Austerity is undesirable. Everyone wants prosperity. Austerity brings violence and unrest.

What is prosperity?

Prosperity is the ability to buy what you need - or what you may not need.

It is everyones desire - this ability to buy what you need.

When there is much buying and selling we have prosperity. Those are times when people are employed. They sell their time and buy goods and services with their earnings. Thus causing other people to be employed and, themselves, to buy things. Prosperity is connected to economic activity; the vigorous exchange of goods and services.

To be able to buy things is the ultimate measure of prosperity. So to ask for prosperity is to ask for economic activity.

Of course, the benefits of economic activity may not fall equally on all, but those who prosper do so from economic activity. Governments try to create prosperity. Adversity drives Governments from office.

Fundamental equation:

spending    minus    revenue = deficit = must be borrowed

Any government - municipal, national - is an economic unit. During the year it spends an amount called ’spending’. The taxes and the fees it collects are its ‘revenue’. The difference between these two is called the ‘deficit’; its negative is the surplus.

The deficit is the amount of money that must be borrowed in order for the government to pay its spending bills for that year.

Government borrowing takes the form of bonds. These are promissory notes sold on the open market. In the U.S. all such borrowing is done only with the consent of the electorate. It is we who permit government to borrow; either directly, by vote on a bond issue, or indirectly as when Congress raises the Debt Limit.

(more…)

I’ve plotted some of the data in the graph.

The horizontal axis covers the years from 1900 to 2007. Where data was available, the blue points display the estimated number of people in the world in billions. (The number 4 on the vertical axis means a population of 4 billion people)

The red points represent the percentage increase in population per year as calculated from the blue population data. For the red data the numbers on the vertical axis mark the population increase in percentage points per year. (The same number 4 means, for this curve, a growth rate of 4%/year)

From data not plotted here it is clear that before 1900 the growth rate was always lower than 0.7%/yr and usually significantly lower. At the time of the Bubonic Plague in 1400 the human population growth rate was negative. In 1778, when Malthus published “On Population”  the growth rate was about 0.4 %/year.

So we see from the graph that the greatest percentage growth rate in the recorded history of humanity happened between the years 1963 and 1972! And that was about 2%/yr - a doubling time of 35 years.

The dip in the curve around 1960 is due entirely to the population drop of 10 million people in China. This was the time of the great famine caused by Mao Tse Dung’s “Great Leap Forward”.

Where do the numbers come from?

(more…)

What’s to love?

An equation is is a statement that says ‘this equals that’. It’s hard to imagine, from that raw and basic idea, that something called an equation could be of any use. Whether ‘this equals that’ or not seems a matter of little consequence!

But, in fact, we know that to state what things are equal can have powerful consequences.

Newton’s law - that the net force on something causes it to accelerate - is a matter of things being equal. Force = mass multiplied by acceleration. This law of nature governs an extraordinary panoply of phenomena: the solar system, the entire NASA program of space exploration, the working of engines, the nature of energy and thus of pressure and of temperature and thus our understanding of weather. It underlies thinking in engineering, geology, chemistry, biology, and, of course, physics. All from ‘this = that’.

(more…)

In “Civilisation and its Discontents”, Freud says, “Culture has to call up every possible reinforcement in order to erect barriers against the aggressive instincts of men…Its ideal command to love one’s neighbor as oneself is really justified by the fact that nothing is so completely at variance with original human nature as this.” From a Buddhist perspective, nothing is so at variance with our original nature as the “aggressive instincts” Freud describes. In fact, aggression, hatred, and greed are seen as based in delusion and covering over our innate goodness.

‘Original human nature’, ‘innate goodness’. Is there meaning attached to these phrases?

How measure what is ‘human nature’? How can one know what is at the core of all human activity? Is there a single ‘nature’ which drives the behavior of all humans? Is there any empirical foundation for the idea that ‘aggressive instincts (are) original human nature’ or for the opposite view that ‘aggression, hatred, and greed are … covering over our innate goodness.’?

