Ahmed wrote:First of all, thank you for the "fallacy" which you carelessly gratify me and which avoids you to answer on the merits. You are however excusable since the concept of "balance of power" does not enter your explanatory grid, my sentence could not therefore have meaning.
First of all, don't make it a personal matter. I am not "gratifying" you. I qualify one of your words. I recall that your statement was:
"
Assuming difficulty due to multiple subjective factors is only an elegant way of drowning the fish in apparent objectivity".
It is a fallacy and an innuendo. Assuming a difficulty due to multiple subjective factors is in no way a way of drowning the fish (trial of intention). It is to suppose a difficulty because of multiple subjective factors. And there are. It is obvious that weighing the pros or cons, for example of exploiting neodymium in Madagascar, requires assessing the impact on the environment. For each of the solutions considered, it will not be the same, as the cost, for example mine is open pit or not. This also requires evaluating the impact on the standard of living of local populations, perhaps positive and it can be part of the negotiation, and everything will be played out with judgments established according to scales of values rarely shared by the actors. . For example the acceptance of a certain degradation of one thing to obtain the advantage of another, will depend on subjective factors, it depends on the people.
An objective evaluation of the project becomes almost impossible when it is complex and involves very different people, who do not have the same interests. Your "the benefit / harm ratio is easy to establish, which helps the final decision well", certainly not. Obviously, if you only tell us about the thesis of the operators, yes "the ratio advantages / disadvantages is easy to establish". If you only speak to us about the thesis of the ecologists, yes "the ratio advantages / disadvantages is easy to establish". But if you tell us about a decision obtained between operators, environmentalists, the populations concerned, and for the general interest, no: the advantages / disadvantages ratio will be very difficult to establish. The existence of rational criteria which would allow an automatic decision once one has fulfilled the parameters of the grid is a utopia. Only a consensus can support a decision.
Just as I suspect my economic considerations will be invalidated former before, always for an inadequate explanatory grid reason.
An instrument only measures what it is designed to do and the term "wealth" is fraught with ambiguities.
First of all, it is hardly surprising that wealth (in the most trivial sense of the term) is increasing: the quantity of goods has never been greater. This is explained by the need of the market to always produce more goods to fight against a profit which tends to decrease structurally with the unit price (which allows [less and less] to expand consumption).
Faced with the phenomena of saturation which can be observed in the countries of the center and which lead to delaying strategies in order to avoid collapse, the conquest of the last possible spaces in the countries of the periphery leads to several consequences. On the one hand, a certain displacement of the zones of "prosperity" directed from the center towards the periphery (from where the resentment of the "bobos" of the center), on the other hand a monetarization of populations which lived until then more or less in outside the economic system. The latter have gone from statistical nothingness to the status of "new poor", which reflects a deterioration in their condition; for the others, who are gradually forming a middle class, it is a big step forward (at least if we analyze it according to Western criteria). Obviously, as much the initial growth was great in these countries (I am thinking above all of China) due to the importation of operational techniques (but which have become unproductive in terms of abstract wealth in the countries of origin), so will the saturation be fast and these countries will be overtaken by a history they do not understand, nor will those they imitate understand it.
Material wealth is spread profusely throughout the world, without overcoming poverty, which is not surprising since it is not its goal which is only, through these goods, the accumulation of abstract wealth. This last point also explains two things: first, that the growth in wealth inequality is not an accident that could possibly be mitigated, but is an integral part of the process (thereby creating increasing relative poverty, since the difference in wealth measures the balance of power existing between social categories); second, that the creation of material wealth for the purpose of infinite and irrational abstract accumulation leads to the massive destruction of natural wealth.
My point was not about economic theories (if economics was a science, it would have a predictive power, but we have never seen it announce a stock market crash). I try to keep my feet on the ground.
"Material wealth is spread in profusion over the world, without overcoming poverty": what do you call "overcoming poverty"? What do you call "poverty"?
Without a quantified definition, this kind of statement is a tautology because everyone will go there from their feelings. But poverty is assessed according to certain objective criteria (I have given enough links on the subject). If those of the United Nations do not satisfy everyone, they at least have the merit of having been defined, and the evaluation indicates progress in the right direction. It becomes a little painful to see that the slightest positive aspect of anything in the world is immediately denied. I come to wonder if the denial of the positive points does not have the same cause as the highlighting of the negative points, used by all the protesters to extol their miracle recipes or to justify the destruction of the existing system.
