Chicken Sh*t Economics
Economists are really smart. But sometimes they get seduced by theory, and forget that we still have to be obey the laws of physics.
My oldest brother was a graduate student in natural resource economics at the University of Maine during the 1980s. At the time, the poultry industry in the state was in terrible shape. People were losing jobs, farms were going under, and Maine’s whole poultry sector was on the brink of collapse.
One day, one of my brother’s professors rushed into the building, very excited. “I have a way to save the state’s poultry industry!”, he declared.
My brother, curious, asked the professor what the solution was.
“You see, chickens will eat their own manure.” (This is true, by the way. Chickens do not have very efficient digestion systems, and so their manure has residual nutrients. If pressed, chickens can eat it to survive.)
My brother then asked the professor why that would matter. The economist said, “Don’t you see? All we have to do is feed them once, and we’ll never have to buy chicken feed again!”
Naturally, my brother thought this was some kind of test.
He said to the professor, “Yeah. Gee, that would be a good idea, except for that pesky second law of thermodynamics. Ha, ha.” (The second law says that energy will always degrade from a high-grade form, such as high quality chicken feed, to a low-grade form, such as low-quality animal manure and lost heat energy.)
Chickens could never be fed just once, and then recycle their manure forever. It would violate the laws of thermodynamics…and common sense.
Amazingly, the professor looked at my brother and said, “The second law of thermodynamics? Aw, come on, that’s just a theory!”
He went on to explain his economic model of how manure-eating chickens, in a perfect recycling system — in complete violation of physical laws — would be very cost effective.
My brother then looked at the professor and said, “You’re an idiot. How did you ever earn a Ph.D. in anything?”
As you can imagine, my brother didn’t go on for a Ph.D. in economics.
That story stuck with me. And, today, I collect economist jokes. Here is one of my favorites:
A physicist, an engineer, and an economist are shipwrecked on a desert island. They’re starving, and there is no food to be found. After a few days of severe hunger, a big can of beans washes on shore. They rejoice — food, at last! But, after a moment, they realize that can needs to be opened somehow.
The physicist jumps on the problem, “A ha! All we need to do is put the can like this in the sand, at this particular angle. After a few hours, the sun will warm the can, causing the contents to expand, thus tearing the metal open in precisely this spot.”
The engineer is disgusted, “Oh, come on! All we need to do is find a couple of big rocks, and I can smash the damn thing open!”
The economist sneers at both of them, “You’re both wrong! I have the perfect solution, which puts yours to shame!”
The physicist and the engineer both look up, surprised. The economist raises his finger and says, “First, assume a can opener…”
And here’s a classic:
An economist and a businessman are walking down the street, and they see a $20 bill lying on the sidewalk.
The businessman stops, looks at it, and starts to bend down to pick up the bill. The economist says, “Don’t bother! The market must have picked that up already…”
Those are pretty silly jokes, I know. And maybe they’re unfair. (Just to be a good sport, I’m happy to hear scientist jokes anyone would like to leave below.)
But perhaps my favorite description of economics comes from the brilliant California author, Kim Stanley Robinson, in his book Red Mars:
“…that’s a large part of what economics is — people arbitrarily, or as a matter of taste, assigning numerical values to non-numerical things. And then pretending that they haven’t just made the numbers up, which they have.
Economics is like astrology in that sense, except that economics serves to justify the current power structure, and so it has a lot of fervent believers among the powerful.”
From these stories and jokes, you might think that I don’t like economists. That’s not true! They’re fine people, quite smart and absolutely charming. And economics can be very useful.
I just think that traditional economics isn’t a very good tool for making important long-term decisions about what society can and should do.
Sure, it’s fine for handling day-to-day markets, determing the right price for things, and managing trade and currencies. Markets are great at solving problems, once our larger societal goals have been set. I just think that economics is often a poor way to actually guide our civilization into the future.
Instead, I think we need to be guided by a sense of ethics, to know what we should do, and the laws of physics, to know what we can do.
Economics is mainly helpful after ethics and physics have set the terms of what should and can be done. Not before.
Otherwise, we’ll probably be left with some kind of complicated economic theory for why the chicken crossed the road. Maybe it was to get to the invisible hand?
Dr. Jonathan Foley (@GlobalEcoGuy) is a climate & environmental scientist, writer, and speaker. He is also the Executive Director of Project Drawdown, the world’s leading resource for climate solutions.
These views are his own.
Copyright © 2015–2020, Jonathan Foley. All rights reserved.
