Professional Documents
Culture Documents
supply of labour and the demand for it results from adaptations of the supply
of labour to demand. In the past various ‘reserve armies’ have provided this
supply, including pre-capitalist sectors, agricultural underemployment and
housewives, as well as frequent and controlled migration flows (1990a, p. 16).
Arts, once Alfred Marshall’s qualification, or the idle Ph.D. requirement for
foreign language efficiency. (A deeper dissection is in 1976a.) And I should
not fail to decry the plagiarisms towards which the intelligentsia shows no
disgust. Quasi-plagiarism is committed by many an author who refers only to
very recent works although the primary contributions to that field go back
several decades. The manifest intent is for such an author to appear as
belonging to a tidal wave of a new discovery.
A second influence on my development came from the town of Constantza
where I was born and raised; having been an important trading centre for
centuries, this was a truly cosmopolitan town. Occupations followed roughly
national lines and so did marriages, but there were no conflicts whatsoever
in this regard. Growing up in such an atmosphere I reached the faith that,
although people are not identical, each can contribute to the happiness of
society (if other things do not impinge upon it). Any restrictions imposed
without imperative reason against particular groups of humans have always
given me goose pimples, as in the US in the mid-1930s where hotels still
had brass plaques outside to advise that only Caucasians were accepted,
and where the town of Brookline (Mass.) was at one time bedecked with
immense placards painted with anti-Semitic slogans. During the madness
that plagued Europe since the 1930s I could not possibly escape from being
terrorized in Romania by the entire gamut of extremists against whom I
protested loudly enough to put my life in danger, a risk that almost materi-
alized twice.
The foregoing sentiments are so obviously beyond question that they do
not constitute dissent. Yet one of them is germane to dissent. As I have argued
in several places, first in ‘The Steady State and Ecological Salvation’, the
commandment ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ cannot sustain an entropic
salvation. A new one, ‘love thy species as thyself’, must be accepted. This is
the strongest dissent to the vulgar question used by many economists, ‘What
has posterity ever done for us?’ From a first hint of bioeconomics I observed
that societies of other species, which take care of their offspring in unimagi-
nable ways, could teach us some very good lessons. True, some standard
economists have ultimately succumbed to the idea that concern with the
welfare of future generations is a sine qua non for the survival of the species
and come out with a characteristic observation: certainly, they say, the wel-
fare of all future human generations is fully ensured by the common fact that
every family cares about its children, those children in turn care about their
own children, and so on down the line. But as in many other cases the desire
of getting out of a tight professional spot has got the best of standard econo-
mists’ logic. None has stopped to ask whether the relation ‘to take care of’ is
transitive for, if it were, our present welfare should have been warranted by
Adam and Eve.
Nicholas GEORGESCU-ROEGEN 219
Essays (1976b). One plausible explanation is that Herman Wold, who had
excellent public relations, proposed an almost identical model in 1938; Wold
attracted all attention.
I took two economics courses, one with Jacques Rueff, the other
magisterially taught by Albert Aftalion. From those courses and from my
own intellectual torments I reached the idea that economic phenomena can-
not be described by a mathematical system, a faith that I have never renounced.
So although studies of business cycles were then in great vogue, I decided to
apply my method of discovering cyclical components, not to economic data,
but to the rainfall in Paris (which, curiously, showed the same periodicities as
those recognized in economics by Schumpeter).
The Paris interlude was the first switch on my life tracks. I came as a
mathematician and left as a statistician. I then yearned to do some research
under Karl Pearson whose contributions had been highly praised by Georges
Darmois, the chairman of my dissertation. There were two obstacles though:
the cost of living in England was then far higher than the usual Romanian
stipend, and I did not even know what ‘goodbye’ meant. The solution came
from the family of a Master of French, Leonard Hurst, whom I had be-
friended in Paris. With things getting hard because of the depression, they – a
working-class family – took me in as a paying guest for 171⁄2 shillings per
week! An extension of my Romanian scholarship thus permitted me to go to
London and also to learn English (as a child does) from the wonderful lady of
the house, a marvellous retired schoolteacher.
