Whatever Floats Your Boat

   Is not magic.  Two ‘Happy Birthday songs’ (…  while washing our hands…)    is NOT magic.”    Easy short term answers are almost always too short, too little, too soon, and are based on assumptions.

The concept of a minimal response, to change a course, is one of those “economic” principals that seem to work.  Supply and Demand … ( let’s apply a nudge here or a tug there, and we’ll fix all our problems.)  They often even have math equations and graphs!  All we have to do, is just adjust a few little tiny, easy to manipulate parameters.  Just a tad; and all will be well (as defined in my Econ Text book). 

Our economists say that the  most “efficient” way for the world to work is for it to allow that wonderful  Invisible hand of the Market, with its ability to “weed out” those “inefficient” things that impede “progress” (or any other solutions old or new) is economic dogma.   It is the only way to set policy for the greater good of the greater fraction of mankind; and all because how much profit made is the only determiner of success.

 Man!  That invisible Hand is better than God.  Better than logic, empathy, justice, morality, or anything.

And the guy that made 1 penny per ton of extra profit on recycled used tires from Indonesia back in 1985:  he was a genius, (forget that the tax payers spent a 100 million dollar$ getting rid of the dengue fever epidemic that he brought to our shores with the Indonesian mosquitoes.  There was also a Cholera outbreak caused by “cheap imports”.   Cholera had been eradicated here for decades before the boat brought it to our shores.   The economically posited “genius”, the infinitely wise and omniscient God-like force that raises all boats (with its magical invisible hand) is the only way to set policy.   Now is the time, if any of you disagree, to have the capitalists scream: “Socialism!” 

Let us all be like economists; let us assume that we have a boat.   I recall a discussion about a hypothetical problem discussed between two economists:  It was thus:  “You are stranded on an island and you are desperate to get off ASAP…” one economist asks the other, “What would you do?”  The answer from the other economist was, “Well, let us assume that I have a boat.”  And then he went on at length with lots and lots of details.  The economists at Goldman Sacks just predicted the unemployment rate for 2021.  That’s when the pandemic with be over.  Forget that there is no vaccine now, no one knows how soon there will be one.  No one knows how much of it can be produced how fast, how many people will need it, how long it might work…  But they’ve assumed we’ll have it.

Now….  “Efficient” as defined by almost all economists is, the CHEAPEST short term bottom line, corporate, (and now: governmental) way to run the world and everything in it all the time so as to $ave money...  Shall we quote those who have said that the USA should be run like a business? 

Perhaps by a successful business man?

That Supply Chain Problem!  I just heard that the collapse of the supply chain is due to the fact that most (capitalists) ran their decisions of supply, sub contractors, manufacturing, movement of product, and retail distribution, based on the bottom line: “WHAT is the cheapest way to maximize my profit?   TODAY.

The invisible hand of the market somehow (in its infinite wisdom) lifts all boats.

You might have to assume that you have a boat, though…