Dimensions of Value

I have written a lot in the past about what I called "The Zen of Value". The "Zen" idea refers to the concept of sitting back, clearing your mind of preconceptions and seeing things as they really are. Another title that occurs to me is "Dimensions of Value". It turns out that this metaphor is quite fruitful and worth exploring. It grows out of a previous post: "Human Welfare And the Four Economies". Upon thinking of it, there are more than four and the mental picture of "dimensions" is helpful. The "dimensional" aspect promises to add some rigor to the underlying subject. The "royal road" to the "Zen" view of this subject is the realization that "money" is a poor measure of "value".  You already know in your bones that this is wrong but you have never wondered how, in detail, it's wrong and how, specifically you could see things better in a way to make better decisions for yourself, your family, your society and whoever comes next.

This post is basically an outline of a new line of thought in this blog: "Dimensions of Value", tagged "#Dimensions" in the index.

MONEY

Many folks are totally unfamiliar with "money" in general. I won't repeat myself on that subject. The bottom line is that every dollar of "money" is backed by a dollar of debt. When the debt turns out to be uncollectable, the money vanishes from the system, as in 2008. For some background on that subject, along with lots of reading links, check here.

So, "money" is one "dimension" of value. In fact, in "finance capitalism", money itself, rather than any assumed underlying value, is what as seen as "value". With the "dimensional" approach, we take a close look at how this presumed value can be projected on other forms of value. As already mentioned, "debt" is the "real" basis of this form of value, so it makes sense to take a look at "debt" itself as a value, which it obviously is to the creditor. If this isn't immediately obvious, consider the "books" of the bank, where debts (outstanding loans to customers) are listed as assets. But we should go a bit deeper to take a look at debt itself as a measure of value, remembering that the correspondence of money and debt is an assumed relationship that can turn out to be wrong, as it did in 2008 where 4 trillion in money was backed by debt that was, in fact, uncollectable. Another thing we could look at is government debt, which can turn out to be uncollectable in cases such as Greece.

There are other promising "dimensions" of value with connections to money that are so loose that they shout out for separate analysis. Most obvious is human life itself, perhaps the value that we can all agree on. However, we find many situations where the lives of others are routinely valued at zero or cases where an individual will value his/her own life worth throwing away for some perceived value. What is that value and how can we visualize the transaction.

LIFE ITSELF

Insurance companies provide some useful guesses for the money value of human life - we'll take a look at that. Lawsuits against polluters that compensate for the loss of life and quality of life are useful sources of information. Such information effectively places a floor on the value of life. We can all agree that nobody can compensate anyone for the loss of a loved one. And, of course, if a person is dead, the whole idea of compensation to the victim becomes meaningless - a bit like dividing by zero.

For centuries, the value of labor has been assumed to be a fundamental value (Marx assumed this for example). This can be a bit slippery since we tend to only value "work" that can somehow be turned into money and we ignore the fact that "work" adds to the value of life for some people and amounts to throwing away time you will never get back for others. Nonetheless, with our "dimensional" approach, we can perhaps get a new way of seeing why labor, the compensation for it and the economic value of it varies so mysteriously.

RESOURCES

Centuries ago, the economic theories of "mercantilism" assumed that gold and silver were the basis of all value - driving the policies of governments and a wave of colonial conquest. Even though this theory is long dead (except in the minds of Donald Trump), we need to take it seriously. There are three aspects of it that seem to be almost independent (dimensions). One is the actual value of the resource (its "utility" or usefulness). The other is scarcity. The third is widespread acceptance of the resource as a kind of "money". Bitcoin is a recent attempt to create a "store of value" that is based on scarcity and trust alone. Bitcoin believers tend to think that "real" money - what they call "fiat" money - is "nothing but" arbitrary tokens that we trust and scarcity.

There are a few resources that are undoubtedly valuable and are becoming scarce, at least locally. Their value depends on how we use the resource and many "technical" features. There are many examples of this, namely:

• Water
• Fossil fuels
• Coltan
• Uranium

It's useful to look at what these resources have in common as well as how they differ. Since water is emerging as a "physical" resource of this type that's "in the news" these days, it's a good example to consider in detail.