The contribution closest to Karl Pearson’s heart was the method of moments,
a formidable idea that has unfortunately been completely shelved by the pecu-
liar undercurrents of the society of scientists. I said unfortunately because
Pearson’s method is superior in research to the maximum likelihood, as now
tends to be admitted. It was from that field that I chose the topic of a paper of
more than 40 pages published in Biometrika (1932). My direct, simple contacts
with Pearson for almost two years, together with the study of his magnificent
Grammar of Science, convinced me that a scholar must also do some philoso-
phy in order continuously to control the verisimilitude of his own scientific
endeavours. Pearson was a Machian, a disciple of a philosophy that has been
downgraded like no other but is still endorsed, even by some pundits of phys-
ics. In a subdued way I became a Machian too. In fact, this peculiar philosophy
is the root of my most irritating dissents. I profess an epistemology concerned
mainly with the analytical representations of observed phenomena. Satisfactory
representation is the primary issue in any scientific endeavour. The controver-
sies about the use of mathematics in economics would clear up if the antagonists
saw that mathematics is irreproachable; the fault rests with the economist who
applies it to flawed representations. Analytical Economics was the title I coined
for my first English monograph (1966).
Nicholas GEORGESCU-ROEGEN 221
Schumpeter wanted to write a theory volume with me; this led to an offer
to join that department. It is next to impossible for me to conceive now why I
turned him down, if it was not the memory of Lalescu’s call. I returned to
Bucharest where I had several jobs rather unrelated to my mathematical
economic armamentarium. I went back to teach statistical methods while
living through four dictatorships, the last brought in by the Soviet tanks. And
it was my hard fate, later, to get the onerous job as Secretary General of the
Romanian Armistice Commission which, however, did allow me to learn
more about how the great powers implement their written treaties. During my
12-year exile in my own country until fleeing from the Communist terror, I
also learned two invaluable economic lessons that were to represent the third
and a very important switch on my life tracks.
I had entered into a wonderful friendship with Andrew Edson, the Secre-
tary of the US Legation in Bucharest and a Ph.D. candidate in economics at
Harvard. One day Andy softly said, ‘Romania is a deficient economy because
her institutions are inept. The man who just sits outside the office of every
high functionary, public or private, does nothing to deserve a slice of the
national cake.’ The fundamental principle of standard theory – marginal
pricing – was violated by my own economic world. The answer to this
anomaly, when it finally dawned upon me, was that in an overpopulated
country marginal pricing is the worst economic policy. In a country of dearth,
people must work as much as they can in order to maximize the national
product, to the point where their marginal productivity may even approach
zero.
The internal logic of the Agrarians who insisted on the merits of family
farms (where there are no wages) was thus justified. I presented this idea at a
1948 after-dinner chat at the University of Chicago, which was followed by a
general silence: the group did not want to expose me as an economic ignora-
mus. Hating to have the paper refused I sat on a draft until the day when
George Richardson, after listening to a lecture of mine, immediately commit-
ted me to prepare a version to be published as a leading article in Oxford
Economic Papers (1960). In spite of the lack of attention for the political
implications of my agrarian theory, after more than 40 years I still think it to
be highly valuable, particularly my belief in the efficiency of the family farm
(see Chapter 6 of 1976b).
In my essay in Oxford Economic Papers I pointed out, first, that there are
endless types of economies and that each one requires a different theory; no
single theory could describe them all – an idea which is anathema for the
standard school. Second, that the famous Arrow–Debreu proof of the exist-
ence of a solution of the Walrasian system rested on an absurd premise:
namely, that all individuals are ab initio endowed with an adequate income
forever. That exposure must have so appalled the econometric establishment
Nicholas GEORGESCU-ROEGEN 223
production processes had to have a proper unit. For it I proposed the elemen-
tary process, which brings forth a fact hard to accept at first: that idleness of
agents is a physical predicament of production. In this predicament lies the
scarcity of time in our productive activity, a scarcity that may be reduced
primarily by the special arrangements of the elementary processes illustrated
by the factory system.
In a 1970 pamphlet (Chapter 3 in 1976b) I pointed out for the first time the
important role of the entropy law for the existence of our species. As I argued
then, the entropy law is the root of economic scarcity: it states that the natural
resources on which our existence depends are continuously and irrevocably
turned into waste. For us this is the most important of all the laws of the
relatively new science – thermodynamics – which in essence is the physics
not only of economic value, but of biological phenomena as well. Some, to
oppose my idea, argue that the entropy law, like many other laws in history,
will be refuted. But history is on the opposite side: few planks now count on
the eventual refutation of the entropy law.
