The notion of cost is not well translated on social issues. How many times we have heard a politician promising one thing and almost doing the opposite once elected? In our times, despite all the communication medias, the notion of cost is still elusive. The cost is of course for the other guy to stand for if we even have the decency to admit that there is after all a cost attached to every benefit.
Peoples choose their representatives on a menu where policy benefits are underscored and the cost wrapped in a prosaic form. For instance, a politician directing attention on an immigrant will almost succeed to hide the true cost of a policy.
Do not ever ask a politician how a certain benefit will be achieved. He will rapidly diverge to identify areas where savings can be made. These areas are always where the most vulnerable in the society lives, gets her/his bread, and has her last treasure. It always she the bad girl. In countries where immigrants are visible, politicians are almost blessed. Lots to say about them.
Immigrants are by no means innocent. They are for the most opportunists. They should be as nothing has been prepared for them. They come to and live in countries where their presence is a disturbing factor. Politicians taking the opportunity to score political points will portray immigrants as the source of all ill in the country. People are literally flattered when a politician has the courage to speak out. It seems it requires many years of study to insult somebody. But as for the true cost, no one hear about it. If someone insists on how the benefit will be realized, the answer comes easily in the form of a tirade, not as an economic figure.
I always think that politicians are the lecturer of the society. They should explain until we understand why we cannot get it. They should tell us that the cause is just but too expensive. We cannot go there to colonize when on our planet we do not why we go to war. Unfortunately, the cost of a policy is never clearly stated in a language that it is understandable to all.
To my view politicians of these years are more like biased CEOs. They are proud to present figures in billion of dollars. What a billion? It is not a dollar multiply by 1000000000? No, politicians will not take the risk of stating it in a dollar terms. They cannot say that we have a dollar, but we spend 1.5 dollars. Since we do not have the 0.5 dollars, we have to borrow from the rich guy and pay back with interest. If we don't pay the 0.5 dollars soon we will need to borrow more to pay interests since the rich guy has agreed upon to keep his savings for ever. In the end we will be serving the rich guy as his saving will be growing faster than our dollar we start with. We will end up being slaves of an unknown citizen. May be we are about there. Our dollar has long ago been lost. We are in debt both to the planet and to some of our fellow citizens.
I came to realize that the awareness of a cost disappears the larger the economic figure. My students for example when asked to come up with an investment idea will almost automatically propose an idea requiring $1 million in investment. I will ask them if they do have $10,000 in savings. They will often admit that they do not have even a $1,000 in savings. Then I will add. If you invest $1 million, it means the cost is at least $1 million. Are you aware that the higher the investment, the more resources are engaged? Some of them understand that you cannot pretend have an investment idea when you need so much money. A person starting a business with million of dollars is not to my view an entrepreneur, he is a capitalist. Good ideas require relatively less investment.
In all these, the notion of true cost is often absent in the mind of a capitalist. For this category of people, only profit matters. If you invest billions of dollars, and you can generate a billion dollar, the project is worth undertaking. Here again the true cost will not be considered. Even when our planet is under pressure, some capitalists still consider that the current benefit economic model does more good than harm. While there is a stock market for the good stuffs, there is no market to trade the social cost of a planet in bad shape. With a suffocating planet, we need a cost economic model that considers the true cost of getting richer and richer. In stead of discounting future cash flows, we should discount future costs. If the discounted costs are greater than current benefits, the investment should be rejected. This is what I call the Net Present Cost (NPC) model.
The more you read, the more you realized the complexity of human brain.
I cannot help it, but wonder if we will ever be aware of something call the cost of living on a planet that is not ours since we find it with our birth. We go about our world's business as if there was not a cost tag to our lifestyle. We see things appearing, and other disappearing without reflecting on ourselves the ephemeral nature of our existence. If we were the owner of the earth it should have been known long ago. We could fix the fundamental problems of our planet. We are simply arrogant agents who went ahead of the true owner.
We spend each dollar of the nature without showing any form of gratitude. We consider nature to be in our services. Those insects working for us, get of course not pay. We could give them a year of reproduction. They could enjoy themselves for a decades without the need to stop their own natural cycle. But we want them to work to death. Can they speak these insects burgeoning for us? Can they contest these bees making our planet colorful? May be they do in their own ways. But the agent has not developed a language to understand them. He wants them if possible to speak his mother tongue, not the other way around. The agent is literally cheating on the principal.
The true cost of our life is hidden. We live, we die, knowing all about what we want, but little on what we loose. Because the cost is latent. More true than the benefit. We may think there is no cost when in reality a cost is first engaged before any benefit appears. We cannot put a number on each cost, but we can at least be aware that such a cost exists. Economists talk about the social cost, which includes the explicit and the implicit costs.
The cost is there when we introduce a new policy. It is there when we remove a policy. It is about awareness that there is a trade-off. If our education was based on cost awareness, we would have lived in a better world. But since our education is about awareness on gain opportunities, we tend to desire more and more.
Finally, if we are people who elect with our brains, we should always vote for policies where costs are underscored. We should always talk about the cost of getting there. It can be even in extreme case where we want all the immigrants out. We should have the courage to state the costs of getting them out. How big is the benefit of being among ourselves? A politician claiming to do the right thing, but failing to state the nature of the cost must be taken as a meaningless talkative person. Only the awareness of the true cost will save the democratic system in which we are in this part of the world.
