Why not just Economics. Why do they have to play games with everyone by adding "science" to everything? Economic "Sciences" is just as absurd as Creation "Science".
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025
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Re: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025
#102That's a tiny article, but it does contain an interesting passage: "for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress" which is the core of the reason the prize was awarded. I find it interesting to see technological progress so tightly coupled to sustained growth and I wonder if the implication is that growth will stop when technological progress stagnates. Is there any proo…
From an economist's perspective, energy is not typically recognised as a critical quantity. In so far as it is considered, it's thought of as an incidental property of some good or service being traded like oil or electricity. But technological progress can be understood as successively more sophisticated ways of capturing and directing energy from natural processes. Economic growth has always occurred downstream of…
> From an economist's perspective, energy is not typically recognised as a critical quantity.
Energy is a critical quantity in multiple subfields of economy including environmental economy where it's a core issue.
Re: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
At first glance, "sustained growth" sounds like an oxymoron. Nothing can grow forever, unless the growth asymptotically approaches zero.
Nothing about "sustained" implies "forever". Sustained notes at the symphony don't continue after the audience leaves.
More usefully, constantly looking at "forever" while living at human life time scales and engineering and scientific progress time scales - is absurd.
Re: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
White western men are no more represented in Economics than other hard sciences, and concensus in Economics is no different in East Asia and the rest of the world excepting the authoritarian Socialist experiments.
There's no "consensus" in economics, let alone.
Of course, there is consensus in economics.
It's a field which is mostly interested in models and anyone can agree that a model is consistant and implies surprising things even if they think the hypotheses it makes don't faithfully represent reality.
It's endlessly fascinating to me how some people will happily disparage economics while having very little idea of what it's actually about.
Re: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025
#105I was thinking about this concept of creative destruction recently. I move to my neighbourhood in 2019. Before I got round to visiting them, a bunch of pubs and eateries closed down for the pandemic, and never re-opened. One pub became new apartments. A cafe became some sort of spa. Take the pub for instance, I could imagine it was a lifestyle business for someone who made enough money from it, but not a whole lot. I…
A park will generate less revenue than an apartment building, a sports complex, or a cafe. Not all value is quantifiable in USD.
this isn't necessarily true. While it generates less direct revenue, it increases nearby land value in two ways: 1) business activity which would have taken place on that parcel "overflows" to nearby parcels, ie, the demand for those other land uses doesn't go away and increases prices in the surrounding area. 2) the park provides real value to its users and access to that value also increases nearby ground rents.
Re: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025
#106Why not just Economics. Why do they have to play games with everyone by adding "science" to everything? Economic "Sciences" is just as absurd as Creation "Science".
"Just economics" would go to the best businessman, no?
Re: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025
#107That's a tiny article, but it does contain an interesting passage: "for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress" which is the core of the reason the prize was awarded. I find it interesting to see technological progress so tightly coupled to sustained growth and I wonder if the implication is that growth will stop when technological progress stagnates. Is there any proo…
This is a persistent mythology of western economic history to "cleanwash" the past and "explain" the present inequality (or what was the present until recently) Think about the components of all those innovations from the past and if they would have been possible (to scale) without violent and forcible extraction of resources from around the globe, incl forced labor. Think about when GDP was constructed and how, and…
The west didn't get rich from colonizing the world.
It got rich domestically through industrialism. Then the newly rich countries went on to colonize the world, because now they could. If and how much the colonies made them even richer is debatable, but it was probably a net cost on average.
This is one of several insights counter to "common sense" that economists have figured out.
Re: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025
#108Why not just Economics. Why do they have to play games with everyone by adding "science" to everything? Economic "Sciences" is just as absurd as Creation "Science".
"Just economics" would go to the best businessman, no?
Is this a real question? Businessmen are in the business of management. It's why businessmen tend to get MBAs. Whilest economists get degrees in economics.
Re: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025
#109Re: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025
#110That's a tiny article, but it does contain an interesting passage: "for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress" which is the core of the reason the prize was awarded. I find it interesting to see technological progress so tightly coupled to sustained growth and I wonder if the implication is that growth will stop when technological progress stagnates. Is there any proo…
This is a persistent mythology of western economic history to "cleanwash" the past and "explain" the present inequality (or what was the present until recently) Think about the components of all those innovations from the past and if they would have been possible (to scale) without violent and forcible extraction of resources from around the globe, incl forced labor. Think about when GDP was constructed and how, and…
> Think about the components of all those innovations from the past and if they would have been possible (to scale) without violent and forcible extraction of resources from around the globe, incl forced labor.
This is just silly. Everywhere had forced labour, but didn't manage to build what the west did. The African slavers selling their fellow continent-dwellers didn't somehow manage to pick all the people who could build the most advanced things in the world at the time.
Oxford University was founded in 1096, long before what you're describing. This is very strong evidence that the UK has a thousand years of excellent investment in education, which much better explains all the advantages that built its empire, the good bits and bad. Its advances are in part due to the Roman colonisation, which allowed Britain to rediscover things that much more advanced civilisation had discovered 1000 years prior to that founding, and then push on to far greater heights.
There are entire countries that still wouldn't have universities today if left to their own devices. But they would still have slaves, because western powers wouldn't have ended this practice, either through Christianity or, if that didn't work, by force.