An Academic Joke

An Academic Joke.

An Engineer a Physicist and an Economist are on a desert island after a shipwreck. A can of food also washes up on the beach. They debate how they will open the can so they do not starve to death before a rescue arrives.

The Engineer says, "Using the available palm tree leaves as rotors, trunks as shafts and seaweed for lashing we may construct an ocean tide powered engine that moves a saw constructed from shells embedded in wood to open the can."

The Physicist says, "Elevate can Object A to height h and drop it so that it accelerates with the force of gravity g to velocity v until it strikes rock B, opening the can."

The Economist says, "Assume a can-opener."

Other professions or disciplines may be used but the punch line remains a constant.

The point of the joke is that Scarcity is what Economics is all about. If you can assume the existence of enough of anything then it is no longer a tradable good. There is no shortage of salt water in the ocean or of oxygen in the atmosphere so the need for them only becomes of interest to Economists under special circumstances. Advertisers and Politicians may create a perception of scarcity to induce demand.

Marxists live in the Economist's Joke Universe. That is Gene Roddenberry's vision of the Star Trek future where there is no longer a need for money. Marx phrased it thus, "to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner" which ignored both the need to gain expertise and the benefits of trade based on comparative advantage.

What Roddenberry did was assume a technology that can instantly create matter, either in the Transporters or the Replicators. The matter produced may be either a person reassembled at a distant location or a chicken sandwich and coffee. However even in the Star Trek Universe the Economic Problem exists. The can of what is needed to satisfy all wants has simply been kicked down the road a bit. What is always in short supply is Energy usually in the form of Deuterium. With enough Energy the Replicators, Transporters, Warp Drives, and Photon Torpedoes work.

Hucksters Grifters and Politicians, but I repeat myself, have been selling Free Energy stories forever, probably since we climbed down from the trees. The motivation to try is a good thing. Storytellers keep motivating us to if not find the utopia of free energy to at least in the hunt for it find a chicken sandwich machine.