Re: RE: Social and political aspects

Bob MacGregor (rdmacgregor@gov.pe.ca)
Thu, 08 Jul 1999 16:48:57 -0400

The practical limitations to consideration of all three dimensions are considerable. What the resource economists are trying to do is construct a common numeraire. If your box's width is measured in inches, the height in barleygrains and the depth in ogglequats, it is difficult to describe its reality.
If we cannot find a common numeraire for the economic, social and environmental dimensions, then we have no way to figure out the optimal balance among them --they cannot be considered holistically, as is most desirable. Some folks would, or course, weight economic returns or social well-being above environmental concerns; others might place the sacredness of species above ANY other concern. In aggregate, though, societies (indeed, the entire world society) must eventually come to terms with the inevitable tradeoffs among the three dimensions (sort of like saying the volume of the box is fixed, so expanding one dimension means reducing another to compensate --> too crude an analogy, since technology can introduce some flexibility in the world's economy/society/environment "box"; still, the world is finite in the end).
If we cannot find an acceptable way of rating all factors against each other, we will always be locked into looking at them separately. The political process becomes the ultimate arbiter which will implicitly decide on the relative value of these factors (as reflected in subsidies, tax laws, incentives, endangered species or anti-pollution regulation, etc.).

BOB

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