(re: Tyler Cowen/ Scott Sumner / Econlib ) (important idea )
—“Economic activity consists of interactions between people, and it’s not ever independent of human influence, and so it’s never “natural”.—
One can however, increase the truth content of human relations, or one can decrease the truth content of human relations. One can increase the truth content of human relations in times of shock. One can decrease the truth content of human relations in order to accelerate consumption.
So human relationships are in a natural state any time we improve institutions that improve information by reducing informational asymmetry, or distributing information that was previously unavailable (prices, interests rates, money supply, etc).
Human relations are in an unnatural state when we insert disinformation in order to fool people into acting other than they would in the natural state. For this reason it is perhaps more accurate to distinguish not between natural and artificial, but truth and deception, morality and immorality.
The most accurate model of the social sciences, like the physical sciences is information.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine