[lbo-talk] Wealth Distribution & Kinetic Theor

[Jerry Monaco]

On 4/25/07, Eubulides <paraconsistent at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jerry Monaco" <monacojerry at gmail.com>
>
>
> Starting from here the
> evidence is that wealth distribution can be found to obey the models
> of statistical mechanics and specifically the model of the Gibbs
> distribution [snip]
>
> ============
>
> To reiterate; the above is just bad grammar. Asserting that a model is
> consistent with some domain of phenomena is an utterly different kettle of
> fish
> from saying the phenomena occurred because they obeyed some rule. A
> similar
> error frequently occurs in many a pop science book; asserting physical
> systems
> are computable does not justify asserting that the universe is a computer,
> for
> example. One need only think about what occurred with the whole clockwork
> universe metaphor after 1905 to understand how/where language "goes on
> holiday"
> with the above sorts of claims.
>
>
> Ian

Agreed.  The use of the word "obey" is not felicitous, but that was not my
original question.  If the Gibbs distribution, meant to model an ideal gas,
can also model wealth distribution in certain diverse societies -- 19th
century Europe, 20th century India and Japan -- what does that say about the
model and about wealth distribution.  Sorry for the bad grammar.

Jerry