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market-farming - Re: scientific method

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  • From: "jay gee" <jgj23 AT mindspring.com>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: scientific method
  • Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 13:50:55 +0000


Leigh Hauter wrote in part:

> My personal problem with scientific method is not the method but,
> like everything else, the people and organization who control what
> science is inquiring about. Rather than 'people science' we often
> have 'corporate science' and as the economics textbook says, a
> corporation is concerned with making money. And making money and
> helping people aren't necessarily the same thing.

I'm with you on this one. But you have to keep a thing or
two in mind to avoid going crazy when confronted with the
problems produced by modern science.

1.) Most scientists do very little thinking in advance
about what the long term consequences of their
research or projects might be. In this respect
their actions mimic those of many farmers who are
only concerned with what happens in the coming
season. Until all people in modern society look a
little further into the future before acting, things are
going to keep getting worse because of population
stresses on the environment and each other;

2.) Because of the universal principles of diminishing
marginal returns and diminishing marginal utility,
scientists, corporations, farmers, and others will
keeping looking for the "next big thing" rather
than looking to improve what they are doing. It
is always more difficult to keep improving something
you are currently doing than it is to start doing
something new and get better at it over time.

Since the era of the "New Deal," people in the U.S. have
lost a lot of their self-sufficiency. Looking to science, the
government or your neighbor to find the cure for a problem
is always easier than digging it out yourself through research,
or paying-the-hell-attention to what you are doing while and
after doing it. Government subsidies for farmers only made
this worse.

We might all be better off if we first did what was best for us
individually, giving thought and adjusting for long term
consequences, rather than worrying about how our actions
or the lack of them affect others first -- and what they might
think.

Jay Gee
not a farmer -- but interested in farming







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