I have grown tired of trying to convince the champions of ‘sustainable
development’ that this plank is even more foolhardy than ‘steady state’; that
even a steady state needs a constant flow of resources that are continuously
and irrevocably degraded into waste as the entropy law requires. Even Malthus
(as I said in Chapter 1 of 1976b) was not Malthusian enough when he
accepted as possible an eternal steady state.
To oppose my ideas a series of so-called alternative technologies have been
publicized with deafening din: solar technology, in the first place, followed
by gasohol and a few others. Fusion is no longer the great hope of the old,
and fission may prove to be good only for bombs and wrecks (as I said at a
symposium where the Nobelites present did not chop off my head).
For some 20 years I have struggled with the vital problem of the long-run
future of our exosomatic species. My results must stand up, for otherwise
anyone eager of literary success would have put me down with loud criticism.
However, no recognized scholar has wanted to cross intellectual swords with
me. My staunch claims are for two entirely novel thoughts. The first is the
Fourth Law of Thermodynamics (1977), which states that a closed system –
that is, a system that can exchange only energy with its environment, as the
Earth approximately is – cannot produce mechanical work forever at a con-
stant rate.
My second finding concerns the fact that alternative techniques have been
exalted blindly, without anyone realizing how special must be that which could
sustain a viable technology. Surprisingly, among the immense number of feasi-
ble techniques (or recipes) known to humans throughout history, only a few can
sustain a viable technology; that is, a technology that can go on as long as its
proper type of energy is forthcoming. (Certainly, no recipe can produce energy
Nicholas GEORGESCU-ROEGEN 225
or matter; it can only use them.) I have proposed to call these special recipes
Promethean for the good reason that fire best illustrates their peculiar proper-
ties. To wit, fire changes energy of one form (chemical) into one of another
form (heat) and may also generate a chain reaction: with just the flame of a
match we can bum a whole forest, nay, all forests. Our first mineral technology
was based on fire from wood. Before long we reached a crisis as forests were
being depleted. In essence that crisis was identical to the present one. Prometheus
II – two mortals, Thomas Savary and Thomas Newcomen – saved the day with
the invention of another Promethean recipe: the steam engine which changes
heat energy into motor energy and which has thereby triggered a chain reaction
because, as in the case of fire, with a little coal we can mine more coal and
metals to make more machines. A legion of ecological tyros exists who, through
luxurious leaflets and magniloquent global forums, seek to convince us all that
one of their favourite alternative technologies is just around the corner. They
are set on terribly dangerous propaganda for if that promise were true, why
should everyone not have a car that accelerates to 100 miles per hour before the
cigarette lighter gets hot? No thought about the future of our species can be
more disastrous than wishful thinking and decrying the realists as doomsayers.
From what I have said so far it is clear that the only true hope for our
species, fully exosomatic as it has evolved, is whether Prometheus III will
come soon. When? The nature of this question is bioeconomic because, as I
explained (Chapter 1 of 1976b), it concerns the intimate relation between our
biological existence and our economic activity. Indeed, these two domains
have many features in common.
The promise of sustainable development is the most saleable snake oil ever
contrived. Members of the academe now sell it in global forums amply
subsidized by enterprises of the highest rank. The participants who exult in
mutually convincing themselves that the future can be one of continuous
sustainable development remind one of those who in earlier times gathered to
get delight from panem et circenses.
It is in the opposition to this way of preparing to face the entropic menace
that hovers over our species that resides my sharpest and tragic dissent.
long and productive career was marked by gradual but significant changes in his
outlook, focus of research interest, and interpretation of the economic process.
His publications reflect the unusual breadth of his education and work experience,
and an innate intellectual curiosity which caused him to disregard the traditional
boundaries between disciplines. He was an auto-didact in a wide range of areas,
and his erudition showed at every turn. He moved easily from economics to
philosophy, including the philosophy of science, and from the physical to the
biological sciences. (Maneschi and Zamagni, 1997)
226 Herbert GINTIS
Other References
Maneschi, A. and Zamagni, S. (1997), ‘Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, 1906–1994’, Economic
Journal, 107 (May), 695–707.