Sunday 11 July 2021

Rising to the bait.

Our regular troll posted his usual holier-than-thou gibberish re the 18-year boom-bust cycle:

... it's not clear, but must be a combo of many things, and maybe even things the rational and logical thinking weakling Christian finds hard to accept. For example, in ancient times the business cycle was governed by the Saros, an actual harmonic cycle of solar and lunar eclipses of about 18.6 years.

Now, here's the bit many struggle to even accept as a possibility, notwithstanding the many other possibilities they accept easily yet are no more certain: after many thousands of years of following the sun to determine the great resets, we no longer believe we do that right? But who's to say we still do, yet unconsciously, because otherwise it looks like mumbo jumbo to the enlightenment man?

I propose recessions are directly governed by natural forces fundamentally. We just find that hard to consider because like crazy fools we started to believe we are masters of the universe a few centuries ago as the loyal Christians, we still are.


I offer no explanation for why it is so close to 18 years, it *might* well be something to do with solar and lunar eclipses or some other "mumbo jumbo", so what? The point is that it is a) probably beyond our control but b) predictable. In the same way. most parts of the world have regular winter-summer cycles, we can't control those either but we can predict them and deal with them as best we can.

We deal with the winter-summer cycle by planting crops at the right time; having air-conditioning and central heating; having winter and summer clothing; changing the clocks to maximise daylight hours; stockpiling salt and grit during summer and autumn; etc.

It's the same with the 18-year cycle, we probably can't suppress it. But we can minimise the damage to the economy caused when land price/credit bubbles burst by suppressing them, ideally by taxing land values (and not taxing work and production) and if not, then at least by going back to Georgism Lite. There will still be recessions, but they will be shorter and milder, as they were under Georgism Lite.

That does not make us "masters of the universe", it just makes us masters of ourselves instead of being slaves to bankers and large landowners. It's just a sensible, practical measure, like not sowing spring wheat shortly before winter kicks in.

3 comments:

Lola said...

There might be something in the psychology thing. That is, say you have a 40 year working life. It takes you ~20 years to cock it all up, then you realise your mistake and stop doing it and then the next generation does it all over again. Personally, I think the trend has been aggravated by punk Keynesian Central Banking.

Robin Smith said...

Lola, it takes about 20 years to forget the reasons for the last recession too. We hear "oh it's different this time"

Wadders, 'troll' or the one bringing your ideology under serious scrutiny. It's a fine line I grant you. I can understand why you must defend your God with as hominem attacks like that. You are a true Christian

Google "Peter Ridd James Dellingpole" for a good listen on the connection between the corruption of economics and ecology. Root cause is psychological once again. But logic and reason does not have the balls for it.

Mark Wadsworth said...

L, that would be my first guess as well, but it might be something more fundamental.

RS, I do not have an ideology, I just say the way things are. You aren't advancing the field of human knowledge one iota by going round telling everybody they are wrong but without offering any facts or logic of your own.