From Cambridge to Eternity: “Organic Equilibrium”

 

What? Well, the rest of us well aware owing to Benjamin Franklin that an organism if in equilibrium would be dead or otherwise unmoving.

             One of the most typical cases of equilibrium might be of the balance: when the two sides weigh the same to a certain acceptable extent, we declare the system is “in equilibrium.” The other cases would include the clock, the vending machine, the “driving machine,” the robot, the sewage system (?) and the solar system. Supposedly they are in equilibrium as at the moment of interest. The generic name for such systems is the mechanism with a definable number of namable parts, each moving as designed or otherwise presupposed. 

             The mechanism might be opposed to the organism, which will be “finished when it finishes changing.” At any rate, a changing mechanism would be called “Out of Order” while an unchanging organism would be wished “R.I.P.”

             Parts of an organism are by definition beyond definition. How many parts does an ant, for instance, have? Could any of us name them? No, none, never, nothing! If parts are undefinable, their relationships are even more so. Further on, the parts act, react and interact incessantly. How in the first place can the ant be ever in equilibrium ante mortem? Among the rest of us, incidentally, the number of bilateral relationships in the indefinite is half the square of the indefinite: _nC₂= n²/ 2 when n→ ∞. Complexity grows geometrically!

            All in all, equilibrium is out of question as far as the organism is concerned. Now the real question: Is the market an organism? Again, the answer depends on whom you ask the question of. 

             Through the history of economics, some celebrated names referred to “general equilibrium” across multiple markets, if not all the markets. We bet their theories cannot hold true in Here as opposed to Eternity. First of all, “the market” in economics is imagined as a conceptual venue specific to a product with a unique utility, for a community with a spatial boundary and in an accounting period with a temporal boundary. Even with equilibrium of individual markets, the general equilibrium across markets is never definable due to the unconquerable differences in space and time (period) of markets.     

             Then, a “general equilibrium model” of the economy all across the nation? Well, some may be thrilled with strange vibrations.

 

Trivial Questions. What would we get from taking average of the biweekly orange market in Orange County and the biennial car market in the Republic of California? What would the point be of modelling the “general equilibrium” of the two markets?

             Has the body ever been in equilibrium? Please do not address the question to us. Has the US economy ever in equilibrium? For the sake of knowing whether or when, please take a trip to Cambridge. What across the River? We’ll find out later than sooner.