“Relativism reduces every element of absoluteness to relativity while making a completely illogical exception in favor of this reduction itself. Fundamentally it consists in propounding the claim that there is no truth as if this were truth or in declaring it to be absolutely true that there is nothing but the relatively true; one might just as well say that there is no language or write that there is no writing. ... The assertion nullifies itself if it is true and by nullifying itself logically proves thereby that it is false; its initial absurdity lies in the implicit claim to be unique in escaping, as if by enchantment, from a relativity that is declared to be the only possibility.” ― Frithjof Schuon, Logic & Transcendence
"There is no better means of reducing a fallacious variety of thought to absurdity than to let it live itself out completely." ― Carl Menger
The absurdity of Economy ...
Little did Carl Menger imagine that his notion of marginal utility would be allowed to "live itself out" to absurdity, and yet that is what has happened. But, perhaps, Menger [like many great scientists before him] is merely the scapegoat for subsequent, smaller minds that took his transitional notion of relative values and, in a slothful act of pagan idolatry, deified it as a destination ... as absolute truth.
"The study of philosophy is a voyage towards the larger generalities. For this reason in the infancy of science, when the main stress lay in the discovery of the most general ideas usefully applicable to the subject matter in question, philosophy was not sharply distinguished from science. To this day, a new science with any substantial novelty in its notions is considered to be in some way peculiarly philosophical. In their later stages, apart from occasional disturbances, most sciences accept without question the general notions in terms of which they develop. The main stress is laid on the adjustment and the direct verification of more special statements. In such periods scientists repudiate philosophy; Newton, justly satisfied with his physical principles, disclaimed metaphysics." ―Whitehead
While most "economists" are stuck regurgitating what they "learned" by watching and listening to others regurgitate, a few have been able to lift their eyes and minds above their "micro" and even "macro" scopes to REALITY in its dazzling, comprehensive and coherent beauty. And what do they encounter?
... without going to the next level of Ecology
If the fatal flaw of Economy is its obsession with abstract desires, the strength of Ecology is its recognition of relative needs.
WHAT ???!!! Didn't we just say that relative values is a failed paradigm? Not exactly. What we said was that relative values are not appropriate as a destination. Economy by definition limits its field of vision to individuals [micro] or groups of individuals [macro], but in both cases it relies on some form of subjective value determination as the basis for rational exchange to "maximize" value.
Ecology is willing to consider the proposition that Nature [the Cosmos] imposes absolute limits and consequences on Economy in the form of an objective and comprehensive hierarchy of values .. something Hayek claimed mankind could never know and which he therefore fatally dismissed as non-existent. These absolute, objective values are defined relative to one another ... but the idea that this relativity can be meaningful within a local "subset" of all the things in the cosmos is futile nonsense.
... which redefines LIBERTY
Of course, most self-styled classical "economists" claim that the theory of relative values and marginal utility is the basis for liberty. And yet when it comes to explaining this "liberty", they go to absurd lengths which nobody practices in real life or is able to articulate even in theory.
Ecology provides a new and simple definition of LIBERTY:
Local Includes Believing Everything's Related To You
which puts Economy [local] into comprehensive perspective [includes] with Religion [believing], Science [everything's related] and the individual [to you].
... and returns us to Philosophy
And yet Ecology, properly understood, merely returns Economy to what Whitehead identified as its starting point for our Enlightenment ancestors: "the study of philosophy as a voyage towards the larger generalities" ... even God ... the ultimate absolute.
"Assessing the roles of economics and ecology for biodiversity conservation ultimately requires embedding the view of Mainstream Economics, Ecological Economics and ecology on humankind and nature into an encompassing philosophical understanding of the relationship between humans and nature."
TY - JOUR
AU - Faber, Malte
AU - Frick, Marc
AU - Zahrnt, Dominik
PY - 2019/01/20
SP -
T1 - Absolute and Relative Scarcity
VL -
ER -
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340336532_Absolute_and_Relative_Scarcity
Sounds like Genesis 1. Are our religious, political and educational institutions up to that challenge?
Added Resources
Mario Giampietro: "Models with Meaning - Changing Social Practices” | The Great Simplification #107 ... Giampietro proposes the task of combining Economy and Ecology by viewing them as stages in a universal "metabolism" ... an idea we also develop in our discussion of the 3e cycle:
"Society doesn't like complex things because we just like to parse things into dollars or euros and we make decisions on that and this is not easy to do with what you just said. It is something that should start in school, it should start in school. How would we do that? I think that they should change the way we teach things at school because all the energetics, metabolism, these are all... Let alone the discussion on multiple scales, this idea that we have only one scale is absurd. ... We have to even teach young people what energy is and why it's important to our lives. We're still not even doing that. No, but we are victim of the success of economics. This is the point, we are intoxicated [Rev 18:3]. Because if you imagine we have a discipline, I work with Kozo Mayumi which is a professor of economics. So I respect the category of what I'm saying. But what I'm saying is that economics assumes that absolute scarcity is impossible because it works with price. If you have price there is a modest scarcity, so you can use technology to trade the things. But if you have absolute scarcity, you no longer have price, you don't have a market, you have either war or solidarity but you don't have market. So we are using a science, they assume the absolute scarcity is impossible to study absolute scarcity, how to avoid it. Guys, no, economics is not capable of comparing the size of economic process to the size of ecological process. Would that ever change?"
