Kevin Low

Given that I am having Economics tomorrow, I thought it would be interesting to pen something that implicates the fundamental ideas of Economics that I conceived while surfing (and not mugging) the net.

Economics, as we are taught, is the study of how humans deal with the problem of ‘Scarcity’, how we allocate resources to achieve maximal efficiency and make everyone happy. The problem of ‘Scarcity’, in turn, arises from the fact that limited resources that we have cannot satisfy the unlimited wants that we have. In view of that, we have to make choices and decide to work with only a limited number of wants satisfied. Today, we live as though the problem of ‘Scarcity’ has been solved and Economics essay question constantly trick us with lame questions like ‘Discuss if economic growth is able to solve the problem of ‘Scarcity”. It turns out that we may have been wrong all the time – the problem of ‘Scarcity’ that arises naturally have been solved. To explain, the problem we are facing now is one that involves the creation of demands/wants.

The basis of this problem of ‘Scarcity’ has a few dimenstions – time period, the idea of ‘unlimited wants’ and perhaps the problem of want-creation. To begin, time period is extremely important because the statement on scarcity is made based on the ‘long run’ perspective. In short run, scarcity can cease to be a problem, or don’t even arise at all: just imagine the last time when you had a Buffet dinner, where you have finished stuffing yourself and continue to see the endless plates of food being stocked and replenished. For that moment, everyone would have decided that there’s no such thing as scarcity. But as mentioned, it is only for that moment, in long run (or a few hours after you walk out of the restaurant), you will experience the scarcity we seek to study in Economics. So, in long run, scarcity must prevail because the need for certain basic stuff/wants must prevail. Hey, wait a minute, most of the basic wants for survival are replenishable by the Earth’s system – so I guess under primitive conditions, the problem still doesn’t arise even in long run.

At this point, we have already considered part of the idea of ‘unlimited wants’. There’s a great deal of problem with this assumption that we have unlimited wants. We cannot say that we all strive for ever higher standards of living. The reason why people at this point of time strives for that is because it is possible, at least for some people and the results of such luxury are glaringly pleasurable. However, our imagination of a higher standard of living that have yet to exist do not motivate us to strive for that as much as one that already exist but is currently not obtainable at personal level. As such, we can easily say that it is inequality that furthers the problem of want-creation and thus worsens the problem of scarcity with the creation of endless wants. As decided, wants are finite within a time period, and in fact, the wants of a person, within his lifespan, must be finite, at least by default. Unfortunately, this assumption of unlimited, or infinite wants exist because of the fact that there’s a want-creation mechanism driving everything – inequality, advertising and perhaps imperfect information.

Having mentioned that, the want-creation mechanism that stems from production (advertising) is the key player accounting for this ‘unlimited wants’ that we are facing in long run. This is just like when we are really bloated after 5 ‘second-servings’ in a Buffet and decides that we’ll have a final go with that Cheese-baked Salmon that just arrived at the food counter – just to make sure our money is well-spent. As John Locke have argued, we all have a finite capacity for consumption (or ‘real consumption’) but the fact that we can accumulate wealth enables us to ‘purchase without real consumption of the good’. To be able to accumulate wealth is like to be able to accumulate hunger before a buffet and thus the capacity to consume. This allows the want-creation mechanism to work because you can hold far more food than you should be able to when you have ‘accumluated hunger’ (that is, assuming you can) and new dishes will be able to tempt you continually.

Such, undermines the whole idea of the problem of ‘Scarcity’. We, as beings of intellect, have invented means of allowing over[false]consumption and want creation. Even when you don’t need that tiny amount of marginal benefit, the fact that you had all the initial wants satisfied pushes you to take it; similarly, though you are bloated, the thought that you can make your money more worthed it motivates you to take the salmon. Inequality, which I have deemed inevitable, together with the Imperfect Information, operates naturally to further the problem of want-creation – the glaring inequality irrationalizes the people, and limited information makes them think that the higher living standards only does them good, ultimately increasing the demand and furthering the problem of ‘Scarcity’.

