Comments on: what are you worth?

By: been sean

been sean — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 04:35:46 +0000

“Ground breaking research” eh… hmm…isn’t all research by definition ground breaking?

I guess it has a catchier ring to it than “incredibly obscure research.”

By: mir

mir — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:41:05 +0000

oy gevalt Sean,

Hugh’s ideas aren’t new or zany. They are in circulation through out discourses ( that means ‘talking’ to pointy-heads) on development, sustainability and rights-based initiatives.

For one thing; you’ve got your environmental performance index; http://www.newsweek.com/id/143678

and for another you’ve got economists like Marilyn Waring interviewed here;

http://aurora.icaap.org/index.php/aurora/article/view/26/37

Waring is an economist who did really ground-breaking research on people’s actual use of their time and discovered that most time spent laboring by citizens does not appear on any national or global economic index.

So Hugh if I were you I’d watch ‘Who’s Counting’ the film about Waring, which is an NFB film you can probably beg/borrow from someone you know.

By: been sean

been sean — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:21:27 +0000

I think not.

By: Hugh

Hugh — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:14:06 +0000

I think you’ve completely missed the point of the question.

By: been sean

been sean — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:26:40 +0000

Becuase you’re a smart guy who should be chasing down real questions rather than trying to seek glory by coining a new category of statistic.

I can’t imagine any point in knowing this statisticoid other than being able to stare at people wearing Wal Mart T shirt and sneering that they deprived some Chinese woman of 6 hours with her kid on a Sunday afternoon.

By: Hugh

Hugh — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:59:08 +0000

i’m interested to know how many hours of actual human work is represented in the purchases of the average north american, the average zimbabwean, the average indonesian etc. for the same reason that people think it’s interesting to know what the GDP of Russia is, or the inflation rate in Argentina, or unemployment rates in Montreal, or AIDS infection rates in Southern Africa. For all those things, you might ask the same question: what’s the difference? And I’d just have to shrug my shoulders. Just because I’m not interested in some particular fact or stat, it doesn’t follow that no one should be.

Which raises some more curiosity in me: why are you intent on convincing me not to find the answer to the question?

By: been sean

been sean — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:27:34 +0000

I agree fully with your first point. The range of pessimistics and optimists - or more usefully, corporate supporters and protest style rebels - helps create checks and balances on a system that ultimately ensures some good things happen.

I don’t understand why you’re so interested in how a Chinaman spends the hours of his day. If he wasn’t working maybe he’d be sitting around a hut grabbing a few plants from the field to eat. What’s the difference? Time might have intrinsic value for north americans but time ain’t money everywhere on the globe.

By: Hugh

Hugh — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:56:54 +0000

sean, i doubt we’ll convince each other of anything, but, i’d propose that human societies need gloomy pessimists to gnash teeth about potential problems, and chronic optimists to forge blindly ahead. mix them together, along with those in the middle, and you probably get a system that’s more stable in the long run. that is, if everything is always “just fine” there’s no need to find better solutions to problems, or worry about problems at all, ie no need to innovate; and if everything is always a catastrophe, we’ll spend all our energy in risk management and no time on day to day needs. mix the two together, and force them to negotiate with each other (as, say, democracy does - and maybe even blog comments) and you’ll end up with better day-to-day results, and better long term decision-making. nature, truly, is a wonder.

But, all this is a distraction from my initial question/proposal, which was: to look at economic inputs/outputs in a new way (maybe someone has done this already?), using hours of human work, rather than abstract dollars, or even natural resources, as the measure. Whatever my political agenda is, I’m just genuinely curious to know the answer. Aren’t you?

By: been sean

been sean — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 03:57:30 +0000

I suggest you 2 recalibrate your analyses to be in synch with the various recent research on happiness and what inspires such a state in the human species.

Yes it’s possible that some sort of catastrophe that you gravely predict looms over one of these upcoming horizons but even bad events come, people would still be enchanted, fall in love, enjoy the taste of fresh lettuce and learn to dance the waltz. Happiness is not directly dictated by material wealth or even order, it’s an entirely different recipe.

You guys sound like you’re sitting in the basement worrying about ’something wrong on the internet’ while the rest of the world enjoys this short life that we have here.

I have a few children. That’s my secret to happiness.

By: mir

mir — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 03:47:27 +0000

Sean I recently read an article in the Globe and Mail about a different ( I imagine) Sean who has been treated for a very untreatable depression by having DBS:

“With deep brain stimulation (DBS), surgeons implant metal rods that aim steady pulses of electrical current at the faulty neural circuits believed to underlie mental illness. Spaghetti-thin, the rods connect to a cable that snakes invisibly down the neck to a cookie-sized, battery-operated regulator embedded just south of the collarbone.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080627.wmhdepression28/BNStory/mentalhealth

Do you mind if I ask; is a procedure such as that keeping you so irrepressibly on the sunny side of the street?

Hugh, have you considered perhaps electronically stimulating the parts of your brain that are wary of giant mind-boggling debts floating free of any global regulation?