WIP summaries of bill mitchell's blog postings related to the connections between macroeconomics and wellbeing, particularly via unemployment and inflation
Delusions, false
theories and ideas about the world, can be dangerous when acted upon. I
would count as delusional beliefs, belief in 'creationism', 'market fundamentalism' and also the belief that 'climate change is not anthropogenic'.
The CLD
seeks to illustrate the dynamic that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to
disabuse holders of fanatical beliefs by simply using rational arguments and
facts. The professor of psychology, Jerry Kroth, said that delusions can be seen
as an incipient mental illness. He also said that 'repression' and 'denial' are by-products of delusions. It seems that rational arguments are useless when facts are simply denied: the dynamic shows that trying to refute a strongly held irrational belief merely strengthens it.
In a recent report, the World Economic Forum
considered that the use of robots in economic activity will cause far more job
losses in the near future than there will be new ones created. Every economic
sector will be affected. The CLD tries to illustrate the dynamic effects of
replacing human workers with robots. This dynamic indicates that if there is no replacement of
the income forgone by the laid off
workers, then the economy will soon grind to a halt. To avoid disaster, there
must be enough money in circulation, not parked in off-shore investments, to
permit the purchase of all the goods and services produced by robots. The
challenge for the government is to make sure that this is case.
Adapted from Fig 5.1 p.186 of the Book: James A. Forte ( 2007), Human Behavior and The Social Environment: Models, Metaphors and Maps for Applying Theoretical Perspectives to Practice Thomson Brooks/Cole Belmont ISBN 0-495-00659-9
The fact
that we all strive to reduce psychologically inconsistent thoughts is a well-researched phenomenon. When we hold
two conflicting thoughts in our heads we feel an overwhelming desire to reduce
this conflict. This desire can be a powerful driver in the way we behave. Most
of us are aware at some level that if we took the threat of climate change
seriously we would need to completely change our routines and the way we behave.
Flying off on holiday would be out of the question. Swimming pools would be a
past luxury. Most of us would need to give up our cars and become vegetarians.
The list can be extended almost endlessly. Very often, subconsciously, we try
to reduce troubling and inconvenient facts by minimizing, ignoring or even by denying
them. Could this be why we hardly talk about climate change even in the face of
increasingly frequent extreme weather events and obvious signs that it is
occurring now?
This subject
needs to be openly talked about between us and in the press. The seriousness of global warming makes it a necessity.
Only when this happens will politicians have the space and incentive to
act on our behalf. But before this can happen we need to be aware of the reason
why we avoid talking about this subject – this graph tries to illustrate the
harmful dynamic that could be responsible for it.
This common archetype of systems that include relapse or recidivism allows exploration of the unintended effects of increasing upstream capacity and swamping downstream capacity. The increase in the relapse rate eventually returns to swamp upstream capacity as well. A social welfare example, based on a TANF case study, from How Small System Dynamics Models Can Help the Policy Process. N. Ghaffarzadegan, J. Lyneis, GP Richardson. System Dynamics Review 27,1 (2011) 22-44 abstract Conference version at http://bit.ly/HlxtZj
This common archetype of systems that include relapse or recidivism allows exploration of the unintended effects of increasing upstream capacity and swamping downstream capacity. The increase in the relapse rate eventually returns to swamp upstream capacity as well. A social welfare example, based on a TANF case study, from How Small System Dynamics Models Can Help the Policy Process. N. Ghaffarzadegan, J. Lyneis, GP Richardson. System Dynamics Review 27,1 (2011) 22-44 abstract Conference version at http://bit.ly/HlxtZj
Counterfactual views are claims or beliefs that are
contrary to established facts. Such views can be extremely harmful. An example would be the false
claims made by climate-change-deniers. This simple graph of two
self-reinforcing loops illustrates that there are circumstances where such false
beliefs strengthen once a sufficiently large number have accepted them. The
mechanism, well documented by research in cognitive psychology, is frequent repetition,
which makes such false messages appear ever more familiar and to take on an air
of factual truth.
An effective leverage point would be for newspapers and TV station
simply to deny to authors that want to spread counterfactual views access to their
platforms. Whilst everybody has the right
to express their opinion, does anybody have the right to invent their own facts
in an attempt to undermine general well-being?
