THE RECORD
August 16, 2000

Fiat Lux

by Ed Deak

Trying to calculate economic efficiency with monetary terms is like having a group of drunk surveyors measuring up a field with rubber bands, while the prospective buyers are begging, clamouring, threatening and bribing them from the sidelines.

By 1991 I was certain that my efficiency principle was correct, so I applied for copyright to establish the date.

Monetary cost efficiency can not exist outside the concepts of physical (ecological) efficiency and becomes a cost transfer on other sectors. Therefore it is not efficiency, but temporary convenience."

Nothing can be made "cheaper" than the limits of physical efficiency of "no waste." Fiduciary money is a concept, not a reality and can not overrule the laws of physical, or ecological efficiency. Somebody, something, some time, somewhere must pay the full costs.

My principle and definition were based on the laws of thermodynamics that say: We can neither create, or destroy anything, only convert energy and matter into other forms.

Newton's laws of physics tell us that that for every action we get an opposite and equal reaction. Therefore, the larger the energy/resource inputs into products, the larger the reactions are going to be. Also, it takes very large increases of energy inputs for very small increases in the speed of a body.

As economic activities are governed by physical laws the rules of economics must also follow the same laws, or else the system is going to collapse. What I find most peculiar in history is that all past and present economic and ideological theories have not only ignored, but defied physical laws and as the consequence all past systems have collapsed. Our present capitalist system is well on the way to self destruction, because it is based on the US bubble economy, which in turn is based on global gullibility. It is incomprehensible that the human race hasn't figured it out in thousands of years that an economy must be based on simple physical, or ecological laws if it wants to survive. How many more years will it take to learn this basic lesson?

Our economists and their university departments ignore these facts. Because physical laws can not be fitted into their monetary hallucinations they just sweep them under the carpet and hope for miracles. Well, at least as long as big business pays them to keep the faith and push out phoney accounting.

Industrial production works on the laws of speed. Mass production demands huge energy and resource input increases. Economists and their corporate bosses always keep saying that governments should be run as businesses. A country, or society is not a business, but an extended family. A business can fire people at will, but a family can't fire their sick children or old people, unless they start sending them off to the gas chambers to preserve the profitability of multinationals. Who knows, it may come to that as the demands of competition grow into desperation.

When a business sells something out of stock, the replacement value is entered into the books as a debit. This is not true in economics. When the forest, or mining industries tell us how many billions they bring to the province it is meaningless nonsense, because the loss of trees or minerals are not debited in the accounts by government. All the money is accounted as an income and there're no debits for depletion. When there's a major disaster, like an earthquake, or flood, the losses are not debited, but the rebuilding is accounted as "growth" and an increase in the Gross Domestic Product. The funeral expenses of accident victims are also accounted as an income. The more accidents on the roads, the better the GDP reports.

We hear incessantly from certain politicians that everything should be privatized so that taxes could be lowered. When medical expenses and other services are paid out of taxes economists go into a frenzy, but when the same services are provided by private corporations at double the cost to the public, it is welcomed as growth in the GDP. It does not take a lot of intelligence to figure out what is going on here.

It is this kind of economy that is being pushed by the BC wing of the Alliance, who now call themselves Liberals. Old Socreds never die, they just pick up other names to fool the suckers.

When these Parties are pushing their privatization and tax cutting agendas and put the USA as the good example, they ignore that people in the USA are paying through the nose for services we take for granted. Last year we had a couple visiting us from Minnesota. They are paying about $400 Cdn per month for medical insurance that costs $64 in BC. Some people in the US pay over $1000 per month.

According to our economists, this is the kind of efficiency we must follow.Copyright (c) 2000, West's International