One degree of thought

For all of those people who have gone through the wonderful experience, that is science, would know that theory advances, what starts of as ground breaking thought, simple, straight forward ideas. For example, the humble electron. It started as a planetoid particle on a 2D disc and ended up being, to my limited knowledge, a vague cloud whose position we couldn't know precisely, if we also wanted to know its momentum (Yes. I confirmed this from Wikipedia. Just to make sure). We like straight forward things, we like keeping things simple. In fact we have an entire rhetorical argument regarding what Occam's Razor really means...it also doesn't help when the greatest smart ass of all time, Aristotle, is regarded as the father of Modern thought. If you are a lawyer, perhaps, and if your vocabulary consists of either a 'yes' or a 'no'. For the rest of us, who struggle with grey, there is a more pressing matter. When do we start thinking beyond 1 degree of thought. What do I mean ? Well lets tackle inflation. What is the cause of inflation ? People getting paid more money ? Yes. Govt, printing more money ? Yes. Increased demand for underlying commodities ? Yes. All of the above ? Yes. Give people cheap credit ? Yes... so on and so forth... one can research the various schools of thought from the Wiki page if one wanted to.

Ok so we have established the 'causes' for inflation. Now how do we tackle inflation, and why must we tackle inflation in the first place ? Well, unless you can take advantage of the rising prices and the free money floating around in the market place, you are going to be stuck with a fiat currency, a bit like a leaky boat, or an energy system, slowly losing its energy to entropy, in other words, the inherent value of your savings decreases over time. Why does this matter ? After all, as you climb the ladders of society won't you get paid more ? and then, won't you be able to meet the demands of your humanity irrespective of the inflationary pressures ? Yes you would, if you constantly get promoted and if your salary keeps rising beyond the rise in inflation and if you don't get married and have children and don't have rising health costs and you don't have to buy a house and I'm sure you get the picture.

So there is a need for tackling inflation. So, how do we go about tackling inflation ? and is it fair to say that the job of tackling inflation lies with just 1 body, either the reserve bank or the govt. etc... If the cause of inflation if multi factorial then it's safe to assume that the 'cure', too, should have a multifaceted approach. So perhaps if the Govt. was all encompassing, it could, in its infinite wisdom, try and tackle inflation. However, Govt. like any large organisation, is really self serving and panders to either its CEO or it's majority stake holders. Since inflation doesn't really effect any of these people, they aren't too serious about it, unless there is a rising mob demanding blood, hunkering down for a good protest somewhere. Let's be creative in thinking about inflation and tackling it. We should all go on strike. For one day. wouldn't that be an awesome sight to behold. Everyone just stayed at home for one day. Let the homeless people have the city for one day, to ride up and down the streets in their trolleys. What would that achieve ? nothing really, but I just thought it would be cool if that would happen. Ok so mass strike isn't a relevant part of this conversation. What is then ? I mean increasing interest rates is only a single macro economic weapon, which sort of influences the demand and supply of credit and debt, which sort of gets people to start tightening their belts, which sort of eases the demand generated for goods, which sort of makes a few expensive items in the stores to go to waste, ensuring that they get sold in a 'not quite right store', which sort of reduces profits somewhere, which sort of gets pushed onto the consumer... I'm not sure where the inflation is being tackled here and this doesn't work for stagflation. We could pay people less. They would have no money to spend, no inflation. Obviously that won't work, but that is what is happening all around the world. Slowly and surely the earning capacity of each and every individual is declining, and we are working longer hours, except in France. They just keep working less and less, though they are getting clever with ways to pay the rent. And prices keeping rising. You can't buy a house without taking a loan, for most people, you don't get tax benefits if you rent, in most parts of the world, and that new night club isn't ever as exclusive as it used to be on the opening night. So many people everywhere !! Shall we have a mass culling, let's say we get rid of all the Africans and then then carve Africa up into pieces for everyone else to share, increasing the supply side of economics. I still think we aren't being creative enough, I'm sure there are more creative ways to tackle inflation, I'm just limited by my uni dimensional thought process. Its a horrendous position to be in for someone who is a Kantian at heart. If my ability to think n steps into the foreseeable future is greater than that of the other person, then do I get to make the ethical rules that everyone must follow ? Or do I simply become more ethical ? would I be ethical if I took advantage of my foresight ? Mmmm have I digressed from our topic of inflation ? Those fellow Kantians, who know what I'm yammering about, won't think so. But for the others, sorry to say, you are stuffed. Society at large doesn't really think about itself in any meaningful way, it sort of struggles along, limping from one disaster to the next, all the while pretending to have meaningful insights into itself. Like the one you are reading right now ! I like straight forward 'yes' / 'no' scenarios, but lets face it, the time for 1 degree of thought is over, we should at least recognise 2 degrees of thought :) if not three.

to be continued...