Saturday, August 03, 2019
No More Economic Theories !
Currently, there does not seem to be any way to control the world economy. Regardless of the will of individuals, economic indices are volatile and the prediction hardly predicts any expected outcome. Economic theories seem to be excellent at explaining the nature of how various economic activities whilst they seem to be poor at predicting the outcomes caused by these activities. Individual agents in this world have become so interconnected with each other that small margin of errors and frictions is no longer insignificant to ignore. Any spontaneously matters of this world are now influencing economy simultaneously. In another word, predicting economic outcomes is like predicting any seismologic matters. Predicting and controlling when another recession strikes is like doing for when the next earth quake occurs.
I have never regretted having studied economics even in a postgraduate degree level. The subject economics helps to systematically understand the nature of how any trades, decision making processes, and power relationship are maintained in daily life, business, and politics. However, I have simply found out that professional economists are just adding up footnotes onto the already invented economic theories, and any brand new invention, surprising the mass in this world, seems to be unable to come up.
Adam Smith, the father of economics, has already summed up the fundamental principle of economics. Various classical economic theorists added up some unavoidable footnotes onto Adam Smith's work. Then, John Maynard Keynes introduced countermeasures against chaos causing economy deviating from the ordinary movement of what Adam Smith explained. All these economists admired Adam Smith and kept his idea as the fundamental criterion of their own theories. Market economy itself does not seem to fade out as long as trades are carried out in our daily life and the notion of private properties, which seems to be one of innate human natures, prevails to exist. Then, the free market principle explained by Adam Smith keeps prevailing, and only some minor reforms are adapted to it.
Karl Marx attempted to offer an alternative principle but his principle sounds suspicious. Marxian theory is that it claims for a very abstruct factor such as determining the value of labour which is often substantially undervalued in the market economy. The problem of this claim is that the scaling method of this value is utterly subjective and this is inconceivable as same as the quality of a faithful spirit. Despite materialist focus and atheist perspective, Marxian theory sounds more like a religious theology expecting for an absolute being and a universal morality judging human qualities. Furthermore, Marx's theoretical backgrounds are actually not so original. His basis economic principle highly relies on David Ricardo's theory. His philosophical foundation is based on his teacher Friedrich Hegel's dialectic philosophy. Marxist economics thus prevails as one form of culture meanwhile it seems to be difficult to categorise as a newly invented academic theory analysing economy.
Adam Smith said "Only fair is laissez-faire (Let it do)". This implies that there is no way economy can be manipulated and there is no universal principle of how economy should be operated. Economy nowadays is prone to be influenced and even messed up by any chaotic friction. In addition, reactions to any change and any economic policy in economy vary across different psychological mindsets of individuals and their culture codes. The mainstream modern economic theories excessively standardise market structures and the mindsets of individual agents. Only the solution seems to be just let the market move alone and let each individual agent to handle it with their own way.
The major financial institutions can be guilty for having messed up the world economy with their pseudo science called financial engineering. Even John Maynard Keynes had already warned that financial market is more psychological than natural-scientific so there is no legitimate answer and equation precisely tracking the market movement. Despite Keynes's warning, these financial elites and government aiding them ignores as though Keynes's original theories of investment had never existed. They have injected extraordinarily massive supply of cash and financial assets into the market against the natural level of the demand.
The extraordinary market stimulus propped up by the excess supply of cash and financial assets are causing the severe negative bounce back effects. Understanding of their financial engineering does not exist to solve problems of economy; It actually causes unnecessary problems caused by those using this engineering technique only for their own short term gain by sacrificing the majority others. As a matter of fact, those gaining the short term gain from this pseudo-science eventually lose out due to the negative impact of the bounce back caused by their reckless manipulation. It comes back to the point of the quote by Adam Smith "Only fair is laissez-faire".
