One simple example:
Functioning militaries prefer not to send soldiers into the field, until they can, proverbially, disassemble & reassemble their weapons in the dark. One of several reasons is that without that detailed familiarity, they won't know the limits of what their tools are and aren't capable of in different contexts, when there's a need to push them to survivable limits.
In general, every functioning system known - from physics to biology to human cultures - is incredibly densely engineered, and is rife with useful shortcuts & hacks. The next iteration of any system is built by those who can navigate the DETAILS of the prior iteration.
Here's another useful insight into why given operations matter, and how much, in given contexts.
We need more tables analogous to this, for other contexts and disciplines.
Such tables could be very useful, even for economic theorists. Any suggestions?
As just one application for the table given, you can look at the details of why these operational issues mattered to the software running competing computer-networking protocols, and which ones survived.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_sockets
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECnet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excelan
So how on Earth did orthodox economists (& religious ideologues) end up presuming that banking operations don't matter, only pure theory?
Whatever the obtuse explanation is, the real issue is how to correct that flaw. Rather than telling people HOW to do that, let's leave it up to distributed human ingenuity. My only prediction? Orthodox macroeconomics is NOT going to survive the demands of reality.
(Either that, or we'll kill ourselves trying to make it work. Bill Black pictured that in a group email several years back - something to this effect. "If one country seemed to thrive by balancing it's budget and being a net exporter, then we'll all be better off if EVERY country was a net exporter, with a balanced budget, right?" Is that why several countries are discussing bases on the moon? To accommodate the excess exports, while the orthodox achieve Earthly gridlock, by "balancing" aggregate fiat? That or pinning themselves down with one or a few fixed, Pyrrhic tactics, while ignoring any & all ways of actually achieving a Desired Outcome.)
Such tables could be very useful, even for economic theorists. Any suggestions?
As just one application for the table given, you can look at the details of why these operational issues mattered to the software running competing computer-networking protocols, and which ones survived.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_sockets
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECnet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excelan
So how on Earth did orthodox economists (& religious ideologues) end up presuming that banking operations don't matter, only pure theory?
Whatever the obtuse explanation is, the real issue is how to correct that flaw. Rather than telling people HOW to do that, let's leave it up to distributed human ingenuity. My only prediction? Orthodox macroeconomics is NOT going to survive the demands of reality.
(Either that, or we'll kill ourselves trying to make it work. Bill Black pictured that in a group email several years back - something to this effect. "If one country seemed to thrive by balancing it's budget and being a net exporter, then we'll all be better off if EVERY country was a net exporter, with a balanced budget, right?" Is that why several countries are discussing bases on the moon? To accommodate the excess exports, while the orthodox achieve Earthly gridlock, by "balancing" aggregate fiat? That or pinning themselves down with one or a few fixed, Pyrrhic tactics, while ignoring any & all ways of actually achieving a Desired Outcome.)
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