Biology Reference
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heaven” but “the stairway lies on a whispering wind” though we have the choice that “the
piper will lead us to reason and a new day will dawn … and the forests will echo with
laughter” for “there are two paths you can go by … there's still time to change the road you are
on” and “the piper is calling you to join him.” Furthermore, in comparison to the hunter-
gatherers, the purchase of one item for pastoralists and agrarian societies implicitly meant the
denial of purchase of another, and hence there was always an element of yearning for a
delayed gratification and a yearning to make more money, to be able to satisfy the yearning and
obtain financial security. Economists like to use these principals to impute how people will
behave (produce, distribute, consume) and influence economies. This clearly refers to not
hunter - gatherers but to our modern civilizations, a more recent man made system developed
some 5,000 years ago. The origin of economics is well described in the classic book by Adam
Smith (The Wealth of Nations) and in
Against the Gods
by Peter Bernstein. It is also worth
pointing out that hunter-gatherers and later African populations derive considerably from the
consumptive economy of using animals and vegetation from their ecosystems for survival
“wealth” but this is not included in economic value calculations of gross domestic product of
African countries and only productive use economies are measured, namely those to which a
monetary value can be ascribed to the resources being used for calculations, like agriculture or
mining. Furthermore, the future accrued “goodwill” of maintaining biodiversity for later
indirect potential benefits like disease resistance in an ecosystem is not counted. Bernstein
also relates Pascal's Wager, namely that if one gambles on whether there is a God or not, one
is better off statistically to assume he exists because one's good life on earth may rewarded but
if he does not exist it does not matter but if does, then one is doomed.
While travelling I came across the article by John Kay in the August, 2011, issue of the
Financial Times. He reviews how long held claims and assumptions held about economics
often ignore or overlook real-world empiric data, particularly in light of the global crisis. And
one could add altruistic gift economies. Just like predicting animal herbivore populations,
prediction of financial markets is difficult because they are non-linear, dynamic and are
influenced by random events like geologic or climatological events. Thus, predictions are
fraught with risk and for macroeconomics the governing DSGE model that tries to predict what
companies and households will do is only an approximation but holds sway. For financial
markets the assumption is that they take into account all factors and reflect these as part of the
capital asset pricing model. Even as late as 2007 the International Monetary Fund asserted that
from a macroeconomic point of view everything was under control and as Prof Robert Lucas
asserted, depression prevention had been solved. Kay goes on to argue that too much belief in
economic models has blinded economic theory to the realities that exist. Indeed, for example,
modern economists have little role for gift economies or for that matter professions that are
more altruistically driven such as NGOs, pro bono lawyers, physicians, nurses who do their
work more because they are driven by the importance of nurturing others and deep hunter-
gatherer egalitarian instincts. Fair enough, if the process is to predict how companies and
households influence the economy, then yes this has little immediate consequence. But one
entirely ignores it in its various formats. If healthcare is altruistic, and that point can be
debated, then surely the effects of the healthcare economy must be considered, the problem is
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