Modern Myths
I would like to start a new “internet meme”. The topic today is “Modern Myths”. What popular myths do you know? What things do many people take for granted, but are actually false?
1. Full employment/zero unemployment is achievable.
It isn’t. The market never clears instantly, so there will always be a natural rate of unemployment. Of course we should aim to reduce unemployment as much as possible, but I recently found out that some people believed zero unemployment was achievable.
2. Growth is possible without job losses.
It isn’t. There is nothing bad about people losing jobs (except for them, in the short run), because ultimately they can do other things, the economy becomes more efficient, more wealth is produced and everyone is better off.
But I used to think that of course it would be better if growth could be achieved without job losses.
I read recently a very simple argument that growth is not even possible without job losses. For growth to occur, labour has to become more productive. Therefore, a company will be able to do the same work with fewer people. Therefore, job losses.
3. Genetically modified food is bad. “Natural” means good.
I do not quite understand the opposition to genetically modified food. For some reason, people think that “natural” or “organic” means good and “artificial” means bad. Of course there is no link: there are plenty of natural poisons, and natural foods which are bad for you. There are plenty of foods with added chemicals which are fine. Perhaps it is because people do not understand that all food, whether “natural” or “unnatural”, is made of chemicals, which can be isolated and are identical whether grown naturally or synthesised in a lab.
People campaign against GM food trials on the grounds that it could escape and grow in the wild (”contamination”). But this begging the question: it is not contamination unless the food is bad in the first place. Why would it be? Genomes, whether natural or altered in a lab, are fundamentally the same. What is the problem?
Tags: economics, GM food, growth, political correctness
November 6th, 2007 at 1:19 am
Response for 1. I am not an economist, but I can possibly comment on this.
Though full employment may be theoretically possible in an ideal economy, it won’t be possible practically.
a. Zero unemployment leads to unacceptable and uncontrollable wage inflation leading to all down stream effects
b. Forgetting about the downstream effects, changes in workplace is always ahead of the workforce preparing and changing for the new workplace. This gap/ lag would always ensure that there is a subset of the workforce that is always unemployed.
Response for 2. Though there is a lot of hype against GM food there is a learned basis for it.
a. There have been occasions where GM corn have been found to be more allergenic than its natural counterparts to a large extent.
b. Simply because all organisms have genomes, does not make monkey and donkey the same. The differences in the genome manifest as different proteins, outcomes, etc., being transcribed from the DNA leading to different organisms. Similarly, GM crops produce modified proteins which effect may not be known, unlike their natural counterparts which have been used by humans for centuries and hence well understood.
This is akin to new drug being tested before found safe. Unfortunately, GM crops are not a single chemical to be studied that easily. Moreover, pharmaceutical chemicals (drugs) do not inter-breed producing newer chemicals of unknown nature, whereas plants do!
Thus, the problems are the shallow knowledge of blind proponents of GM crops. I am all for GM crops, but in a very guarded way, for example, taking the above into consideration and with proper precautions. The potential risks are too much to rush into unconditionally embracing GM crops and so on.
November 26th, 2007 at 9:19 am
“Genomes, whether natural or altered in a lab, are fundamentally the same.”
Yes, that was rather flippant. My point is that, for any given organism, whether it is modified or not gives us no information about whether it is good or bad. GM food is no more likely to be “bad” than non-GM food.
Yet many places, including St John’s College, have a blanket policy of using no GM food. We should campaign against this stupid policy. Indeed, I’d quite like to campaign to use only GM food just to annoy stupid people.