Create Your Own Economy

Post Reply New Topic

Just picked up economist Tyler Cowen's book "Create Your Own Economy", a sensitive treatment of what society is learning from autistics, and generally a good read. Have you heard of it? What do you think?

From Publishers Weekly
In this provocative study of behavioral economics, Cowen (Discover Your Inner Economist) reveals that autistic tendencies toward classification, categorization and specialization can be used as a vehicle for understanding how people use information. Cowen spends a great deal of time dispelling autism's societal stigma, arguing that mainstream society is reaping benefits from mimicking autistic cognitive strengths. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Z

Best economy is no economy. Eventually we'll build self sufficient self repairing self managing factories which will then crank out anything we require. Goods and raw materials will be transported by robots as well. All our junk will be recycled and put back into circulation as raw materials.

Most humans will eventually spend their entire lives pursuing their favorite passions. There will be no business or economy or employer/employee relationship, other than the services industry such as hotels and restaurants which will in all likelyhood remain more or less as they are today (human touch!). Scientists have always been willing to pursue new things and new knowledge at no compensation, so progress will continue. The global economy and stock market and the giant corporations? That will all disappear.

Personally I give ourselves 2 chances in 3 that we'll cause our own extinction before we can achieve what I just described.

Giving away our secrets? He must be stopped!
First I will have to read it.
I have told many people how to fix computers, none ever have.
They are just not wired for it.

Hey Inventor!

Back from hiatus and I'm still reading . . .

Z

Welcome back to WP!

From Wikipedia
"Cowen has been classified as a "libertarian bargainer" - someone of libertarian ideals who is not so radical that he cannot influence the "currently powerful".[2] This puts him closer to Friedrich Hayek than an anarcho-capitalist such as Murray Rothbard or an anti-establishmentarian like Ludwig von Mises."

I have previously thought that Ludwig von Mises could have had Asperger's.

I haven't read the book, but I did read Cowen's article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, which pretty much summarized his ideas about autistic thinking. I also had an interesting email exchange with him after commenting on his blog. He offered to send me a copy of the book, but the company that does his fulfillment hasn't come through yet. I'd love to read it, but my budget has made buying it something to be put off for a while.

I like his ideas, but I don't know if he gets more specific about autistic thinking, or whether he believes that it's common to everyone on the spectrum (it isn't).

RE: Dilbert and 'Personally I give ourselves 2 chances in 3 that we'll cause our own extinction before we can achieve what I just described.'

It's just my opinion, and I'm not going to write a thesis about it, but I firmly believe I have no control over my life, by extension nobody else has, and our destiny of living and dying will be fullfilled, no matter what we are doing.

Species and their creations (like civilizations in our case) live and die just like bigger objects like planets or smaller ones like flies.

We are just evolving matter. The so-called 'selfish gene' in humans is universal, no human is spared, it's us, it's what we are, whether we like it or not.

Amen.

Any transhumanist in here? I like futurism, transhumanism, Kurzweil & his peers.

Hi Z,

I am still writing, and this gives me a thought, support him and as the NT view has run out of ideas, we franchise autistic thought.

Spectrum diversity does run from surviving alone in the desert, me, to having a world run by robots, which will only cost $20 million per person, and has a huge electric bill.

I see a problem in that a robot would have to have AI to function, self repair, and would by design be autistic and want nothing to do with humans.

Is it the same with us? I have found the same traits in some very good NT Engineers, Mechanics, who also share the alienation from the general NT cultural complex. On both sides there are those who deal well in the world of facts, and then there are those that live in some private fiction. AI would not understand humans.

Libertarian Bargainer, anarcho-capitalist, anti-establishmentarian? Who comes up with these things?

The first is talking to a herd of Lemmings about a change of direction, the second says lets stick with what works, and the third says doing it right takes stopping doing it wrong.

With the vast majority of selfish genes living in their private fiction, well protected from thought, for it would burst their bubble, we will never change people as a group.

Doing what works is my level, that can be done by hermits. Here I see room to expand, I sell products, information, and there is a market. There is a good return on effort expended.

For the last, I think it is a hopeless waste of effort to try to get the mass of humanity to stop doing it wrong. That has to be accepted as the background for our jungle, we are apes, and from burglers to Madoffs, there are a lot of apes best avoided.

Our historic path is species and civilizations do end, and the next model is based on what works.

Like a snake shedding it's skin, core function goes on, and the rest is left behind.

The religious and trade wars did slow the progress, but the future is heading to another doubling of humans which the planet cannot support, lemming like we hurry reach that peak.

By the same biological mathematics, the peak will be maintained by a death rate equal to increase, and when the next doubling occures, only a few years, an avalanch of species extinction.

The Lemmings that survive are the ones who were busy with their special interests, did not like groups, and missed the migration.

The normal path of biology is that a species reaches it's greatest numbers just before extinction, and the survivors then become another species, a survival of what works.

In a culture dish in the lab or the world economy, the pattern is always the same, the total use of resources and highest performance comes just before the end.

I do think we should supply what works now, for it will speed human progress to the peak sooner and faster, which will cause it to be over sooner.

We do have one advantage, Post-humanist, in that we have advanced data storage where knowledge can be carried forward through the coming dark age, and the next species can be machine educated about the faults that lead to our demise.

The next species starts with the first generation born after the fall, and they will want to know what works. I see that coming about 2050.

I dropped out of college before even attending a single class. High school years were awful, I spent the last year alone locked up in the toilet.
I got out of the house to seek self-employment, attempted to win my independence, and after two years struggling with real life, my abilities finally turned profitable enough for me to live without financial assistance. Very limited success so far, but enough to be independent and on my own. It's been five years and I'm still ok.
These days I'm trying to secure my independence once and for all, goals include owned property, more regular work, more solid finances, paid help with daily life. I'm also trying to improve my relatively fragile health, mental & physical.
Cheers.