I remember hearing a fascinating bit on agriculture. In Leviticus 19, the Bible says - 23
" 'When you enter the land and plant any kind of fruit tree, regard its fruit as forbidden. For three years you are to consider it forbidden; it must not be eaten.
The fascinating bit of agriculture is that apparently in the first few years you want the roots to establish themselves and the tree to grow, so you're not supposed to let it fruit. Fruiting and flowering takes energy from growth, and if you prevent that then the tree will establish itself more strongly.
I may be reading into this too much. The Bible just says that the fruit is forbidden, it doesn't say you should prevent it from growing in the frist place. Yet I can't help thinking that they stumbled on a bit of agricultural knowledge (noticed that fruit trees were stronger if you didn't let them grow fruit in the first couple of years) and passed it on by making it a biblical commandment. I've heard similar arguments about pork. Someone noticed that people eating pork got sick more often (it can carry some pathogens), and passed the knowledge on in a form of biblical prohibition. When you don't have science, don't understand cells and viruses and diseased, yet you notice something important that's one way of making sure the observation sticks.
I'll come back to that in a bit. I've been thinking more about economics. This is, of course, a complicated area. It's fairly new, and hard to understand in it's entirety. Reminds me a bit of something my father said about meteorology (he has a Master's in it). He said that if you want to predict the weather you have all these tools to assess it. Barometric pressure, humidity, radar...you can sit at a computer and have it spit out an analysis. And then you still ought to go step outside, look at the clouds, and try to see if what's out there is matching what the computer is predicting.
Economics strikes me as somewhat similar, and in many ways even more difficult. We're still caught flat-footed by unexpected events. Like meteorologists who every ten years somehow fail to notice a hurricane is brewing. Worse, economics is strongly affected by human activity. And human psychology. The things we choose to do will change what the analysis should be. Plus people can get into panics, or manias, and affect economics in ways that are hard to predict in advance.
I'll probably go into that in more detail later. Right now I wanted to go into something I'm seeing a lot on Brigade. Namely - debt. Student debt, which I've been hearing for years is in some sort of bubble similar to the mortgage crisis. For the most part, this doesn't affect me. Thanks to the military I've been able to pay off every single penny on my student loans. (This, btw, is a huge advantage for me. Given the debt so many others my age are tied down with, I feel very grateful for that my monthly budget doesn't have to take into account paying back a student loan on top of everything else.)
I've seen a number of posts comment that debt - student loan debt in particular - is choking growth. The millenials who would be taking out a mortgage are instead paying back student loans, which makes it hard to do all the other things we used to expect came with adulthood.
Which brings me back to my first point. The Bible also has that fascinating bit about the jubilee year, and I have to wonder if there was an observable advantage to it...one that they couldn't quantify and didn't understand in the same way they didn't know why giving up fruit for the first few years would help a tree produce more later.
I have a hard time seeing how that would work in our modern world. So much of our society is built on property rights, legally binding contracts, etc. For good reason. The idea that any modern business would forgive debts and expect to be profitable seems...ludicrous. Even back in biblical times they didn't do this often - maybe every fifty years. Yet I can see how this would help, economically. The people freed from debt would have more resources, would be able to buy more things, and would probably stimulate the economy.
I have to wonder if there's any sort of practical, modern alternative. I know there's a charity group doing that whole Rolling Jubilee thing, but I suspect it doesn't have enough support and resources to make that much of a difference. The website says they've abolished almost $32 million of debt. Out of how much?
24
In the fourth year all its fruit will be holy, an offering of praise to the LORD.
25
But in the fifth year you may eat its fruit. In this way your harvest will be increased. The fascinating bit of agriculture is that apparently in the first few years you want the roots to establish themselves and the tree to grow, so you're not supposed to let it fruit. Fruiting and flowering takes energy from growth, and if you prevent that then the tree will establish itself more strongly.
I may be reading into this too much. The Bible just says that the fruit is forbidden, it doesn't say you should prevent it from growing in the frist place. Yet I can't help thinking that they stumbled on a bit of agricultural knowledge (noticed that fruit trees were stronger if you didn't let them grow fruit in the first couple of years) and passed it on by making it a biblical commandment. I've heard similar arguments about pork. Someone noticed that people eating pork got sick more often (it can carry some pathogens), and passed the knowledge on in a form of biblical prohibition. When you don't have science, don't understand cells and viruses and diseased, yet you notice something important that's one way of making sure the observation sticks.
I'll come back to that in a bit. I've been thinking more about economics. This is, of course, a complicated area. It's fairly new, and hard to understand in it's entirety. Reminds me a bit of something my father said about meteorology (he has a Master's in it). He said that if you want to predict the weather you have all these tools to assess it. Barometric pressure, humidity, radar...you can sit at a computer and have it spit out an analysis. And then you still ought to go step outside, look at the clouds, and try to see if what's out there is matching what the computer is predicting.
Economics strikes me as somewhat similar, and in many ways even more difficult. We're still caught flat-footed by unexpected events. Like meteorologists who every ten years somehow fail to notice a hurricane is brewing. Worse, economics is strongly affected by human activity. And human psychology. The things we choose to do will change what the analysis should be. Plus people can get into panics, or manias, and affect economics in ways that are hard to predict in advance.
I'll probably go into that in more detail later. Right now I wanted to go into something I'm seeing a lot on Brigade. Namely - debt. Student debt, which I've been hearing for years is in some sort of bubble similar to the mortgage crisis. For the most part, this doesn't affect me. Thanks to the military I've been able to pay off every single penny on my student loans. (This, btw, is a huge advantage for me. Given the debt so many others my age are tied down with, I feel very grateful for that my monthly budget doesn't have to take into account paying back a student loan on top of everything else.)
I've seen a number of posts comment that debt - student loan debt in particular - is choking growth. The millenials who would be taking out a mortgage are instead paying back student loans, which makes it hard to do all the other things we used to expect came with adulthood.
Which brings me back to my first point. The Bible also has that fascinating bit about the jubilee year, and I have to wonder if there was an observable advantage to it...one that they couldn't quantify and didn't understand in the same way they didn't know why giving up fruit for the first few years would help a tree produce more later.
I have a hard time seeing how that would work in our modern world. So much of our society is built on property rights, legally binding contracts, etc. For good reason. The idea that any modern business would forgive debts and expect to be profitable seems...ludicrous. Even back in biblical times they didn't do this often - maybe every fifty years. Yet I can see how this would help, economically. The people freed from debt would have more resources, would be able to buy more things, and would probably stimulate the economy.
I have to wonder if there's any sort of practical, modern alternative. I know there's a charity group doing that whole Rolling Jubilee thing, but I suspect it doesn't have enough support and resources to make that much of a difference. The website says they've abolished almost $32 million of debt. Out of how much?
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