(more…)

Fundamentally there is no point to being alive. People live. They don’t dwell on its pointlessness.

Most fabricate a meaning for existence. They manufacture a ‘point’:  to serve God, to make music, to create art, to succor the family, to attain high speeds, to wreak vengeance … To ‘do’ something or other. The ‘doing’ is sanctified by calling it ‘the meaning of life’. But on the cosmic scale of things none of these activities qualifies as ‘meaning of life’. They’re merely expressions of human enthusiasms. Subjective passions not ultimate insight.

A few accept that the phrase “the meaning of life” has no meaning. They are the ones who delight in pointlessness.

Meaninglessness has implications. One is that there is no God. I can’t prove it. Nor can I prove that there is no Santa Claus or tooth fairy. By the time of adolescence one accrues enough experience of life to relegate these concepts to charming myth. It is experience of life - awareness of natural process - that relegates God to myth.

Is existence due to will (the will of God)? If there were a God, is he interested in the trivial foibles of human affairs? These ideas are simply too primitive for a mature, reasonably educated person to embrace.

Medieval battles were preceded by fervent appeals of the combatants to God. Was the outcome determined by the appeals? Surely not. On earth, death is the release granted terrible suffering. Can there be an afterlife of interminable suffering from which not even death can offer relief? The alternative is an afterlife in which one floats around interminably happy in the presence of God.

These are such manifestly fairy tale notions that it is difficult to understand how functioning adults could believe them. But a large number evidently do believe them. And with fervor. Lives are molded by these convictions.

How charmingly diverse are the life forms among human convictions.

On my daily walk along Joy Road I pass many scenes. One of them is shown in the image. Another, further along the road, is policed by a black and white dog. My neighbor tells me he is a Border Collie. As I walk by he barks at me without stop as if to say, “If I weren’t on this chain I’d come at you and sever your foot from your leg.”

I, of course, am happy that the chain restrains his turf.

One day, as my walk brought me near, I could see this dog scampering around his usual territory. But, now, he was obviously free of the chain. I got worried and looked around for a stick to defend myself. Fido, oblivious, just cavorted merrily, snapping at flies, running frenetically here and there without a sound out of him. He stopped for a moment, looked at me, and then returned to his play. No barking. No attack. He had no interest in me!

And so I came to understand what Fido was saying when he barked at me.

“Hey you - anybody - come over here and get this chain off my neck.”

Of course any dog lover would assume this from the outset. Apparently I lacked the insights that dog lovers have. I have not paid attention to the language of animal behavior. It’s a failing.

RESTRAINT IS VALIANT

It takes valor to hold your tongue. The common view is that to do battle is valiant. But, in truth, to refrain from battle is valianter! The reward is the husbanding of precious life’s moments, as exemplified in the following story called “Righteous indignation is a temper tantrum.”

It’s Friday. Morning. The telephone rings. I answer it.

Caller:

“Marvin Chester? This is Dr. Andersen’s office.
You have an appointment at 10 am next Tuesday.
I need to cancel it.
I’ll put you down for 2 pm.
Do you have any problem with this?”

I am offended by the words and the tone of voice. I think of answering:

“Is this a command from an imperial highness? When you break an appointment, common courtesy dictates an apology. And a request for another appointment. Not a summons to appear. Not a recital of when audience will next be granted. I’d like to speak to Dr. Andersen. Please have her call me.”

That’s what went through my mind but it didn’t pass my lips. Instead I answered:

“O.K. 2 pm it is.”

On hanging up the phone I rejoice in the blessings of perspective. By restraining my outrage I bought myself perhaps hours, if not days, of precious life moments that would otherwise have been wasted in the fruitless instruction of others on how to behave.
________________________

This stepping stone once read:

RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION IS A TEMPER TANTRUM.

http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/hhw/hhw_pumping.html

http://childrensheartinstitute.org/educate/heartwrk/bloodflw.htm

(more…)

(more…)