It is the right point that the subject economics was originally introduced as one of philosophical theories by Adam Smith. Although economics nowadays tend to be considered as more physical scientific, Smith was more concerned about metaphysical matters like how the world is formed and how logic derives answers and is evaluated by its principle. Perhaps, there is no absolute answer in economics as same as metaphysics and other philosophical realms. Many economic theorists seem to pretend to be natural scientists claiming there shall be a solid answer for something they are pursuing and demonstrating some pseudo-natural scientific something.
In particular, nowadays, the world is dynamically changing and any already existed social scientific theories hardly prevail to solve the newly emerging problems and promote the newly emerging opportunities. It has already come to the point where it is necessary to start thinking in terms of metaphysical ways of thinking about the world functions including economy. Economy is a life style so it should be more free to think about economy and there should be various unique ways of conceiving it such as doing philosophy.
Sunday, May 12, 2019
Thursday, May 02, 2019
The Political Compass by Country measured by Numerical Data
The Political Compass inevitably relies on the author's subjective sense of judgement to measure where politicians/countries are located on each spectrum. Its author still uses the objective analysis to the certain extent as he seems to be an educated and well-informed academic. There are also various many derivational charts of political compasses invented by various individuals. However, majority seem to rely on the subjective measurement to determine how the selected policies are categorised in their chart.
This project is inspired by the Political Compass, and attempts to create a chart based on less relying on an author's subjective sense of judgement. So, the numerical data set is used to create this chart. The data were downloaded from the following sites:
Data Source:
Economic Freedom: https://www.heritage.org/index/download (2019)
Political Freedom: https://freedomhouse.org/report-types/freedom-world (2018)
By following the Political Compass, the X variable (The horizontal axis) indicates the economic freedom i.e. friendliness to free market capitalism. The way the economic freedom is measured turns to be notably different from the perspective of the Political Compass because the Heritage.org regards of the economic freedom and the development of the global capitalism as the positive optimistic element meanwhile the Political compass regards of them as relatively more oppressive and something not favoured by the mass. Yet, the main objective is to measure how each country adapts the free market global capitalism on the horizontal axis so that this does not induce it to be a significantly different analysis.
As same as the Political Compass, this chart also indicates the top side of the chart denotes more authoritarian, i.e. less politically free, and the bottom side denotes more liberal, i.e. more politically free. So, the Y variable (The vertical axis) is created by diverging the political freedom index. This is also not quit identical as what the Political Compass attempts to indicates. This index from FreedomHouse.org only ranks the countries' policies only by means of the relative measurement to the other countries in the current world situation: It compares them with neither historical examples nor the non-existent but maybe possible policies introduced in political theories.
Each variable is calculated as follows:
Both indices are powered by 0.3 in order to balance the chart (Making the candidates on the chart comparable and the chart more visible). 0.3 is used for the power because the average and the median of the variables become close to 0.5 together and the gap between the minimum and the maximum is widened by this calculus.
This chart was created by Microsoft Excel but it is not equipped with the chart label shown on the map of the chart. So, a chart-labelor was installed from www.appspro.com/Utilities/ChartLabeler.htm.
The dots of these countries are shaped and coloured dissimilarly by means of various diverse geographic and cultural regions. Unlike the original categorisation for the referred data sources, this chart scattered the original regional categories into more detailed unique ones. Western English speaking countries are categorised as Anglo-Saxon and Celtic on this chart (Blue Dia). Those in Asia-Pacific which are heavily influenced by Confucianism (Red Circle) are distinguished from the rest Asia-Pacific (Purple Circle). Those in Europe are roughly divided into three groups, West (Yellow Dia), Central (Pale Green Dia), and East (Pink Dia) in order to clarify the difference caused by historical and ethnic characteristics and the past as well as the present political factors. (It is by means of this author's subjective sense based on his knowledge because it is difficult to clear cut with a pure objective measurement)
This may help to compare and understand the economic and political attribute of various countries in a macro perspective.
