What Is Causality?
Freeman: This question comes from someone who is a leader of the Stanford group, but also was a former cabinet member. She's an economist. She says:
Lyn, we're taught, for the most part, that any truly intelligible universal principles, and, I suppose, in that sense, any actual truth, doesn't exist. Now, it would seem to me, in reflecting on it, that it is that very notion that underlies the whole idea of monetarism. And this has come up, in discussions of our group, in comparing monetarism to what you have called for in terms of a new economic system.
But, the fact is, that monetarism—and that is really what we are all taught—is that reality can somehow be represented by an essentially statistical notion of value, and of monetary value.
Now, the question that this raises, at least as I see it, is one of mathematics versus physics. For the most part, economists are trained in mathematics, and we are told, in fact, we are ruled by the idea, that any economic principle that we put forward, must be qualified mathematically.
Now, obviously, the physicist takes a very different approach. And one of the things that has become immediately apparent to us, is that your Triple Curve function could never have been arrived at purely from the standpoint of mathematics. Therefore—and please understand we're not trying to replace you, but we're trying to figure out why it is, that you were able to do this, when no one else was. And somehow, it seems that it is in this area of mathematics versus physics, in dealing with questions of economy and of national economy, that the answer lies. Would you comment?
LaRouche: Well, of course, the whole mathematical system of economics is a fraud inherently. And it was based on an imperialist system, to begin with. And it's against humanity.
Now, the question should be, is: What is causality? There is no concept of causality in a mathematical economics. We choose one thing over the other. What's the difference? Well, someone says it's the mathematical equation. Crap! That has nothing to do with it. It's causality that's important. And when we use a financial system which is statistical, it never works.
Why? Look, in no case in history, the known history of mankind, has mathematics, or mathematical economics, ever succeeded in producing an improvement in the conditions of life. Never. So, mathematics has, in that sense, constantly failed, and will always fail.
What happens? First of all, look, you have to look at it from the standpoint of chemistry. Life processes and chemistry. In other words, you have to have an actual science, and there's no science in mathematical economics. None. And the results are always bad. As the case history of the United States since the death of Franklin Roosevelt shows. Always wrong. American history. Always wrong. History of Europe. Always wrong.
We have the greatest perfection of mathematics per se, with no physics in it, which was introduced by reductionism, especially since Alan Greenspan came into power, with these innovations. The greatest freedom of mathematics to test everything, without any difference for quality. The result has been the greatest catastrophe in all human history. So, any kind of mathematical economics, as such, has been proven, again and again, to be a total failure.
Now, if you want to say a failure is a success, your measure of success, then mathematical physics is superior.
The fact of the matter is, you live in a universe which is essentially consonant with what is defined by Vernadsky's conception of the three qualitative phase-spaces of which existence is composed, at least experimental areas: the non-living, living processes as such, and the human mind. Three different phase-spaces.
Now, what do we do? Mankind does not live naturally. Mankind's achievement is to be highly unnatural. I don't want to encourage certain tendencies by that, but it's unnatural in the sense of the typical ordinary physical chemist who is not really a competent physical chemist. What is the physical chemistry of the universe? We have the physical chemistry we identify with the non-living—that is, which has no antecedent as an organized process. Then we have processes which are living processes inherently, or residues of living processes. Then we have humanity, which is not quite the same thing as any other form of living process.
So, you have the three categories. These are dynamic, they are universal and dynamic. They interact. The universe is a composite of interaction of these three phase-spaces, and everything that's derived from it.
So now, how do we live? Let's take a typical case of iron. How do we get iron? Well, we could get iron in many ways, hypothetically, but how do we actually get it? How have we gotten it in terms of the 18th and 19th, and 20th centuries? We went to areas where a lot of little animals and plants died. We went and we robbed their graves, for iron.