We are, far from solving the problem we have created ourselves and not the one that arises naturally, but that’s probably a problem to sustain the congregation of man in bid to prove the improvements can be made with a more unified system. The Undercover Economist had an interesting Introduction, which I read in the bookstore, as predicted by Tim Harford himself. It narrated a basic argument in support of the statement, ‘No Man is an Island’ and it has illustrated, quite nicely, the good that the economic system has brought us that is inconceivable when our ancestors were still foraging for tree roots [and checking if they are edible]. The problem, is that we had to sustain the growth, unfortunately, by keeping the demand alive, making it truly endless and unlimited, to keep up with depletion and thus continuing the problem of ‘Scarcity’ to justify the existence of the economy. Or perhaps, the whole point of this ever increasing demand stems from some hedonistic concept that is probably a product of the notion of unlimited demands and thus a cyclic argument that economic theories often ends up in (just like the kinked demand curve).

I have, in this essay, addressed the evolution of the problem of ‘Scarcity’ at this age and outlined the justification for this problem to prevail. It appears, then that our decendents would eventually have to end up with the dilemma of whether to preserve for the new beings that comes or just simply live like there’s no tomorrow (something we have truly embraced at the turn of the century – besides the escalated environmental concerns that do not exactly translate into actions*). It is perhaps then, time to turn back to mugging and maybe thinking a little more about Economic stuff that goes way beyond our Sloman-Concepts and Parkins-Notions.

*Maybe it would be better for Bjorn Lomborg to address that

Given that I am having Economics tomorrow, I thought it would be interesting to pen something that implicates the fundamental ideas of Economics that I conceived while surfing (and not mugging) the net.

Economics, as we are taught, is the study of how humans deal with the problem of ‘Scarcity’, how we allocate resources to achieve maximal efficiency and make everyone happy. The problem of ‘Scarcity’, in turn, arises from the fact that limited resources that we have cannot satisfy the unlimited wants that we have. In view of that, we have to make choices and decide to work with only a limited number of wants satisfied. Today, we live as though the problem of ‘Scarcity’ has been solved and Economics essay question constantly trick us with lame questions like ‘Discuss if economic growth is able to solve the problem of ‘Scarcity”. It turns out that we may have been wrong all the time – the problem of ‘Scarcity’ that arises naturally have been solved. To explain, the problem we are facing now is one that involves the creation of demands/wants.

The basis of this problem of ‘Scarcity’ has a few dimenstions – time period, the idea of ‘unlimited wants’ and perhaps the problem of want-creation. To begin, time period is extremely important because the statement on scarcity is made based on the ‘long run’ perspective. In short run, scarcity can cease to be a problem, or don’t even arise at all: just imagine the last time when you had a Buffet dinner, where you have finished stuffing yourself and continue to see the endless plates of food being stocked and replenished. For that moment, everyone would have decided that there’s no such thing as scarcity. But as mentioned, it is only for that moment, in long run (or a few hours after you walk out of the restaurant), you will experience the scarcity we seek to study in Economics. So, in long run, scarcity must prevail because the need for certain basic stuff/wants must prevail. Hey, wait a minute, most of the basic wants for survival are replenishable by the Earth’s system – so I guess under primitive conditions, the problem still doesn’t arise even in long run.

At this point, we have already considered part of the idea of ‘unlimited wants’. There’s a great deal of problem with this assumption that we have unlimited wants. We cannot say that we all strive for ever higher standards of living. The reason why people at this point of time strives for that is because it is possible, at least for some people and the results of such luxury are glaringly pleasurable. However, our imagination of a higher standard of living that have yet to exist do not motivate us to strive for that as much as one that already exist but is currently not obtainable at personal level. As such, we can easily say that it is inequality that furthers the problem of want-creation and thus worsens the problem of scarcity with the creation of endless wants. As decided, wants are finite within a time period, and in fact, the wants of a person, within his lifespan, must be finite, at least by default. Unfortunately, this assumption of unlimited, or infinite wants exist because of the fact that there’s a want-creation mechanism driving everything – inequality, advertising and perhaps imperfect information.