We may harm people, we may like them, we may hate them, and we may ignore them, but we should never forget about the cost. There is no benefit without cost.
Peoples choose their representatives on a menu where policy benefits are underscored and the cost wrapped in a prosaic form. For instance, a politician directing attention on an immigrant will almost succeed to hide the true cost of a policy.
Do not ever ask a politician how a certain benefit will be achieved. He will rapidly diverge to identify areas where savings can be made. These areas are always where the most vulnerable in the society lives, gets her/his bread, and has her last treasure. It always she the bad girl. In countries where immigrants are visible, politicians are almost blessed. Lots to say about them.
Immigrants are by no means innocent. They are for the most opportunists. They should be as nothing has been prepared for them. They come to and live in countries where their presence is a disturbing factor. Politicians taking the opportunity to score political points will portray immigrants as the source of all ill in the country. People are literally flattered when a politician has the courage to speak out. It seems it requires many years of study to insult somebody. But as for the true cost, no one hear about it. If someone insists on how the benefit will be realized, the answer comes easily in the form of a tirade, not as an economic figure.
I always think that politicians are the lecturer of the society. They should explain until we understand why we cannot get it. They should tell us that the cause is just but too expensive. We cannot go there to colonize when on our planet we do not why we go to war. Unfortunately, the cost of a policy is never clearly stated in a language that it is understandable to all.
To my view politicians of these years are more like biased CEOs. They are proud to present figures in billion of dollars. What a billion? It is not a dollar multiply by 1000000000? No, politicians will not take the risk of stating it in a dollar terms. They cannot say that we have a dollar, but we spend 1.5 dollars. Since we do not have the 0.5 dollars, we have to borrow from the rich guy and pay back with interest. If we don't pay the 0.5 dollars soon we will need to borrow more to pay interests since the rich guy has agreed upon to keep his savings for ever. In the end we will be serving the rich guy as his saving will be growing faster than our dollar we start with. We will end up being slaves of an unknown citizen. May be we are about there. Our dollar has long ago been lost. We are in debt both to the planet and to some of our fellow citizens.
I came to realize that the awareness of a cost disappears the larger the economic figure. My students for example when asked to come up with an investment idea will almost automatically propose an idea requiring $1 million in investment. I will ask them if they do have $10,000 in savings. They will often admit that they do not have even a $1,000 in savings. Then I will add. If you invest $1 million, it means the cost is at least $1 million. Are you aware that the higher the investment, the more resources are engaged? Some of them understand that you cannot pretend have an investment idea when you need so much money. A person starting a business with million of dollars is not to my view an entrepreneur, he is a capitalist. Good ideas require relatively less investment.
In all these, the notion of true cost is often absent in the mind of a capitalist. For this category of people, only profit matters. If you invest billions of dollars, and you can generate a billion dollar, the project is worth undertaking. Here again the true cost will not be considered. Even when our planet is under pressure, some capitalists still consider that the current benefit economic model does more good than harm. While there is a stock market for the good stuffs, there is no market to trade the social cost of a planet in bad shape. With a suffocating planet, we need a cost economic model that considers the true cost of getting richer and richer. In stead of discounting future cash flows, we should discount future costs. If the discounted costs are greater than current benefits, the investment should be rejected. This is what I call the Net Present Cost (NPC) model.
The more you read, the more you realized the complexity of human brain.
I cannot help it, but wonder if we will ever be aware of something call the cost of living on a planet that is not ours since we find it with our birth. We go about our world's business as if there was not a cost tag to our lifestyle. We see things appearing, and other disappearing without reflecting on ourselves the ephemeral nature of our existence. If we were the owner of the earth it should have been known long ago. We could fix the fundamental problems of our planet. We are simply arrogant agents who went ahead of the true owner.
We spend each dollar of the nature without showing any form of gratitude. We consider nature to be in our services. Those insects working for us, get of course not pay. We could give them a year of reproduction. They could enjoy themselves for a decades without the need to stop their own natural cycle. But we want them to work to death. Can they speak these insects burgeoning for us? Can they contest these bees making our planet colorful? May be they do in their own ways. But the agent has not developed a language to understand them. He wants them if possible to speak his mother tongue, not the other way around. The agent is literally cheating on the principal.
The true cost of our life is hidden. We live, we die, knowing all about what we want, but little on what we loose. Because the cost is latent. More true than the benefit. We may think there is no cost when in reality a cost is first engaged before any benefit appears. We cannot put a number on each cost, but we can at least be aware that such a cost exists. Economists talk about the social cost, which includes the explicit and the implicit costs.
The cost is there when we introduce a new policy. It is there when we remove a policy. It is about awareness that there is a trade-off. If our education was based on cost awareness, we would have lived in a better world. But since our education is about awareness on gain opportunities, we tend to desire more and more.
Finally, if we are people who elect with our brains, we should always vote for policies where costs are underscored. We should always talk about the cost of getting there. It can be even in extreme case where we want all the immigrants out. We should have the courage to state the costs of getting them out. How big is the benefit of being among ourselves? A politician claiming to do the right thing, but failing to state the nature of the cost must be taken as a meaningless talkative person. Only the awareness of the true cost will save the democratic system in which we are in this part of the world.
We may harm people, we may like them, we may hate them, and we may ignore them, but we should never forget about the cost. There is no benefit without cost.
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