Hey Josie. Can you explain a bit more? I'm not quite getting your point. From my economicsy point of view, the thing you're describing looks like substitutability, not diminishing returns, though that might be cos I'm missing what you're saying.
Oop, apols, ended up writing quite a lot...
E.g. with the vitamins - yes, we need all of them and they're not substitutable. But each vitamin has, from the body's point of view, diminishing returns, doesn't it? I can take a certain amount of vitamins a day but the rest just get flushed out (or poison me). But the first portions are hugely valuable/essential to me.
A highly reductionist method for describing substitutability is central to the Krugman-style economics I used in the PhD, you'll be pleased to hear! The difference between substitutable and non-substitutable goods is reduced to a single parameter. It can be set so that e.g. if a model person has all of A but no B, or vice versa, their utility is zero. Or it can be set so that it's maximised when they have a perfect mix of both. Or anything in between. Or for any number of goods. Here's a Two good example: top graph, any mix of two goods for a given spend gives the same utility; bottom of the three, only the perfect mix of the two is maximal.
Can you say more about your last line as well? Seems like it's a more general point about the spurious ethics of utility and its relation to free market ideology. This is stuff I'm still trying to work out, input would be most welcome. I'm aware that my own use of the theory in the modelling work has probably coloured my entire world outlook. (Example: I seem to be happier to use plastic bags now there's a charge since I know I'm internalising their cost. Luckily, most people don't think like that, so the charge *has* led to a drop in plastic bag use, but perhaps it would have gone the other way if everyone thought like economists!)
That said, I am trying to situate what I do in some political context. I don't know if it's possible to extract economics from its relation to free market hegemony. Theoretically, that's not a problem. In practice? I always thought it was very telling in Krugman's reflections (PDF) on his most famous geography model. His whole aim was to get 'proper' economists to take geography seriously. There was no shortage of existing theory but Krugman knew he had to make a fully functioning general equilibrium model to be taken seriously:
In a crude sense, mainstream economics isn’t going away: like it or not, the White House has a Council of Economic Advisers, not a Council of Geographical Advisers, the World Bank hires lots of economists and not many geographers, and so on. So if insights from geography are going to have the influence they should, there has to be some kind of rapprochement.
So that certainly happens for people actually close to the economics/power nexus (and it would appear there certainly is one, as that quote makes clear!) For everyone else using bits of this body of work, as I am... well, it makes me think of the whole GM thing as well. My view is that the technology and the companies using it should be considered separately. GM could be useful and should be publically funded - without that public support, it remains in the control of companies like Monsanto. But one could take the opposite view: the two are inseparably tangled, massive corporate power and a particular form of tech and you can't support one while rejecting the other.
The same might be said of economic theory and free market ideology. Maybe they're not separable. I think that's wrong - some of the ideas are too useful to throw out. E.g. I've been using the CES function to try and work out what happens if fuel costs go up, to help figure a way through to post-carbon-land. And like I say in the Pareto stuff above, I think doing so is just as ideological as its opposite. But I'd like to hear more arguments on it.
On the post-carbon thing, I do wonder, for instance, if the Transition movement's focus on action and dense community economies (whether I agree with its economic analysis) is just so much better than sitting in a room with a CES function. Dunno. I'd like to think both had their place.
Hey Josie. Can you explain a
Hey Josie. Can you explain a bit more? I'm not quite getting your point. From my economicsy point of view, the thing you're describing looks like substitutability, not diminishing returns, though that might be cos I'm missing what you're saying.
Oop, apols, ended up writing quite a lot...
E.g. with the vitamins - yes, we need all of them and they're not substitutable. But each vitamin has, from the body's point of view, diminishing returns, doesn't it? I can take a certain amount of vitamins a day but the rest just get flushed out (or poison me). But the first portions are hugely valuable/essential to me.
A highly reductionist method for describing substitutability is central to the Krugman-style economics I used in the PhD, you'll be pleased to hear! The difference between substitutable and non-substitutable goods is reduced to a single parameter. It can be set so that e.g. if a model person has all of A but no B, or vice versa, their utility is zero. Or it can be set so that it's maximised when they have a perfect mix of both. Or anything in between. Or for any number of goods. Here's a Two good example: top graph, any mix of two goods for a given spend gives the same utility; bottom of the three, only the perfect mix of the two is maximal.
Can you say more about your last line as well? Seems like it's a more general point about the spurious ethics of utility and its relation to free market ideology. This is stuff I'm still trying to work out, input would be most welcome. I'm aware that my own use of the theory in the modelling work has probably coloured my entire world outlook. (Example: I seem to be happier to use plastic bags now there's a charge since I know I'm internalising their cost. Luckily, most people don't think like that, so the charge *has* led to a drop in plastic bag use, but perhaps it would have gone the other way if everyone thought like economists!)
That said, I am trying to situate what I do in some political context. I don't know if it's possible to extract economics from its relation to free market hegemony. Theoretically, that's not a problem. In practice? I always thought it was very telling in Krugman's reflections (PDF) on his most famous geography model. His whole aim was to get 'proper' economists to take geography seriously. There was no shortage of existing theory but Krugman knew he had to make a fully functioning general equilibrium model to be taken seriously:
In a crude sense, mainstream economics isn’t going away: like it or not, the White House has a Council of Economic Advisers, not a Council of Geographical Advisers, the World Bank hires lots of economists and not many geographers, and so on. So if insights from geography are going to have the influence they should, there has to be some kind of rapprochement.
So that certainly happens for people actually close to the economics/power nexus (and it would appear there certainly is one, as that quote makes clear!) For everyone else using bits of this body of work, as I am... well, it makes me think of the whole GM thing as well. My view is that the technology and the companies using it should be considered separately. GM could be useful and should be publically funded - without that public support, it remains in the control of companies like Monsanto. But one could take the opposite view: the two are inseparably tangled, massive corporate power and a particular form of tech and you can't support one while rejecting the other.
The same might be said of economic theory and free market ideology. Maybe they're not separable. I think that's wrong - some of the ideas are too useful to throw out. E.g. I've been using the CES function to try and work out what happens if fuel costs go up, to help figure a way through to post-carbon-land. And like I say in the Pareto stuff above, I think doing so is just as ideological as its opposite. But I'd like to hear more arguments on it.
On the post-carbon thing, I do wonder, for instance, if the Transition movement's focus on action and dense community economies (whether I agree with its economic analysis) is just so much better than sitting in a room with a CES function. Dunno. I'd like to think both had their place.