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Sunday, February 10, 2019
Ethical Principles explained by Mathematical Logic Pt5
5.1. Universality
In the previous chapters, various mathematical logics are introduced in order to explain various ethical theories. Their views are in conflict with the others by means of their unique different way of verification process of their logical formulae. The ancient and medieval philosophers affirm that the experienced reality and rationally derived knowledge at the present situation are truths. Locke and both classical and modern liberalists influenced by him insist that there is a possibility and a complexity which are not yet experienced but will be true at some point. Kantian and various modern ethical theorists claim for an absolute universal ethical principle which ultimately defines the validity of any ethical formulae regardless of present existences, already accumulated experiences and knowledge, and the controversy about possibility and complexity.
On the other hand, there is a fundamental similarity among these already introduced ethical theoretical logical analyses and their principles. Despite their conflicting perspectives, all of them assume that all human individuals are supposed to share the identical world view and there ought to be a universal standard of the objective principle for self-verification processes for all these logics. This aspect traps all the thinkers into the dogma of the ethical principle not being able to understand the others and condemn their opposing or unknown ideas and phenomena by accusing them as error, illogical, and illegitimate.
The trouble of these philosophers is that they assume their ethical logics are resemblance to mathematical formulae, and the critical point is that ethical logics and principles are not mathematics. Mathematical logics merely exist in the world of mathematics where mathematical axiom. Logics derived in mathematics can maintain their logical universality verified by a universally accepted valid universal principle called axiom.
The universality of logics depends on the universality of principle, and mathematics prevails to be universal because individuals applying mathematics admit mathematical axiom and rules based on it as the universal principle. By contrast, unlike mathematics which has an axiom defining validity of its logics by self-evaluation and defining contradiction, logic itself does not have an objective measurement for valid self-evaluation and valid definition of contradiction like mathematical axiom.
5.2. World view A
Their problem is that there are still many humans living without understanding their ethical theories and logical composition. Although their ethical theory might be able to lead the world to a utopia by convincing majority individuals of their logics and principle, it will take almost an eternally long time period and effort to transform both individuals and the world. The fundamental challenge is how to define who is more logical more the others.
There is no such an existence as an illogical human individual! As long as the consciousness of individuals remains, they always derive their thoughts and actions by means of their own way of logical construction based on their own logical principle. The validity of logic and its principle are justified by means of how an individual perceive their world as.
In mathematics, the validity depends on its principle called mathematical axiom which is shared among those who apply mathematics. In ethics, human individuals do not share the same universal principle for all their actions and thoughts in their daily life even though they are living in an identical cultural, ethnic, geographic, and political back ground. Validity of reality, possibility, complexity, and anything imaginable things and ideas depends on how an individual images and believes how the world is formed and functions, and then this principle should be called the world view.
The world view is not only based on their experience and knowledge. Memories of experiences are always subjectively modified by an individual with their own interpretation, prejudice, and faith. Information forming knowledge is passed onto the others is never perfectly passed because there is always an inevitable obstacle such as language barrier, memory lapse, false understanding, and anything spontaneously occurring external noise disrupting an information transmission. The vilification of these experiences and knowledge is thus determined by the capacity of an individual perceiving and understanding their living world.
5.3. World view B
The reason why the others criticise thoughts and actions of this particular individual as illogical is because the logic of this individual is just different from their standard. When some individual cannot be rational to understand what the others insist on, there is no vilification process of the logics provided by these others so that these logics are automatically contradicted in this individual’s mind.
Furthermore, there are individuals who tend to derive some unfamiliar answer for an action and a thought which can sound ridiculous or even odious and suspicious for the others. Then, the others will question or contradict this individual’s logic, but here is no absolute answer for evaluate this logic. There can be some new discovery of ideas in this unfamiliar logic. Even if it is not productive enough to be accepted by the other majority, this unfamiliar logic can be helping this particular individual to live in the life by believing it.
