This is a bit tongue in cheek but ” There’s a dog in the picture. Once you see the dog, there’s still a lot going on in the picture, but the whole thing makes a lot more sense. ” suggests we should not be taking pictures of dalmatians with high contrast black and white films ;-)
At the same time I think that does get to the core of the discussion, for me at least. High contrast images are really good for certain things, no so much in other settings. So while economic concepts may shed some light on yet unanswered questions—or perhaps merely suggest questions we have not yet thought about due to framing type blinders—I think one needs to tread carefully.
I do agree with your, and ChristianKI’s, position that some of the underlying economic concepts, theoretical at least, may actually be wheels we can put on another cart and make some progress. But from that perspective it’s really just the abstract math model and not really economics. I do think using existing wheels is often a pretty good idea. But I also think periodically reinventing the existing wheels is also a pretty good idea too.
So here would be more specific questions I have about the general idea:
1) With pricing I’m not convinced by your answer that we really get anything more, even if the additional properties are really anything more than terminological differences from any other signally mechanism. Nor am I really seeing what more we’re learning or can learn with the change to the economic price model here. What new insights are expected here—or what can the current model approach not tell us but that seem to be rather important?
Some other observations. Insulin as a price is problematic to me on two counts. First, even taking it as such it seems to get us a partial equilibrium model at best so tells us very little about the overall state of the system. Second, it’s not clear to me just what type of price it would be. It’s not like a dollar price where we see the underlying monetary unit as common across all the local prices. Insulin is one of the many hormones in the human body and we don’t seem to have a common unit that would underlie all the hormonal signaling mechanisms. If so then that price will be more along the line of a barter market “price”.
I think a lot of people lose sight of what prices are and see them purely as a signalling device (the Hayakian information signals in society) but prices are both signalling devices and rationing devices. Is the idea to looks at the relative prices within a body and induce rationing on consumption of certain resources and the increased production of other resources?
2) Discount rates. I cannot really think of a good use here, even if we can (easily I suspect) calculate such a rate. The implication is see is that those with more fat should have a lower discount rate for future energy meaning they save more. But is that a really good description of the amount of fat more people have? I would think a better description might be trash we’re unable to dispose of fast enough so it’s just pilling up on the streets and empty fields. Still, you might be seeing a number of things I’m not.
3) When thinking about economic processes and physiological process how do things like , production possibility frontiers or scarcity compare? Is the body’s normal state of operation one of scarcity or perhaps non-scarcity? Does it the body always operate on it’s PPF? If we’re not in a state of scarcity will the economic concepts (which I would to some extent separate from the underlying math) that all derive entirely from that starting point really apply?
I do think the ideas of always moving towards some equilibrium state, and generally never actually being at the point, applies to both settings. On that basis I might see where cross pollination might be good—but I still don’t quite see a benefit to adopting any of the terminology and resulting mental imagery will help and have certain fears it will mislead.
Those are all reasonable questions to ask and points to raise, and I’m not going to go to bat defending any of the suggestions I made off the top of my head when writing the original question. The point of the original question was to see if anybody out there had publications asking/answering the sort of questions you pose, and it looks like the answer is “no”.
For some of these questions, as you argue, it’s possible that the lack of literature is because there really isn’t anything interesting to be found. But at least some of these questions would be interesting to have an answer to regardless of what the answer is—e.g. your example “Is the body’s normal state of operation one of scarcity or non-scarcity?”.
More generally, a better analogy than the dog picture would be the periodic table. At first glance (and certainly before the development of quantum theory) an argument could be made that it doesn’t tell us anything we can’t figure out without it. But it did hint at what questions to ask—e.g. undiscovered elements and their properties. If insulin acts as a price signal (even without a rationing role) or if the body’s fat stores are governed by an internally-represented discount rate, then that immediately suggests that a variety of different cell types would look at those signals to determine their behavior—possibly cell types and behaviors not yet examined. It also predicts that cells which convert one resource into another would examine the corresponding price signals, and adjust production based on relative prices. Like the periodic table, these ideas suggest relationships to look for.
Thanks, and I seem to have come across as more critical/confrontational than I actually felt (so seemed to have been demanding some defense from you—sorry). My intent was to better tease out what type of questions you might be asking and hoping to answer. I understand your thinking and motivation bit better now.
See my response to leggi’s comment, with the dog picture, as well as to Daniel V.