THE ENVIRONMENT

Many people regard the "environment" in general, including the animals that live in it, are in this category. For example, expansion of "arable land" has an opposite cost in "habitat". Whether you care about this tradeoff or not, it eventually comes back to bite you when, for example, "commercial" fish stocks vanish due to pollution and/or climate change. 

At bottom, the issue is whether to treat the environment as a "resource". If we see it that way, only human values apply. If not, we see only the human value of maintaining life on the planet.

We can treat the "environment" as a dimension whether or not people care about this dimension. We have objective measures available, including the rate of species loss, the rate of habitat destruction and, of course, the mother of all environmental costs: climate change, which is being studied to death.

ENERGY

Another interesting source of value is energy and its evil twin "entropy". Life of any type requires an energy source. The big picture is that life fights "uphill" against entropy which is increasing everywhere in the universe at all times at all scales. This is perhaps the fundamental struggle of life, making energy the basic "value" and entropy the basic "negative" value. Life is a constant gamble in the casino of the Universe, where the "house" always wins in the long run.

We all see energy costs translated into money in our fuel and electricity bills. But, by the basic laws of nature (namely the laws of thermodynamics), energy "creation" involves an opposite creation of entropy (actually more entropy than energy is created). An irreversible consequence of all human political systems is that "entropy" is created by irreversible pollution of water sources - something that the energy companies magically avoid accounting for - passing it on to society and the environment itself. Such systems also tend to regard direct costs in other dimensions (such as the value of life itself) as somebody else's problem. 

The same phenomenon can be seen in nuclear energy. Even in "renewable" sources, the same laws apply, although you need to follow the energy transactions. For example, "free" energy from wind power ignores the energy cost of creating the hardware, transmitting the energy and maintaining the system. 

POLITICS

The subject of politics cannot be avoided here. All political theories involve a "meta-theory" about the value and dangerously ignore or misunderstand most dimensions.

For example, political debate in Canada (where it happens at all) is about "money" and its assumed relationship to "jobs" which are a proxy for "life itself". All other considerations can be set aside as long as we can grow "GDP" (Itself an abstraction of an abstraction). We are unable to discuss other "dimensions" intelligently. Capitalism assumes that all resources are "owned" by someone. Even the idea that the "Government" "owns" resources not owned by others is an assumption with sweeping consequences. Assumptions about the "value" of "work" and "money" are buried so deeply in our debates that it can seem crazy to challenge them. The effect of this is that major problems sneak up us from unknown "dimensions". We lack even the language to recognize the enemy.

So, in this blog, we will frequently discuss how political theories perceive the multidimensional world of human value. I know of no political theory that does justice to this subject. We are left with a choice between sets of dangerous misconceptions.

Animus

I want to make a brief note of the concept of "Animus". I'm almost pulling this term out of thin air to refer to an idea that is still crystallizing. The word does already have meanings and connotations which I will comment on when the  opportunity presents itself.

At the core of the idea is recognition of a "system" that shows intentional behavour. Lately I have been using "system" in preference to "thing" because I recognize that nothing really exists in isolation. We recognize a system by (somewhat arbitrarily) drawing a line around all the forms and relationships that determine the dynamic behavour of those forms and relationships (i.e., how they change with time).

Animus refers (or does it?) to the property of a system's behavour that cannot easily be described without reference to the future state of the system. The system is behaving in a way that tends to bring about some future states of affairs rather than others. One might say this of the Earth/Moon system, governed by gravity, but in this case and others not showing "animus", the behavour can be described by a physical "law" or simple cause and effect relationships.

Animus obviously covers the behavour of living things, which behave in ways to perpetuate their form into subsequent generations. Their behavour is described in Darwinian terms as "adaptive".

