Saturday, January 30, 2010

The Hamster That Ate The World lol

A must see British video clip that illustrates the seminal idea upon which Herman Daly built his model of Steady State Economics (SSE). It is also important to remember that Mr. Daly never gave himself the credit for the idea, he always stressed that he borrowed the concept; or rediscovered it if you will; from the work of JS Mill.





4 comments:

  1. I found this cartoon very interesting. The last question it poses, "Why does economist and politicians think that the economy can grow for ever and ever"?, to answer this, I would say its because we have not seen massive extinction of human beings yet. even when humans did die in large numbers in the past, we always blamed it on something, like the plague, famine or natural disasters. Also, when people do die in large numbers, some of us dismiss it as being a natural thing, as if the deaths are needed to keep a health balance in population. Very few of us are keen to understand that having too much people in one place can also bring about a disaster, due to the sheer population volume, for example, cities being warmer, cloudier, etc, then villages; due to cites having more people that live more densely compared to villages. Also, even if economist are aware of this fact to some extent, they believe that advance technology will some how be able to support a more populous world.

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  2. Yea, Syed. I think the issue with not seeing "massive extinction of human beings" is not necessarily because it's not happening. With technology and the stretching of Earth's natural processes (whether with petroleum fertilizers, or by shipping drinking water to cities in the desert)- we've created a fragile system upon which human numbers are growing. I think, instead of us actually escaping any sort of serious immediate population drop (which is the only thing people would recognize as significant- they don't put together the millions slowly dying from air pollution, etc), we're setting ourselves up for some serious regret. What's the saying? "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of treatment." =/

    Also... that video is hilarious.

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