and it constantly is, because we cannot possibly accept the status quo position. In this scenario, it’s “be contented and you are as good as waiting for your turn to be at the end of the list”.
Someone’s going to point out: ‘Hey, material riches have nothing to do with happiness!’ Perhaps that’s true, but worldwide survey has placed the richest people at a much happier level than the others though the difference is not very much, contrary to our fairytale belief that wealthy people are shrewd and thus lonely, without friends and the segregation between classes makes things worse. In fact, rich people have more friends whether they have lousy personalities or not – people would want to try and get close to you for personal benefits. On the other side of the spectrum, the poorest of the world are often a little happier than those sandwiched because they are ignorant about the riches that are present in the other portions of the globe. In other words, if you are living in the African deserts all your life and seen only people very much like you, though you may encounter some brown mechanical monsters moving across the place sometimes, your perception that equality very much prevails keeps you happy. This would mean that the perception of equality is the key factor and not the whole idea of material comforts when considering the happiness of a person. Because we live in a globalized world, we experience greater unhappiness – we are able to perceive the inequality present and feel quite very powerless against it. But the same process of globalization also gives you the riches others perceive you to have – because the range of positions which you can now be in, you have more spaces to move up, and perhaps there’s more ‘contented people’ around whom you can displace.
The question now, is perhaps where we are heading and where we may reach. We are all trying to attain happiness and if we relate the happiness to the equality that we mentioned earlier, that would mean that we hope for equality, at least the perception of it. Unfortunately, we are all heading for greater ‘perceived inequality’ and that means a higher proportion of us would be unhappy despite the fact that everyone’s getting better off (remember, the scale is moving upwards, the net effect is that everyone are better off). The model can also be derived from the Law of Comparative Advantage (as well as Absolute Advantage) and why people still wants to go against trade. While trading raises the aggregate output and everyone would be better off than if they had not trade, people do not compare their own before and after state, they look at the disproportionate returns that each side get from trading. They will also compare the gap between each other before trading and after trading. The losing end won’t be feeling so happy after trading – the gap between you and the highest possible position you believe you can obtain is directly proportional to the unhappiness you feel. That’s perhaps a simple generalization that’s not worthy of your attention since you draw your emotions for a myraid of circumstances. You might like to note that the happiness here refers to general gladness of life – sorry for not making this clear earlier. Therefore, we are heading towards greater unhappiness if the happiness equation remains the same. If we want to use happiness as a measure of how well the countries are doing, if we want to mirror Gordon Brown’s ideas (and make an advancement in economic measurement), we’ll have to place more emphasis on the Gini coefficient, and stop trying to compare ourselves with those other nations in the region.
We are mere individuals acting within our perception of the totality of the system we are part of – we react to this totality that we perceive. We do not seek to see the nation as an aggregate that we contribute to and use this big picture to compare with other national aggregates. As far as we are concerned, there are others out there who are doing so much better, so much more well off, despite the fact that they merely put in the same efforts as we do. If you were wondering, before reading this long essay, why Singaporeans are not exactly happy, and curious about the reasons behind all the complaining, perhaps you now know why.