The matter is not about whether one’s word view is logical/right or illogical/wrong/deluded: It is about whether an individual would like to accept and share the world view of the others. As long as human individuals are humans, there is always something shared among their world views because human beings are naturally social as Aristotle said. So, it is impossible not to share some part of the world view together. Nevertheless, at the same time, it is impossible to share the entire world view together due to the aforementioned description.
Therefore, human individuals need to cohabit together by understanding each other to the certain extent while accepting the difference among them. Yet, individuals ought to have a right to say some other is wrong when their actions and thoughts do not sound either right or even plausible by means of their world view.
When it comes to the conflict due to the differences in the world view, the feasible option is not trying to convincing them by a hard logical talk. Many moral universalists argue that individuals may have talks to negotiate each other to derive their peaceful optimum solution. However, this tends to rather perpetuate an argument of conflict by justifying which side is right. In these occasions, it is often common that both sides of conflict do not share the core world view for solving this conflict so there is no objective measurement mediating their argument.
For example, someone may say a particular green coloured objective looks blueish whilst the other may say it looks yellowish green. This can depend on their optical ability and characteristic of individuals, the concepts taught in their cultural they are brought up, the light strength and angle touching this object in this environment.
It can be a showing off how a better life i.e. a happier life one individual enjoys. It should not be right or wrong/deluded to justify one’s choice because there is no absolute universal principle determining the ethical principle. It should rather be one’s happiness to determine the validity of ethics. As long as the others do not invade one individual’s happiness, it is none of one’s business to interfere to the others’ life choice. Then, it is more likely to avoid any unnecessary conflict with each other.
5.4. World view C
There is a trend of unconditionally trusting natural science, and it should be warned. It does not mean to defy natural science meanwhile unconditionally trusting it does not open the horizon of human individuals’ knowledge and wisdom of understanding the world. Although those who support progressive modern secularism defy dogmatism of traditional religion and exotic superstitions, they simply seem to have just replaced them with a new dogmatic belief in modern science. It is also critical to acknowledge that natural science does not enable human individuals to perfectly perceive and understand the entire natural world characteristics.
Like ethical theories introduced last chapters, scientific theory is interpret by human individuals, and the principle of scientific theory is not guaranteed to match with the principle of how the natural world is constructed. The natural world was created something far superior to humans, and there are still undiscovered mysteries of the natural world whose existence unimaginable. Therefore, it is still unreachable for human individuals to discover the way to even estimate the unimaginable undiscovered feature of the natural world.
In order to understand the others, it requires understanding the world view of the others, which should be called the fundamental principle of their construction of mind. In order to fully understand how the natural world is constructed, then it inevitably requires understanding the fundamental principle of how the natural world of this universe is constructed. Nonetheless, the life span of human individuals is extraordinarily small compared to the life of this universe.
If this becomes possible for one human individual by understanding the fundamental principle of forming the natural world of this universe, this individual will become a perfect being who is now able to understand and apply the universal principle of this world, individuals and various creatures, and their mind. This individual will then be able to analyse characteristics and problems of these existences in this world like solving mathematical formulae by understanding axiom, the universal principle of mathematics. Such an individual should no longer be called human-being; this should be possibly called God.
It looks like an instinct of human individuals to pursue knowledge of the world and their own existence and right guidance of their life choice. At the same time, they tend to falsely assume that they have understood the right principle which is universally valid across all individuals and their living environments. This tends to induce an unnecessary conflict among them and falsely provide some individuals with an exceeding privilege whilst others with an unfortunate misery.
It is important to recognise it is hypocritical to assume having understood the universal principle and one’s world view is universal. Concurrently, it is important to continue interacting with various other unique human individuals, atmosphere, and concepts to open one’s own world view to improve one’s life.
It is ultimately incapable for one individual to understand the fundamental principle of the world like God. On the other hand, pursuing experiences, knowledge, and spiritual enlightenments will lead an individual to perceive a bigger part of the world construction, and this can be an extraordinarily tiny step toward the creator of the existence of individuals and their world who shall be God.