Having mentioned that, the want-creation mechanism that stems from production (advertising) is the key player accounting for this ‘unlimited wants’ that we are facing in long run. This is just like when we are really bloated after 5 ‘second-servings’ in a Buffet and decides that we’ll have a final go with that Cheese-baked Salmon that just arrived at the food counter – just to make sure our money is well-spent. As John Locke have argued, we all have a finite capacity for consumption (or ‘real consumption’) but the fact that we can accumulate wealth enables us to ‘purchase without real consumption of the good’. To be able to accumulate wealth is like to be able to accumulate hunger before a buffet and thus the capacity to consume. This allows the want-creation mechanism to work because you can hold far more food than you should be able to when you have ‘accumluated hunger’ (that is, assuming you can) and new dishes will be able to tempt you continually.

Such, undermines the whole idea of the problem of ‘Scarcity’. We, as beings of intellect, have invented means of allowing over[false]consumption and want creation. Even when you don’t need that tiny amount of marginal benefit, the fact that you had all the initial wants satisfied pushes you to take it; similarly, though you are bloated, the thought that you can make your money more worthed it motivates you to take the salmon. Inequality, which I have deemed inevitable, together with the Imperfect Information, operates naturally to further the problem of want-creation – the glaring inequality irrationalizes the people, and limited information makes them think that the higher living standards only does them good, ultimately increasing the demand and furthering the problem of ‘Scarcity’.

We are, far from solving the problem we have created ourselves and not the one that arises naturally, but that’s probably a problem to sustain the congregation of man in bid to prove the improvements can be made with a more unified system. The Undercover Economist had an interesting Introduction, which I read in the bookstore, as predicted by Tim Harford himself. It narrated a basic argument in support of the statement, ‘No Man is an Island’ and it has illustrated, quite nicely, the good that the economic system has brought us that is inconceivable when our ancestors were still foraging for tree roots [and checking if they are edible]. The problem, is that we had to sustain the growth, unfortunately, by keeping the demand alive, making it truly endless and unlimited, to keep up with depletion and thus continuing the problem of ‘Scarcity’ to justify the existence of the economy. Or perhaps, the whole point of this ever increasing demand stems from some hedonistic concept that is probably a product of the notion of unlimited demands and thus a cyclic argument that economic theories often ends up in (just like the kinked demand curve).

I have, in this essay, addressed the evolution of the problem of ‘Scarcity’ at this age and outlined the justification for this problem to prevail. It appears, then that our decendents would eventually have to end up with the dilemma of whether to preserve for the new beings that comes or just simply live like there’s no tomorrow (something we have truly embraced at the turn of the century – besides the escalated environmental concerns that do not exactly translate into actions*). It is perhaps then, time to turn back to mugging and maybe thinking a little more about Economic stuff that goes way beyond our Sloman-Concepts and Parkins-Notions.

*Maybe it would be better for Bjorn Lomborg to address that

Economics lessons have been pretty dry with focus turned to the syllabus, which forces students to look into highly superficial issues and to give answers that can be expected. Although they require intense analysis, and really deep thinking, the breadth appears highly restricted and there’s not much efforts to highlight special features of different context. For example, in a nation like Singapore, Monopolies may be good because of the highly limited market size and so on. I thought it would be a little more interesting to say something about the trend of pseudo-privatisation in light of the world’s event and the fact that we have began advocating privatisation in our economics textbooks.

Economics started out as a biased study – it favoured market economy and offered no other solutions to distribution and use of resources, despite the fact that it has pointed out several problems with existing mechanisms. It sets out to predict and recommend economic decisions and such – the main differing feature from the study of Business. As such, one can expect the whole focus to be on praising market economy and the private businesses. In the beginning, that was true, but subsequent efforts to identify problems of the study proved very much the flawed nature of the classical theories because of technological and practice changes that set in after the World Wars and the Great Depression. In addition, the successes of certain planned system at the initial stage of a developing region that boomed helped convince people that a degree of control is required in the world of economics – at least before the people are able to discipline themselves.

The movement started out with Marx and then toned down by Keynes. It was powerful and Nationalization became more than just a moral obligation of the government (it was so for the Brits before). There’s now an economic reason for Nationalization – it was to combat the dangers and then ills of the market economy that may just pop out and cause chaos. But as novel methods of control came in, nationalization had to give way to the regulations that were seen as being more efficient. The efficiency of the economy remained the most important consideration despite understanding the danger of free market (which is deemed the most efficient of all – at least economic efficiency, not social efficiency).

