Wiki, Galbraith, and Electrical Tootbrushes

One would think, that sitting alone in Skallerupvej, with a rainy Danish day outside, would be as conducive to acadmic work as anything in the world - a natural self discipline, or prescriptioned drugs. And to be sure, I have done something today: I got up at 9, which is not bad for a student with no immediate due duties, with no where to go, nobody to see. In between watching TV and baking bread and cake, I have found new spunk to review some literature with my new friend, WikidPad, that makes taking notes more fun. When your notepad can easily be equipped with hyperlinks between documents, like the web, in a much simpler way than writing html code, you can make notes much more like your mind works. Like spaghetti. So now, for instance, I have my notes from Neil Carter's "Politics of the Environment" linked to all the relevant concepts for my master thesis, in the same big WikiLife document where I have jotted down my plans for a China-trip, and the recipe for apple cake. Without getting lost. Everything in one place. My own Miss Pringle. What would have been better was if I'd had this before. If I had had this from the start, from when I first started taking notes after making some phone calls about my master thesis, things could have been better. Although, I suppose it all comes down to my own personal structure in a way too. But now it's easier!



One of the more interesting reads today was the late John Kenneth Galbraith's 1964 article in Science: "Economics and the Quality of Life" (from Jstor). He starts off by saying rather obvious things, like in the poor society, the link between economics and the quality of life is very strong, while here and now (USA 1964) this link is loose. One would think that is even more true now. What he means is that increasing your economical property in our rich society doesn't increase your quality of life. When a society is poor, the main problem is to increase efficieny. Now that it is possible to be a lot more efficient, we are left to create electrical toothbrushes - to keep productivity up, to maintain jobs. It's not about production anymore, it's about jobs. But as, of course, businesses would like to get the most out of the resouces, they strive to be more efficient, and, as we also strive to keep everyone busy, we end up with a whole lot of [Electrical toothbrushes]. And since economic growth is good no matter what you produce, in the eyes of economists who only count money, we end up in a society where dental hygiene without muscular effort is as important as producing food, or steel. So why is, that while an individual would strive to get away from the constant economic worry as he or she gets more wealthy, a nation is stuck with the economic priority as the one and single most important measuring stick? Why can't economists move away from the goal of just producing and keeping everyone employed, when we are beyond the point where an improvement in those two will improve the quality of life?



Although this was written in 1964, it still has some relevance, I think. There has, admittedly, been focused on quality of life in economics, but quite clearly we are also producing and using a lot more than in 1964. According to FIVH (pdf) we're using 50 % more than in 1990. Are we 50 % more happy? Norway is supposedly, according to the UN, the world's best country to live in. Although this is meant to actually be a measure of quality of life, it is based a lot on individual purchasing power. Despite this, Norway has one of the highest OD death- and suicide rates. Clearly, today's economists haven't quite embraced the idea that [Mental needs are not on par with physical needs]. Or that a rich family's needs of getting a house that outshines the neighbor's is not on par with a poor family getting shelter. Bottom line is why do we have to always think in terms of economic returns when we have everything we need? It would "enable us to consider a range of new tasks from the beautification of our cities, the cleaning up of roadside commerce and advertising, the enlargement of cultural opportunity, the redemption of mass communications to the suppression of the influence of weapons makers on foreign policy." Today we could add global environmental degradation and poverty to that list. No doubt, there has been a lot of change in the way people think since 1964, but I still think this article has some relevance.

---

[Electrical toothbrushes]

parent nodes: BLog

Electrical toothbrushes

I think, in Norway, in 1964, the influence of electrical toothbrushes on national economy was miniscule.

---

[Mental needs are not on par with physical needs]

parent nodes: BLog

Mental needs are not on par with physical needs

If this were true my home made cake could fully mitigate being lonely in Aalborg. Having 57 channels would cancel out my fear of the licence guy from Dansk Radio that can ring the door bell at any time. WikidPad would be no good to me, because it was free. The right amount of electrical toothbrushes could mend a broken heart.