The laws of physics explain the distribution of wealth and/or income only in the sense and to the extent that everything in the world is material and governed by the laws of physics. This is not a very interesting sense because, even if there is an explanation of a distribution of wealth/income in a place at a time. or of the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore, or the Battle of Stalingrad, using relativistic quantum electrodynamics, we could not state it when explaining anything a whole lot more complicated than a hydrogen atom or the interaction of a couple of elementary particles defeats our mathematical and imaginative capacities. Even if there is such an explanation and it could be calculated, it could probably not be computed within the remaining life-span of the earth or even the universe. The idea that income distributions obey the laws of classical statistical mechanics is ludicrous. In any event, there are far more useful and comprehensible explanations in terms of the behavior of capitalist markets and power politics.
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Apr 24, 2007, at 11:31 AM, Jerry Monaco wrote:
>
> > Why should wealth distribution (in any society)
> follow this
> > thermodynamic model? Is it simply an "artifact"
> of how we have
> > constructed society? Surely it is not an
> "intended" artifact, but
> > simply a mathematical side effect. But why should
> the model work in
> > the first place for any given society? Is this a
> stupid question, or
> > an epistemological mistake on my part to even ask
> the question.
>
> I'm too lazy and short of time to read the paper,
> but there's a
> pretty significant variation in the distribution of
> wealth (and does
> this really mean wealth, or is it a sloppy synonym
> for income?)
> across societies, and within individual societies
> over time. How do
> the laws of physics explain those?
>
> Doug
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com