I would extend animus to cover machines, which behave (by definition) "mechanically" according to ordinary cause and effect like a falling rock, but cannot be sensibly described without reference to the purpose of their behavior. A theologically-minded philosopher would say something like the "animus", if any, was inherited by the designer of the machine who is the one who is "really" alive and the real possessor of "animus". I would reply that "animus" and "life" are not identical concepts. Life is a special case of animus.

It is animus that we see in the "Dragons" of dragon theory. It is animus that we do not see in the Universe as a whole, which is at the heart of the debate over the existence of God. Belief in God is just one way to "explain" animus (purposefulness) in the Universe in general. Other explanations, such as "fate" have their followers. Anthropomorphic  cosmology tries to show that the fundamental laws of the Universe are somehow chosen in advance to make human life possible.

So, while I'm not sure exactly how to define "animus", nor even sure what kind of a thing it is, I'm sure that attempting to put my finger on this slippery idea may help to add another key concept to my intellectual tool kit.

Western philosophy got itself in a tangle by mis-handling analogies to some fundamental ideas - many newly discovered in the Enlightenment:

• Machine. We have been in awe of our machines since the 17th century. Descartes and Hobbes took it for granted that animals "were" machines. The analogy persists with modern philosophers such as Dennett, who takes it for granted that our brains are "kinda" like computers. This is so ingrained and "obvious" that it's hard to make people realize that it's an analogy - maybe not a good one.
• Math Envy. The idea that everything can be reduced to a series of axioms and proofs, like Euclid's geometry. Descartes (whose lasting mark was in geometry) is a perfect example. On a more subtle level, the idea crept into politics: "We hold these things to be self-evident - that all men are created equal ...".
• Free Will. This idea is a relative of "animus". It attempts to distinguish humans from "mere machines" in that their behavour is not governed by mechanical laws. It became important when it seemed that Newton's "laws" were the first step in explaining everything that happens in the world, including human history, in terms of precise, inflexible, deterministic "law". Of course, this project did not proceed as predicted, but many cling to the idea that there exists some kind of distinction between behavour motivated by reason and behavour motivated by physical law. Moreover, this distinction is held by many to be the key to what we call the "soul".
• Physical Law.   It seems that Newton was the one that first developed what we now refer to as a "law" of nature. It's hard to take ourselves back to that period, where there was serious debate (even in the mind of Newton himself) as to just what sort of a thing this "law" was. Newton naturally took it to be a law decreed by God, bringing all of physics into the realm of "animus". We would now see this as mere superstition but it's a superstition that is buried in our language, most notably in the very word "law".

Being Alive

It's worthwhile to base our understanding of the human condition on the brute and obvious fact that we are living things.  "Being alive" involves participation in a vastly complex environment - sharing that environment with all living things. This is where to start - not the illusion of individuality.  In this way, we cannot escape the most fundamental form of assimilation: participation in the drama of all life.

Since Darwin, our idea about what it means to be alive has changed beyond recognition. It is fair to say that the old myths, based on simple stories about the human condition, have not kept up with what we now understand our situation to be. Especially in the West and the Abrahamic religions that are base on the fate of the individual "soul", the simple fact of our interdependence has been forgotten.

The discipline of mathematics and physics can be applied to the science of life (biology) but few biologists, let alone the lay public, have been exposed to more than High School math, which most of them have forgotten anyway.

As a result, we see biological theories based on radical over-simplification:

• The "individual", essential to the mythology of "survival of the fittest". The picture here conjures up a struggle between "individuals", with those possessing the most adaptive modifications passing on their genes to the next generation. In fact, identification of the "individual" is somewhat arbitrary and the idea that the species (collection of individuals) "evolves" while the "environment" remains static is even more arbitrary. In fact, the whole environment is constantly changing due to the stunningly complex interactions between its "components", which can be animals, species, genes and even the wobble of the earth's axis. Traditional views of evolution are serviceable enough within their scope but ignore important aspects of reality. In practice, the sciences of medicine and ecology are both sciences of systems. Any challenge to "Darwinian" evolution is considered heresy.
• The system of life on this Earth is dynamic, not static. It's striking how the political prejudice for "order" and "equilibrium" dominated 19th and 20th century thinking. Extending conservative politics to physics and biology, we saw the world as essentially unchanging except for the little corner where we spun our theories about small changes - such as the evolution of man. As humans, we have a hard time visualizing vast, complex change over long periods. We also tend to take credit for "surviving" when the lion's share of the credit belongs to an environment conducive to human existence (so far).

