Faith, Physics, and Psychology by John Medina

Author:John Medina
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-931847-96-4
Publisher: Bahai Publishing
Published: 2011-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Mathematical Unreality

As we have mentioned, from its inception, the overall discipline of economics has been patterned in the form of a “hard” science. In the eyes of many, such claims were vindicated when the Nobel Prize for “economic science” was first established in 1969, with the following justification given by the Nobel committee: “Economic science has developed increasingly in the direction of a mathematical specification and statistical quantification of economic contexts.”13 As a part of their complex mathematical formulations, however, economists are notorious for applying cost-benefit analyses and various models that do not account for the true social, psychological, environmental, and spiritual costs that are involved in all economic activities.

Economists refer to such costs as “external” variables because they do not fit into their mathematical theories. For instance, the gross national product (GNP), the most basic measure of a nations economic performance, ignores all nonmonetary aspects of the economy, such as pollution, soil erosion, and deforestation, while indiscriminately adding up all economic activities that have monetary value. Ironically, even health care costs and litigation costs that can be attributed to deteriorating environmental and social conditions are all accounted as positive entries that increase a nation’s GNP. The expenditures that are required to try to clean up pollution such as toxic chemical or oil spills actually cause an increase in a nation’s GNP. Thus it is possible for the GNP to present a rosy picture of the state of a nation when in actuality the country may be saddled under accelerating health care costs, disunifying litigation costs, and unproductive (in the sense that wise environmental protections could prevent these costs) environmental disaster clean-up costs.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.