Andy F. wrote:
> "Lysander" <lysander@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>
news:cc386202-b2b2-479b-9672-2330474812b2@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> On Jan 15, 2:42 pm, play...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Doug Bashford) wrote:
>>> in sci.environment, on 11 Jan 2008, Lysander said about:
>>> Re: Ecological Economics - Sustainability requires...
>>>
>>>> On Jan 10, 10:54 am, (Doug Bashford) wrote:
>>>>> This material wealth, consisting of renewable, replenishable and
>>>>> non-renewable forms of natural capital, is being rapidly
>>>>> depleted.
>>>> If you want to pretend to post about economics at least learn what
>>>> capital means.
>>> Thankfully I'm not pretending to post about Economics.
>>> I'm posting about Ecological Economics. ...as in the college
>>> major, etc.
>> I hate to burst your bubble but civil engineers use the same terms as
>> electrical engineers. You can call this economics but it is not. It is
>> not ecological economics because it is not economics. Your post has
>> major misunderstandings of economic principles.
>>
>>
>>> Further, I'm talking about natural capital.
>>>
>>> Natural capital
>>> From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
>>> Natural capital, as described in the book Natural Capitalism, is
>>> a metaphor
>> Scientist do not use metaphors. Economist do not use metaphors. This
>> has nothing to do with economics despite what someone called it. It
>> sounds more like philosophy or <shudder> sociology.
>>
>>
>>
>>> In a traditional economic analysis of the factors of production,
>>> natural capital would usually be classified as "land" distinct
>>> from "capital" in its original sense.
>> Land is rarely if ever used in modern economic analysis. It is no
>> longer a factor of production. You can double the acreage a plant sits
>> on and it will make no difference if you use the same amount of labor
>> and capital. Land as an input only makes sense in farming.
>
> Ridiculous nonsense.
>> Land is very distinct from capital.
>>
>>> The historical
>>> distinction between "land" and "capital" was that land is
>>> naturally occurring and its supply is assumed to be fixed,
>> This is a misunderstanding of supply. The quantity of land is fixed.
>> The quantity supplied on the market, offered for sale, is not fixed
>> and responds to price changes.
>>
>>> whereas capital as originally defined referred only to man-made
>>> goods.
>>> It has been argued that it's useful to view many natural
>>> systems as capital because they can be improved or degraded by
>>> the actions of man over time (see Tragedy of the commons), so
>>> that to view them as if their productive capacity is fixed by
>>> nature alone is misleading.
>> This is not really a good argument for calling something capital. It
>> would be a better argument to say this is why they need to be model.
>> For instance, by your definition fish are natural capital. An
>> economist would never see this as capital. They are the output. You
>> can modify Ramsey-Cass-Koopman to make a model of optimal extraction
>> of fish, a common first graduate exercise. In this case, the natural
>> productivity of fish is affected by man but fish are far from capital.
>> They are not durable inputs that once used in production retain their
>> characteristics and can be used again to produce something else.
>>
> If someone owned the fish, they would be counted as capital, just like
> livestock is.
>
>
The State taxed me on my chickens.
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