A mão invisível de Adam Smith
“By 2040 (...) the world could need to replace over 4 times the current crude oil output of Saudi Arabia (>40mbd), just to keep output flat.”
—HSBC Peal Oil Report 2017
A economia é um sistema dissipativo, logo não é controlável inteiramente pelos governos.
Ou seja, a mão invisível a que se referia Adam Smith, mais do que uma questão ideológica, é da natureza dos seres vivos e dos seus sistemas económicos, tal como é da natureza dos tufões que se formam sobre as águas sobreaquecidas dos oceanos. Quanto têm condições favoráveis ao seu nascimento e desenvolvimento, tendem a expandir-se imoderadamente, até que os recursos começam a escassear, ou a ficar demasiado longe, exigindo cada vez mais tempo e trabalho para os alcançar, e morrem.
A consequência destas dinâmicas, a que, no caso dos períodos longos da vida humana, David Hackett Fischer chama
price revolutions, é terminarem repentinamente sob a forma de um colapso, ou desastre, precedido por uma perda de controlo da situação, a que os autores do famoso relatótio de 1972,
The Limits to Growth, chamaram
overshooting.
Quando esta perda de controlo que precede o embate acontece num automóvel, tudo é muito rápido para quem assiste de fora, embora para o condutor o filme pareça correr em câmara lenta. Já quando se trata do acidente com um grande petroleiro, é possível observá-lo em tempo real como algo aparentemente evitável. O piloto do navio, porém, mostra-se incapaz de fazer o que quer que seja para impedir a colisão e o eventual naufrágio. Tal como neste último exemplo, é a escala dos acontecimentos que nos permite ou não perceber a tempo o que se vai passar. No caso da crise energética que teve início em 1970-73, só agora a aproximação do desastre começa a ser percebido por um número significativo de pessoas.
Dois artigos recentemente publicados—um de Gail Tvelberg, e outro escrito por um grupo de analistas para o HSBC, um dos maiores bancos do mundo— confluem na determinação das causas da turbulência económica, financeira, comercial, social, diplomática e militar que atingiu o mundo desde o colapso do Lehman Brothers. Dito muito simplesmente, a causa é esta: acabou a energia barata e acessível que permitiu a extraordinária aceleração civilizacional iniada no final dos século 19, pouco tempo antes do Jubileu da Rainha Vitória (1887).
O início do fim do crescimento explosivo proporcionado pelo uso intensivo de fontes de energia acessíveis e baratas como o carvão, o gás natural e o petróleo, e de novas energias como a eletricidade, ocorreu curiosamente antes da primeira grande crise petrolífera de 1973; ocorreu quando a taxa de crescimento demográfico mundial atingiu o seu próprio pico, em 1969 (ler também este
post).
A principal conclusão que Gail Tvelberg retira da sua comparação do mundo globalizado com um sistema dissipativo, por definição aberto, é que só poderemos mitigar as dimensões trágicas do colapso (na minha opinião já em curso), por um lado, levantando faseadamente o pé da despesa pública, nomeadamente das despesas militares, e por outro, eliminando o excesso de controlos bancários e financeiros que empurram a riqueza dos países ricos para os países onde a energia e o trabalho são mais baratos, empobrecendo por esta via a grande maioria da população mundial, seja através da repressão fiscal, seja da usurpação das suas poupanças, como consequência da destruição das taxas de juro e do próprio dinheiro.
Por sua vez, as dez conclusões veiculadas pelo HSBC são cortantes, sobretudo esta: em 2040 precisaremos encontrar 4x a produção atual da Arábia Saudita, só para suprir as necessidades correntes de energia.
A leitura destes dois textos dispensaria boa parte da berraria parlamentar a que temos assistido.
Oops! The economy is like a self-driving car
Posted on February 20, 2017
by Gail Tverberg
Back in 1776, Adam Smith talked about the “invisible hand” of the economy. Investopedia explains how the invisible hand works as, “In a free market economy, self-interested individuals operate through a system of mutual interdependence to promote the general benefit of society at large.”
