🚀 go-pugleaf

In article 92Jun5203837@SAIL.Stanford.EDU, jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy) writes:
> What about saturation of demand for various commodities?  Do the
> present models allow for this or are they still models of a
> one-commodity economy.  When does the model predict we will each
> eat a cow a day and drive 5 cars at once.
> --
> John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
> *
> He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
> 

John, you are the one who appears to be refusing to do arithmetic here.
You are obviously not sufficiently familiar with the Club of Rome
models or with other similar efforts.

First, the 1970-73 models only modeled a few commodities, like food,
and did not treat them as commodities in the economic sense, but as
flows of energy and materials. They are primarily ecological models,
not economic models. They modeled "resources". Now, granted it is
simplistic to aggregate such diverse resources as topsoil, fresh water,
fossil fuels, metal ores, and forests, still, such models are generally
focused on the energy and materials on which commodities and services
are based, and which therefore serve as a physical contraint on
possible economic activities.

Econometric models for similar purposes are possible, but would
probably find demand saturation insignificant when the operating realm
of the model is supply-restricted for all but a small minority of the
population.

Demand saturation would, however, need to be considered for my
arcologic compact city models, because people who lived in them would
have enough of what they needed to live.

John, you really need to develop some models of your own if you intend
to engage in this debate. Put them into the public domain and allow us
to ftp them if so inclined. But don't write them in LISP. I still keep
a LISP compiler around for examining other people's AI work, but I do
most of my own AI work in languages like Q'Nial, Eiffel, and C.

---

jdr@starflight.corp.sun.com, starflt@uunet.uu.net
Jon Roland
Starflight Corporation, 1755 E Bayshore Rd #9A,
Redwood City, CA 94063-4142, 415/361-8141