Now, iron is all over the planet. It's a universal thing. But, why do we go and rob graves to get iron? As around the Great Lakes area—it's one of the great deposits of iron. And we rob the graves of the little creatures that died there. That's how we get iron. Why? Because the little creatures who used iron, as part of their biological process, would, when they died, have left a concentration of iron in their little dead bodies. And you can go there and say a prayer over them, hmm?
So, therefore, we found the sources of the richest concentration of iron ores, for us, such as bog iron in the Jersey swamp, which is where the Revolutionary War got its metal, iron—from New Jersey, the bog iron swamp.
So, we concentrate on grave-robbing of living processes, and we find that we go in, and we take the areas which have the richest concentration of iron, which means the least heat, the least coal, used up in order to refine the stuff, and we leave behind the things that are not quite as efficient, that consume too much power in order to reduce this thing to a form of usable iron.
Now we find out that by doing that, we tend to exhaust the richest resources, of various kinds, left behind in the graveyards of various kinds of species. That's how we get them. We have the Lithosphere, and on top of this, we have a Biosphere, which is developing. It selects certain materials in the environment; grabs it, takes it into their bodies—food, food, food, for this little creature. These things die, and they leave behind these deposits. And you go running around the world to find out what kind of species was loose in this area, and they will give you the best concentration of this kind of deposit from the Periodic Table.
But then—you're using it up! Are you using it up? No, you haven't diminished the total iron in the universe, or on Earth. It's still there, it's still abundant. But it's now dispersed! It's not in graves you can rob any more. You have to go out and rob other graves, or you have to take other resources, and you have to get more powerful means of reducing resources, in order to make them equivalent to what had been the richest resources of this iron.
So, the essence of the thing, is: For humanity to exist, several things are necessary. Humanity must increase its power, measured in heat energy, or heat power per square kilometer, per square centimeter, or smaller. And by increasing our power, by increasing the energy-flux-density of the power applied, we are able to make poor resources, better than what had been previously considered rich resources. To do that, we have to develop infrastructure, a total systemic infrastructure. We have to develop an infrastructure which is able to organize the application of energy, power, in various ways, which makes it possible at various points in the Earth, to extract economically a raw material from the Periodic Table, and to distribute it. Because you're getting it here, and you want it over here. That requires a system of power to deliver this damned stuff.
So, therefore, you can take the increase of the energy-flux-density, per capita and per square kilometer, of the planet, as a limiting consideration.
So now, let's look at economics, from that standpoint: Which is called the science of physical economy. Which, in its modern form, is based on the work of many scientists, especially the followers of Bernhard Riemann, such as Max Planck, such as Albert Einstein, and Vernadsky. That, is real economic science.
Now then, the other part of it—well, it's not just economics. It's political, also. Because what kind of a political system do you have, of coordination among people, to do all the various things, including distribution, to make this system work? Look at it from the standpoint of Vernadsky. Look at it from the standpoint of physical chemistry as defined by Vernadsky. What do you have to do in terms of organization of human activity, development of power systems, transportation systems, management in general, to make this work? And to keep society progressing, and not deteriorating, entropically?
That's physical chemistry!
Now, let's take those standards, and let's measure the performance of an economy by that standard, that yardstick, and you have it. That's the problem. You need a science of physical economy, which means that you do have to consider all these psychological and other things, because they're involved in the way in which you bring about the organization of the efforts of society, to solve this problem.
And it's the same thing we're going to go to industrialize the Moon, which is one of the easiest chores before us, and how we're going to get to Mars, in less than 300 days, and not end up as a piece of jelly—that's going to make it difficult to control the machine to get back.
So, therefore, the meaning of economics, as it's taught, is gibberish. And we know it's gibberish, because every time you use it, you end up in bad trouble.
So, you have to test things by their effects, but you have to choose the right effect. You have to find the time-scale on which you have to measure the effect. So, there's nothing scientific about what is taught as economics today. What is taught is, how to behave, to make the bloodsuckers rich.
