Is Aging Caused By Price Controls?
But there may be a way to fix the economy’s goals: price controls. Price controls prevent a price from rising above or below a point, or even just fix a price to be a certain number. An economy with many highly constraining price controls is an economy that never updates its setpoints, as if it has reached an adult form. It can’t grow up any more.
An economy with price controls also exhibits the kinds of things we associate with aging organisms. It degrades, for example: rent control is infamously the most effective way to destroy a city after bombing. Price controls create all kinds of surpluses and shortages in the economy, blockages and slowdowns. Price controls prevent the economy from learning and adapting to change, and make the economy less flexible, more rigid, more vulnerable to shocks and less sensitive to feedback. Price controls may accumulate externalities over time, analogous to senescent cells spreading stress through the body, as markets degrade or fail to respond to changes. It’s not unreasonable to look at an economy full of price controls and see the economic equivalent of an aging organism.
So it seems like price controls might fit this anatomical goal theory of aging well. But there are some problems.
The economy has a clear source of price controls, typically government regulation but sometimes other things like social norms. What are the sources of price controls in an organism?
An economy may age due to price controls, but it does not seem to actually die of old age. Why not?
Price controls should basically just be strictly harmful to an economy’s competency, but adults are very competent. Why are adults good at things when economies with price controls are bad at things? Though adults are bad at learning compared to children—is this due to price controls?
There are probably many more limitations and issues with this theory. But it may also be valuable food for thought.
I think Picard has a good talk on something akin to this idea regarding how well the body adapts to energy (price) demands, how it mitigates those swings, and responses to the stresses on mitochondrial function. Although, he doesn't quite frame issues in terms of economics. Starts 16 minutes in. https://youtu.be/P0qnGmCqfXY?si=URgBUbTtLzumIsrh
Interesting essay indeed!
I know we like to think we're continuously learning, but you're right, it's definitely not the same as when we were children. Language learning in particular seems to be a very clear indication of our minds becoming ossified as we age. What is it that makes it damn near impossible for adults to learn a new language, especially something like, say, Navajo, but not even hard for a very young child? Is there a way to stop or at least put off this adult language learning blockage? What would happen if children had to start learning a new language each year starting from early on (and keep up the old ones)? Would they find it more difficult each year? I have seen very young children (kindergarten, first grade) juggle several languages, do math in Chinese then go on to learn science in German, and they don't realize what they're doing would make an adult's head explode.