Then the capitalist fought back with trade, globalization and whatever network that helped raise demand almost infinitely and made it possible for privatization to become important – to keep up with the market and the rest of the world, in product development, research and management. It made privatization the trend, the priority, the goal, of many economies – at least for those who were forced upon such aims by trade agreements and trade organizations. It was another victory of the capitalist over the left-wingers (not too sure, maybe I used this word wrongly) though it was an overhaul of the capitalist perspective (Monetarism became much more important in this so there was an incorporation of the socialist ideas as well).

So much for the support of privatization and historical setting but the main point is not even raised. These aims, being forced upon the nations of different nature, had to retain control over key industries and at least those important in generating the revenues for the government and such. Such requirement that the governments deregulate markets and try to allow more competition ends up resulting in more control unfortunately. The overt nationalization, under such circumstances, cannot work. The government had to show, at least as apparently as possible, that there exist competition, or potential for competition. This caused the rise of ‘Pseudo-Privatization’, where the government retains almost full control over the key industries or prefered businesses that are generating lots of profits. This is made possible by complicating different processes and issuing highly exclusive licenses for starting the businesses.

Asian societies have not been comfortable with intense competition – mainly because they had a great culture of collaboration, and emphasized the importance of working together in the business in order to prosper. As such, the governments would like to retain as much control as possible to reduce uncertainty that may be present in an event when key industries are bought over by foreginers. The intention of pseudo-privatization is largely good, to protect the interest of the nation and its people. Fortunately, to privatize would mean the need to raise prices, and that compromises the interest of the consumer and this have not been solved mainly because the owners of the firms eventually benefit from the higher prices. It is under such circumstances that the government and firm owners are gaining more control rather than less.

To the distaste of citizens, there’s another scenario that’s worse off. Governments try to raise revenue by deregulating a industry that is highly profitable, then allow competition while they own the original firm through government-link companies or huge corporations started by the family members of those who may be in the government (though it may not necesssarily constitute neopotism) and this would result in the non-allocative efficient equilibrium across such industries – highly undesirable by the standards of the college economic textbook.

The general strategy of pseudo-privatization is making it obligatory for the firms to expose accounting information and company data by forcing them to list publicly when they attain a certain size, then the main ‘investing arm’ of the government will try takeover firms that have been privatize or capture rival firms with their [infinite] financial power. They would then manage the firms professionally, generating enough revenue to cover up such costs and advertising mainly to give foreigners the illusion that the market have been deregulated. This translates into unnecesary spending and thus worse consumer welfare.

It would then perhaps be better sometimes for firms to be nationalized if they are just pseudo-privatised because it simply creates a worse scenario for the consumers. It is important, though that we recognize that these pseudo-privatized firms helps create jobs and thus stimulates and propel the economy – something deemed extremely desirable in a society in need of demand and purchasing power. So looking back at the point I made earlier, small markets, should still have lots of pseudo-privatized firms; so that they may have a chance to be as good as our nation.

Life’s probably getting a little too dry and some incidents prove that my sense of humour and wit is getting distorted by the pressures of education (or otherwise). At least, they happen in a way that makes me laugh – so I must say there’s no harm sharing.

Few days back, when I was lazing around, refusing to acknowledge the fact that examination is just 400 hours away, and playing Tennis on my Sony Ecrisson, the phone rang. The handphone, not my house phone. Being alone in my bedroom, I looked around, hesitated for a moment or two, and looked at the screen to find out which irritating friend was preventing me from enjoying my game, I realised the number came from an unknown caller. Annoyed, I picked up the phone with the characteristic dry ‘hello’ that arises in calls that irritates me.

Caller: *In a shocked-that-someone-picked-up-the-call tone* Oh! Hello! Good Afternoon!

Vib: *Pretending to be concerned but absolutely clueless tone* Yes?

Caller: I am from Lifestyle Limited (or whatever lameshit corporation that does cold-calling) and we are promoting this cruise package for…

Vib: …I think you called the wrong number… *Confidently, and eager to get back to the game of Tennis on the handphone*

Caller: *Concerned and confused* …Er, why do you say so?