We talk and act today as if governments and economic policy are what make the economy behave as it does. Unfortunately, Adam Smith was right; there is an invisible hand guiding the economy. Today we know that there is a physics reason for why the economy acts as it does: the economy is a dissipative structure–something we will talk more about later. First, let’s talk about how the economy really operates.
Our Economy Is Like a Self-Driving Car: Wages of Non-Elite Workers Are the Engine
Workers make goods and provide services. Non-elite workers–that is, workers without advanced education or supervisory responsibilities–play a special role, because there are so many of them. The economy can grow (just like a self-driving car can move forward) (1) if workers can make an increasing quantity of goods and services each year, and (2) if non-elite workers can afford to buy the goods that are being produced. If these workers find fewer jobs available, or if they don’t pay sufficiently well, it is as if the engine of the self-driving car is no longer working. The car could just as well fall apart into 1,000 pieces in the driveway.
If the wages of non-elite workers are too low, they cannot afford to pay very much in taxes, so governments are adversely affected. They also cannot afford to buy capital goods such as vehicles and homes. Thus, depressed wages of non-elite workers adversely affect both businesses and governments. If these non-elite workers are getting paid well, the “make/buy loop” is closed: the people whose labor creates fairly ordinary goods and services can also afford to buy those goods and services.
(...)
In theory, both debt and increased complexity can help the economy grow faster. However, as I noted at the beginning, it is the wages of the non-elite workers that are especially important in allowing the economy to continue to move forward. The greater the proportion of the revenue that goes to high paid employees and to bond holders, the less that is available to non-elite workers. Also, there are diminishing returns to adding debt and complexity. At some point, the cost of each of these types of turbo-charging exceeds the benefit of the process.
[...]
The economy is yet another type of a dissipative structure. This is why Adam Smith noticed the effect of the invisible hand of the economy. The energy that sustains the economy comes from a variety of sources. Humans have been able to obtain energy by burning biomass for over one million years. Other long-term energy sources include solar energy that provides heat and light for gardens, and wind energy that powers sail boats. More recently, other types of energy have been added, including fossil fuels energy.
When energy supplies are very cheap and easy to obtain, it is easy to ramp up their use. With growing supplies of energy, it is possible to keep adding more and better tools for people to work with. I use the term “tools” broadly. Besides machines to enable greater production, I include things like roads and advanced education, which also are helpful in making workers more effective. The use of growing energy supplies allows growing use of tools, and this growing use of tools increasingly leverages human labor. This is why we see growing productivity; we can expect to see falling human productivity if energy supplies should start to decline. Falling productivity will tend to push the economy toward collapse.
[...]
Now, in 2017, prices are “sort of” affordable for consumers, but they are not high enough for producers. Oil companies will go out of business if these low prices persist.
Back in 2007 and 2008, we had the reverse problem. Prices were high enough for producers, but too high for consumers (especially non-elite workers). This is a big part of what pushed the economy into recession.
[...]
Very few have realized that the economy cannot really shrink back very much; past history, as well as the nature of dissipative structures, shows that economies tend to collapse. The only economies that have at least temporarily avoided that fate have shifted toward less complexity–for example, eliminating huge government programs, such as armies–rather than yielding to the temptation to add ever more complexity, such as wind turbines and solar panels.
The real situation is that we have a here-and-now problem of too low wages for non-elite workers. Commodity prices are also too low. Intermittent renewables such as wind and solar are thought to be solutions, but it is well-known that intermittent renewables cause too-low prices for other types of electricity generation, when added to the electric grid. Thus, they are likely part of the low-price problem, not part of the solution. Temporary solutions, if there are any, are likely in the direction of cutting back on government expenditures and reducing regulation of banks. In fact, with the election of Trump and the passage of Brexit, the economy seems to again be re-optimizing.
Full text here
