MDMD (5) Colonization of time

[andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk]

Doug Millison writes:

> . . . The idea that our participation
> in "commerce" is "voluntary" seems to me a bit more problematic. Opting out
> of this system is possible, so in that sense it might be called
> "voluntary", but the hurdles that must be overcome to do so are
> substantial, including, but not limited to, breaking through a lifetime of
> cultural conditioning shaped by pervasive if not all-powerful political and
> media systems that work their way into our deepest cellular representations
> (neuronal, or maybe synaptic is the better word?) of ourselves and our
> relationships.

One of the shibboleths of market economics is the notion of the
rational self or agent. Individual and/or whole industries are
expected to switch their consumption and production around to meet
fluctuations in supply and demand. Recognising that there are costs in
such transfers of allegiance, yet the net result will be that the
market will, given time, converge on the best of all possible worlds
(the Pareto maximum). 

Some free marketeers, when faced with general and persistent
reluctance to follow the swooping lines of their economic curves, have
attempted to model this resistance to progress. Rather than accept the
obvious conclusion that the market model misses something fundamental
they decided that the problem was ignorance. It costs resources, time,
money, whatever, to understand how the world is changing around us and
that cost puts us off trying to understand and respond to change. So,
rather than follow all `developments' we deliberately limit our
attention to our most immediate concerns, which phenomen has been
labelled as `rational ignorance'.

Some may find this a hard notion to swallow but yes, foax, it's true.
A certain level of ignorance is absolutely justifiable in most
circumstances and is just another necessary cost of putting our money
to better use. And remember that's not just any old ignorance we are
supposed to have arrived at. That's all the ignorance we can
reasonably afford. The ultimate market reductio. Now watch the vandals
and the vultures swoop in.

Meanwhile Rome burns. More news at 10.


Andrew Dinn
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How do you know but ev'ry bird that cuts the airy way
Is an immense world of pleasure clos'd by your senses five