Vib: *Loss for words*…Er… Because this is a handphone number… *Slapping myself for the lame excuse and the predicted subsequent lameness*

Caller: Oh… *Loss for words and absolutely stumped and confused* So whose handphone is this?

Vib: *Decides that the opportunity to lame around has arrived*…Er…I have no idea… *In the spoilt-American-kid-with-funny-accent way of speaking* …this phone just appeared in my house …

Caller: *Totally freaked out and anxious to end the conversation* Er…okay, bye bye!

So I just invented another method to rid myself of dumb cold-callers. I later perfected this technique, adding a ‘Hohoho, God bless you!’ before the call ends abruptly to amuse myself further. I’ll probably try it when the next cold-caller comes.

Next up, my mom has been lame all the while, but this time she totally breakthrough.

Vib: This piece of essay is totally crap…

Vib’s Mom: So you are implying that your essay is totally prawns?

Vib: *Absolutely loss for words. Stares at Mom*

Vib’s Mom: *Pretends nothing happened*

That’s a rather typical day in my house so to speak but I am damn put off by this lame one that I decided to blog anyway.

Step into the Popular Bookstore in the top floor of Majestic months back and the Chinese-educated applaud their great efforts for getting in the majestic array of Chinese books, that ranges from translated literature, arts, magazines, and even deluxe package novel series. For decades, the true Chinese of Singapore have not had such an academic haven. It is unfortunate that Chinese scholars have this really great sense of thrift that often translates into dog-earred books dumped back on the shelf, stacks of unsold but thoroughly read novel series, weird people who are strangely familiar because you see them in the bookstore reading some books every single time you go. The courageous attempt by the bookstore to slash prices proved further that these scholars has great affinity for money.

Alas, English books packed shelves eventually began emerging from the majestically designed, formerly ‘all-chinese’ bookstore. I believe it would soon take over half of the huge hall. Thinking back about the times when I frequent the Calligraphy shelf (now displaced by the English stuff), I began to regret not buying certain books I have come across. I took for granted that I could finish that few books just by visiting the bookstore now and then. The same applies for some other inspirational sort of books (but I can heck those).

I guess bookstores have to be caught in this dilemma of balancing profits with sincere encouragement for customers to get great books. That’s the case of publishers as well. Good books that could have otherwise been published was not because the publishers didn’t think they were profitable. In effect, the market system is definitely not in sync with the academic world. Looking at this fundamental assumption of rationality of consumers, we may have to sigh. The brave attempt by Popular to rejuvenate the ‘Chinese’ kind of reading culture failed pretty terribly because of several factors – though there are still many things to be happy about.

Firstly, the majority of Singaporeans (those born and raised in singapore) who would read Chinese books are really limited. Often, I find myself the only kid (maybe I am not) in the Chinese section (which takes up three quarter of the space in the bookstore). Most people at the ‘Chinese-educated’ age are at the financial-sensitive age where their price elasticity of demand for books are really high and thus, it is hard for the bookstore to extract profits from them. The second group of customers, those foreign residents educated in Chinese might be attracted but they really take up too little of the whole market and more importantly, the Popular@Majestic isn’t really that popular so to speak.

Life as an economic individual in this world isn’t going to be as smooth-riding nowadays.

Wanted to write another posts ranting about the dumb Singaporean/Asian lifestyle that requires that we mug and work harder during holidays but I decided that it was unnecessary in getting people convinced that we are not living very well – I guess it is too obvious.

Nah, don’t feel like writing anymore. Mugging Time.

Realising that my computer is running really slowly after acculmulating a hell lot of junk from my 4 years of secondary education and experimentation with different digital art forms, I know something had to be done. The 40GB Astone Portable 2.5″ harddisk is definitely running out of space and I can’t be carrying about 20GB worth of precious data in an unstable storage and potentially lose it. I didn’t set aside any budget at all for computer equipment this year because there’s nothing new coming out this year that I required or desire (Wanted Leopard but I guess I wasn’t that ready for it, so I decided it shall be left to 3 years later).

