An Ecological Primer and the Myth of the “Free Market”: Part I

I have a pet peeve when it comes to how economists, politicians, Libertarians, bloggers, and people misuse Ecology as the blue print and template for how so called “Free Market” economics is supposed to work.

 In a nut shell a free market economy is a self regulating system that will correct itself. Less government regulation means a better running system. The consumers and the price of raw materials act as the main regulatory agent, etc…..

In My Opinion, The way supporters misuse ecological principles to push the “Myth” of a “Free Market” and how it is superior than “Regulated Markets” is so off base to either be ignorant on how “nature” works or deliberately misleading that these people have done more harm in the last 30 years in which it culminated into the mortgage and banking crisis which has cost millions of people their jobs and lively hoods it is the largest economic white collar crime since the S & L scandals of the 1980’s.

Ecology

Interaction is the key concept of Ecology.

First let us strip god, new age beliefs, politics and any romance and emotion out of the concept of how we look at Nature. I like to look at it cold and mechanistically, kind of like how a machine works, on what we know of how things interact with each other.

Ecology is the study or the interactions between the Abiotic (without life) and Biotic (with life) factors in an environment.

Ecosystems are studied and are a matter of scale, small-to-large: Ecotone, Niche, and Habitat (the range in which a living thing can live), Biome and the Biosphere (i.e. the planet).

These Ecosystems also interact with each other and the Earth interacts with the solar system, galaxy, and universe around it.

Abiotic Mechanisms: Climate which includes precipitation & temperature, minerals and rock, UV radiation, Visible Solar radiation, location, non living organic molecules, dead animals and plants, CO 2, Oxygen and other gases, etc..

Biotic Mechanisms: Animals, Plants, Microbes, Bacteria, Viruses & Prions (okay these last two are debatable, but until the debate is solved I am putting them under biotic)

Food Chain: The single path an organism uses to gain substance. Example: Cow eats grass. What path and how an organism gets its food?

Food Web: The interactions between an organism and other organisms in an environment. Example: Cow and Goat compete over the grass. This is were the concepts of mutualism, competition, key species, and other key interaction concepts come in. What paths, how and why living things interact with each other to get their food? How living things regulate each other?

Food Web with Abiotic Mechanisms: This is basically the definition of Ecology. The big picture of how and why living things interact with their non-living factors? How Abiotic mechanisms regulate the biotic world.

I will defer all complex physics related questions to Al, since this is his area of expertise. I will also defer as much as I detest too, complex economic systems & market mechanisms to Jim Hayett since this is his area of expertise.

What I wrote today is pretty simple. There are many sub-disciplines within ecology, many of which are used professionally in Fisheries Management (FYI, Lake Michigan is the largest managed freshwater system in the planet), herd Management, Forest Management, etc…, very heavy on the population management side of the fence. Also, if you want to debate me on my opinion on how ecology is misused and the subject of ecology I suggest you do some more reading before coming back with an un-researched counter point. I have studied and worked in the field so I am talking from experience.

URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ecology/

URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecology\  actually, the Wiki is pretty good.

I want to leave you with a question, “What area or concepts of Ecology do “Free Market” proponents focus on the most?”