Especially since the 1960's applied mathematics has provided tools that help us understand dynamic systems. Sadly, mastering the math of dynamic systems (and the resulting intuitive "feel" for dynamic systems) is out of reach for anyone lacking a strong background in analytical math. 

Dynamic systems are characterize by a set of equations (often a very large number of them) that describe the rate of change of variables and/or the relationship between variables. Time is of the essence. It is not generally possible to "solve" the equations to predict the value of all the variables at any one time. Even so, you can predict the behaviour of the system as a whole in important ways. For example, you can answer such questions as:

• Are there stable "orbits"? Does he system settle down into a repeating sequence of configurations or just wander around aimlessly? 
• Is the system chaotic? Do small changes in the initial conditions result in arbitrarily large variations over time?
• Does he system "settle down". If you start with a given configuration, will the system tend to move into a predictable state? Even a "stable" state (fixed point) where all variables remain constant?

In the case of a biological system, we can visualize a vast number of dynamic equations, specifying rates of change. For example, the rate that a substance can be metabolized (used for life) depends on its availability and concentration, along with the availability of proteins (enzymes). Availability of proteins depends on the existence of certain genes and the expression of these genes. If we are picturing the tiny environment of the human body, we can ask which genes. It's not just the human genome that is active. Every human being is a composite of two genomes (at least): one from both her parents and the completely independent mitochondrial genome "infecting" the egg - responsible for creating ATP - the essential energy currency of the body. And then there is the "microbiome", the genes working in the bacteria we host, which play an essential role in digestion and he immune system. Availability of essential substances also depends on the active genes in the food we eat - for example the genome of wheat (the world's oldest GMO) and the genome of the bacteria that are responsible for 70% of the energy available to cattle. We could consider all these genes working together to be an "individual", but perhaps it's best to put aside the notion of an individual altogether.

We can then go back and ask the kind of questions we typically ask of a dynamic system. For example, we see the daily rhythms of life - meal times, sleep times - as "stable orbits". We see the death of the "individual" as a stable "solution" to the dynamic equations under a wide range of circumstances where the rate of change for all relevant variables goes to zero. Disease and injury can be seen as radical departures from "normal" which may or may not lead back to stability. This concept of disease can be applied to "individuals", environments such as a coral reef, entire ecosystems or even the entire planet.

Stepping back from the "individual", we can see how vast collections of factors (metabolism of quadrillions of living agents) together determine the state of the system in the next moment. Ththte entire system is constantly changing. Many factors, including evolution and climate change, ensure that the overall trend is for the system not to "orbit" around a stable set of conditions. Life has a way of being unrepeatable. Or, as they say, extinction is forever. 

A simple example may suffice. A simplified mathematical model can be created for the relationship between predator and prey. Under certain fairly narrow conditions, the numbers of predators and prey swings around an "orbit". However, under different assumptions, either the predator or the prey is driven to extinction. The fate of either species is determined not by "fitness" but by the parameters of the system as a whole. This can be seen intuitively if one imagines a predator that is "too efficient" and wipes out all the prey, starving itself out of existence. On the scale of human current events, we can see that humans may be so efficient at consuming all possible prey that they literally eat themselves out of home and go extinct. Seen from the traditional perspective of Darwinian evolution, he "fitness" of a species quite obviously depends on the environment the species is found in and that environment is never static.

In mathematical terms, there are only a certain configuration of variables that are possible. Others, while possible, are radically unstable, leading quickly to stable solutions with a lot of zeros. Zeros in this case mean no metabolism: no life.