Statements like this just get under my skin...

[Mr.Puff]

traditional economics has never put a monetary value on “natural capital”
in part, this happened because there was a perception of limitless resources

This is from my environmental science and policy class. He is actually teaching this to second quarter students. That is a very untrue statement. Economics is about allocating scarce resources. Unlimited wants with limited means... It very much includes natural capital or "resources we use, both products and services, renewable and non-renewable." A prime example of a professor running his mouth. The name of my major is "Agriculture Resource Economics." I'm in the college of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences... It's the third largest major at the school (5%). He should know this.

Sorry to vent, the political science students do this too. Some of them tried to blame Wal-Mart for the current condition of Africa during a discussion... the TA agreed. Yeah, right.

[Jim Richards]

The good thing about your post is that you, as the student, use your own brain to evaluate what you're being taught. Your profs and TAs have their own biases on the subject, and of course, so will you after you've thought it over. It's good that you're not a mindless robot, following anything and everything the profs say. Even if you're wrong!

[Mr.Puff]

Originally Posted by Jim Richards

The good thing about your post is that you, as the student, use your own brain to evaluate what you're being taught. Your profs and TAs have their own biases on the subject, and of course, so will you after you've thought it over. It's good that you're not a mindless robot, following anything and everything the profs say. Even if you're wrong!

Nevar! Multi-period graphs, in some applications, are used to evaluate mine production. In theory, say we can remove an entire natural resource in a given year, a small coal mine, but instead an artificial constraint is imposed to prevent this. I'll call this the "environmental" constraint . From a pollution standpoint say we want the mine to last X number of years or we only want Y amount of coal to be utilized for the environments sake. This constraint has no monetary value. It's based entirely on quantity. Plus you can establish coal production itself as a bad after a certain point. Arbitrary values are used in the calculations, but it never becomes a monetary matter.

Another similar case, Multi-agent graphs for constrained allocation. Some examples; the allocation of water in California between agriculture and cities, and the in-stream flows for fish to aquatic habitats. Again, ignoring monetary values .

Last one! The famous use of carbon credits... Carbon credits can be given to countries that are rich in natural resources, like timber, to account for the amount of carbon removed from the atmosphere by their trees. These credits should discourage further deforestation because the trees now posses some kind of value beyond their timber. The credits can then be traded by the forested country to industrialized countries, that tend to pollute more, in return for money, debt reduction, or even Food Aid (why not?).

In a lot of cases a strict monetary value is not necessary. The professor was implying that the lack of a monetary value on natural capital results in no value being placed on that capital at all. Not true! Limitless resources? Also not true!

[stealthn]

Sounds like your doin some of that book learnin, dont know nuthing bout that there.

wait till skools done, then the learning begins

[jyl]

Not sure what he means by "natural capital".

If he means traditional extracted natural resources like oil, metals, coal, then look at stock prices for those companies and investor valuation methods which include the value of proven reserves. Investors, certainly, place a value on those resources.

If he means the natural resources that are degraded by industries as a byproduct of their businesses, like air quality, water quality, etc, then it would be harder to prove these are included in investor valuations. Would be interesting to compare companies in the same industry, some of which degrade (pollute) less and some that degrade more, and see if there is a consistent difference in valuation that is attributable to this factor. Might be hard to show that.

Also, I guess, not sure what he means by "traditional economics". It is true, I guess, that you can sit through class after class of macro-economics and never see a variable that represents the country's available natural resources. But that seems like a narrow definition.

[rammstein]

Professors, in my experience, are often very warped and shockingly shortsighted given their academic stature.

[rhjames]

last year, when everyone was jumping all over Exxon Mobil's record huge profits, the conservative's were deflecting the outrage by claiming that E/M paid outrageous amounts of taxes, to the tune of 3 dollars in taxes to every dollar of profit.

True, except......they forgot to include money paid to the shareholders (profit), which then flipped the ratio, 3 to 1 profit to tax. Money paid to shareholders is profit, although a deductible expense against tax liability.

How did this get started?

A finance/business professor from Michigan, who is openly conservative, posted an editorial on his own (college) website. The Fox noise talking head crowd picked up the story (6 months later---yes, it took them that long to pick up the story), and the crying was on about how Exxon was over taxed......

I pointed out his bias to him directly via e-mail, and he still did not get the full picture of Exxon Mobil's profit/loss/tax picture, even though our exchange lasted over three days.


I am continually amazed at how college professors have no clue about the big picture, can't even put their own subject matter into correct real world use, and only focus on their own biased opinions of how things work.

[emcon5]

Originally Posted by rammstein

Professors, in my experience, are often very warped and shockingly shortsighted given their academic stature.

I took a History class once and really enjoyed it, professor was very entertaining, and quite good. Next quarter, I saw the same prof teaching American Government, I needed it to graduate, so I signed up. Turns out this very competent history teacher was a horrible government teacher. He was as far to the left as anyone I have met before or since (more so than most), and spent the whole time telling the students how he thought things should be, rather than how they were.

The worst example was election day fell during the semester. He spent the hour going over his sample ballot telling us how we should vote. "This is how I am going to vote, and you should too!"

He didn't like being argued with, which I did regularly. Still amazed I got an A.