Comex came at a timely period when the junk is lagging my computer and the internet instability is really starting to irritate me. I worked out all possible solutions and decided that I have to transfer the education document archives in my computer and harddisk out. So I headed to Singapore Expo today and got a Maxtor Basics 200. It was a huge plastic box, measuring 45 by 130 by 226 millimeters and have a real storage capacity of 189GB. It is prettier than the Ranger casing though probably not as good, but I wanted to feel good about the thing I spent on so out fly the 170+ bucks on this plastic grey box, which I subsequently went on to dump 16GB worth of data into. If I happen to decide to backup my iTunes database, the usage will be much higher.

So I am sitting down here blogging and realising that my computer is running faster – though it probably is some kind of illusion that stems out of the desire to justify my buy.

Realising that my computer is running really slowly after acculmulating a hell lot of junk from my 4 years of secondary education and experimentation with different digital art forms, I know something had to be done. The 40GB Astone Portable 2.5″ harddisk is definitely running out of space and I can’t be carrying about 20GB worth of precious data in an unstable storage and potentially lose it. I didn’t set aside any budget at all for computer equipment this year because there’s nothing new coming out this year that I required or desire (Wanted Leopard but I guess I wasn’t that ready for it, so I decided it shall be left to 3 years later).

Comex came at a timely period when the junk is lagging my computer and the internet instability is really starting to irritate me. I worked out all possible solutions and decided that I have to transfer the education document archives in my computer and harddisk out. So I headed to Singapore Expo today and got a Maxtor Basics 200. It was a huge plastic box, measuring 45 by 130 by 226 millimeters and have a real storage capacity of 189GB. It is prettier than the Ranger casing though probably not as good, but I wanted to feel good about the thing I spent on so out fly the 170+ bucks on this plastic grey box, which I subsequently went on to dump 16GB worth of data into. If I happen to decide to backup my iTunes database, the usage will be much higher.

So I am sitting down here blogging and realising that my computer is running faster – though it probably is some kind of illusion that stems out of the desire to justify my buy.

Great, I learnt a new word ‘Satisfice’. A few moments ago I still lived in the delusion that ‘Satisfice’ meant the same as ‘Satisfy’ but it cannot possibly be. It has the similar kind of essence as the term it resembles but it meant something deeper, more sophisticated and much more specific. The aspect of the term I am most concerned about is it’s vaue in the study of Economics, so I ‘answer.comed’ it and found the following:

In economics, satisficing is a behaviour which attempts to achieve at least some minimum level of a particular variable, but which does not strive to achieve its maximum possible value. The most common application of the concept in economics is in the behavioural theory of the firm, which, unlike traditional accounts, postulates that producers treat profit not as a goal to be maximized, but as a constraint. Under these theories, although at least a critical level of profit must be achieved by firms; thereafter, priority is attached to the attainment of other goals.

The word satisfice was coined by Herbert Simon in 1957. Simon says that people are only ‘rational enough’, and in fact relax their rationality when it is no longer required. This is called bounded rationality.

Some consequentialist theories in moral philosophy use the concept of satisficing in the same sense, though most call for optimization instead.

In an attempt to describe the world better, we invent terms, and for the Economists, we have to come up with simplification of scenarios. In the case of ‘Satisficing’, we realised our classical theory that assumes we are perfectly able to achieve what we want – or at least it seems. In reality, we have to settle for something less everytime and not being able to make up our minds meant that the second best alternative used for measuring opportunity cost does not really exist (because you have ‘many other’ alternatives) and moreover, your option is usually not the best choice made – at least in restrospect (which is why we have a term to describe this phenomenon and it is known as ‘regret’).

The concept of bounded rationality is not new – in fact, all students of economics who have not learnt about it would have a sense of it already because the concept of economic rationality is somehow flawed. I wanted to write the article ‘When Smith meets Kant’ but haven’t got the chance to. It’s going to be a long treatise to reconcile the concept of self-deception, reality, morality, economics and perhaps all questions that lies fundamentally in how decisions are being made based on a variety of theories. It relates very much to the question of rationality. In essence, we have absolutely no idea what rationality is. We may have a degree of knowledge about it, but not sufficient to quantify all decision making in the world. The concept of insane is also frequently misunderstood to be a lack of rationality. I would think it is more like a ‘postponed rationality’ because our perception of the world changes with time and so is the idea of rationality.

Back to the topic of how imperfect the world is, it is unrealistic to learn about the perfect world actually. For if we cannot get to the ideal, do not want to make use of the ideal, know about the consequences of the ideal which we do not want to befall on us, and have clear idea of the disadvantage of what is known and thought to be ideal, then there’s no point even constructing it in the first place. If you know your stuff, you know I am referring to concepts of Market Structures that forces us to think about the Perfect Markets. I guess we all know about the Perfect Competition and the merits of it. We think it is best market structure because it is perceived to maximise utility in peaceful, unregulated conditions. Unfortunately, if you see hard enough, you will realised that a Perfect Competition Market Structure raptured by an economic recession is never going to recover and I guess I don’t have to elaborate on these facts of life.

We withhold what thought to be the essence of the ideal when in fact, there’s no such thing because of the way what is ‘idea’ is defined. In my opinion, those ‘ideal’ scenarios should not have any conceivable disadvantages and must not be attacked in any way to render it as not being ideal anymore. As such, nothing can be ideal and perhaps in Economics, we should cease considering such kind of knowledge. The models we know of and reject as ideal are mere product of the imaginative mind that persuades us that things that do not occur are ideal and perfect – which cannot be true because it would have pose a strong incentive for us to work towards it, when we are not. Let us then, settle for the less ‘ideal’.

‘Yes!’ I exclaimed to myself suddenly as I was at the bus stop waiting for the bus that comes every 20 minutes and is supposed to translate me in the spatial dimension over to a locus that is deemed to be my house. I just realised that we have all been wrong about the concept of time – gravely wrong in fact.

My preoccupation with the idea of time began very much after watching the video on ‘The Elegant Universe’ 2 years back and I was struggling to imagine time as another dimension that exist in space. It would make it the 4th dimension or so we call. The problem with the existing imaginative model of time is that it exist as frames, as though a video documenting our lives, and therefore, we can rewind, review, pause, and even ‘overwrite’ events. This model is gravely wrong if we analyse time in the spatial dimension kind of way.

Let us assume that our spatial dimension is collectively a ball in some form of 3-dimensional space but only able to translate in a single dimension. This ball, is on a ramp and it rolls down as though there’s gravity pulling the ball on a ramp. It rolls in a straight line and it can only keep rolling, unable to cease without help of any external force or whatsoever. The ramp is infinitely long, or we can say it is as long as time can go. This ramp, is the dimension of time itself. The action of rolling down the ramp is an innate physical property of everything that exist on and within the ball, which is our spatial dimension.

At every moment, the rolling continues, we translate in time. When we translate in time, the time we have passed simply cease to exist. Thus, when you go back in time, it would mean you are jumping off this spatial dimension (the ball) and on to the dimension of time (the ramp, which is a single dimension), and the only experience I can postulate from this ‘jumping off’ action is simply ‘void’. You are said to be ‘erased from our time’ and you become stucked in this void. As everything has translated along the axis of time, it cannot possibly still be expected to exist on the same position so in no way can you go ‘back’ in time.

Similarly, trying to ‘jump off’ the ball, to be ahead of it, or to ‘travel’ to the future, would leave you in void, and if you are lucky enough, you can return to our spatial dimension when the ball catches you, if not, you’ll be as lost as those who ‘travelled back in time’. In this model for the concept of time, there’s entirely no room for time travel. For in the first place, you are unable to create this external force to change the movement of the ball on the ramp and more importantly, nothing ‘moves in time’ with you and even if ‘travelling in time’ is allowed, it is going to be pure gloom and nothing else. In fact, the rolling momentum can even destroy you entirely before you leave the spatial dimension – assuming there’s such a rolling motion.

In this sense, time is possibly the largest dimension, containing everything in it, including those dimensions within our spatial dimension. There are, as suggested by the string and M-theory, other dimensions so small we can’t translate into them. Though we can’t actually measure the ‘size of a dimension’, we can gauge that sort of property by thinking in such imaginable models. Unfortunately, this model I present focuses too much on the conventional idea of space that may not be applicable to time (which would mean I forcefully attached the idea to the concept), and disregard possible presence of more sophisticated systems in newer and unimaginable dimensions.