This is a bit tongue in cheek but ” There’s a dog in the picture. Once you see the dog, there’s still a lot going on in the picture, but the whole thing makes a lot more sense. ” suggests we should not be taking pictures of dalmatians with high contrast black and white films ;-)
At the same time I think that does get to the core of the discussion, for me at least. High contrast images are really good for certain things, no so much in other settings. So while economic concepts may shed some light on yet unanswered questions—or perhaps merely suggest questions we have not yet thought about due to framing type blinders—I think one needs to tread carefully.
I do agree with your, and ChristianKI’s, position that some of the underlying economic concepts, theoretical at least, may actually be wheels we can put on another cart and make some progress. But from that perspective it’s really just the abstract math model and not really economics. I do think using existing wheels is often a pretty good idea. But I also think periodically reinventing the existing wheels is also a pretty good idea too.
So here would be more specific questions I have about the general idea:
1) With pricing I’m not convinced by your answer that we really get anything more, even if the additional properties are really anything more than terminological differences from any other signally mechanism. Nor am I really seeing what more we’re learning or can learn with the change to the economic price model here. What new insights are expected here—or what can the current model approach not tell us but that seem to be rather important?
Some other observations. Insulin as a price is problematic to me on two counts. First, even taking it as such it seems to get us a partial equilibrium model at best so tells us very little about the overall state of the system. Second, it’s not clear to me just what type of price it would be. It’s not like a dollar price where we see the underlying monetary unit as common across all the local prices. Insulin is one of the many hormones in the human body and we don’t seem to have a common unit that would underlie all the hormonal signaling mechanisms. If so then that price will be more along the line of a barter market “price”.
I think a lot of people lose sight of what prices are and see them purely as a signalling device (the Hayakian information signals in society) but prices are both signalling devices and rationing devices. Is the idea to looks at the relative prices within a body and induce rationing on consumption of certain resources and the increased production of other resources?
2) Discount rates. I cannot really think of a good use here, even if we can (easily I suspect) calculate such a rate. The implication is see is that those with more fat should have a lower discount rate for future energy meaning they save more. But is that a really good description of the amount of fat more people have? I would think a better description might be trash we’re unable to dispose of fast enough so it’s just pilling up on the streets and empty fields. Still, you might be seeing a number of things I’m not.
3) When thinking about economic processes and physiological process how do things like , production possibility frontiers or scarcity compare? Is the body’s normal state of operation one of scarcity or perhaps non-scarcity? Does it the body always operate on it’s PPF? If we’re not in a state of scarcity will the economic concepts (which I would to some extent separate from the underlying math) that all derive entirely from that starting point really apply?
I do think the ideas of always moving towards some equilibrium state, and generally never actually being at the point, applies to both settings. On that basis I might see where cross pollination might be good—but I still don’t quite see a benefit to adopting any of the terminology and resulting mental imagery will help and have certain fears it will mislead.
Those are all reasonable questions to ask and points to raise, and I’m not going to go to bat defending any of the suggestions I made off the top of my head when writing the original question. The point of the original question was to see if anybody out there had publications asking/answering the sort of questions you pose, and it looks like the answer is “no”.
For some of these questions, as you argue, it’s possible that the lack of literature is because there really isn’t anything interesting to be found. But at least some of these questions would be interesting to have an answer to regardless of what the answer is—e.g. your example “Is the body’s normal state of operation one of scarcity or non-scarcity?”.
More generally, a better analogy than the dog picture would be the periodic table. At first glance (and certainly before the development of quantum theory) an argument could be made that it doesn’t tell us anything we can’t figure out without it. But it did hint at what questions to ask—e.g. undiscovered elements and their properties. If insulin acts as a price signal (even without a rationing role) or if the body’s fat stores are governed by an internally-represented discount rate, then that immediately suggests that a variety of different cell types would look at those signals to determine their behavior—possibly cell types and behaviors not yet examined. It also predicts that cells which convert one resource into another would examine the corresponding price signals, and adjust production based on relative prices. Like the periodic table, these ideas suggest relationships to look for.
Thanks, and I seem to have come across as more critical/confrontational than I actually felt (so seemed to have been demanding some defense from you—sorry). My intent was to better tease out what type of questions you might be asking and hoping to answer. I understand your thinking and motivation bit better now.
No problem, and they are great questions. :)