Okay, as long as we sem to be drifting a bit on this topic......  There is  
problem in the definition of economic demand and elasicity of demand that  
will have strong influence upon the ability of the nominal homo "not so'  
sapiens relative to adapting to rapidly changing economic conditions. One  
popular choice has been to choose inelasticity and finding a scapegoat  
population (do I really need to give an example here?) To put in slightly  
different terms how does culture get adapted to environment as opposed to  
the more familiar adaptation of adaptation of the environment to  
expectations, until the inelasticity of the environment strikes back, eg  
collapsing fishery stocks, dead zones from pollution, or more mundanely  
shifting from a car culture to high density occupancy. It seems as much to  
do the principles and vocabulary of economism(note spelling, ie not  
"economics"). Another variety is political reformism. I went to a grand  
confabulation of MoveOn.org here recently and they had four top issues and  
then a a whole elaborate concept of generating a lobbying organization.  
Trouble is, as one example, in the advocacy of "Clean Energy" they didn't  
have a clue as to what they were advocating for and what the real choices  
are, other than a very nebulous "restoring democracy" (doesn't anyone real  
political and economic history at all?), In the lobbying process they  
seemed uncommonly tilted toward specious speculations about bio-ethanol or  
nuclear as an acceptable risk. The more particular response was that I was  
way ahead of them. It all seems to be more about being caught in a certain  
set of demand assumptions, and refusing to adapt to the 'environmental'  
details. It seems to bode very poorly for the hand axe equivalents over  
pther possibilities.  Comments general and specific, please, Tadit




On Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:37:24 -0500, Michael H Goldhaber <[log in to unmask]>  
wrote:

> The discussion of cultural evolution reminded me of something I wrote
> a while ago  in an early effort at a blog. See http://
> mhgoldhaber.blogspot.com/2005_01_01_mhgoldhaber_archive.html
>
> It is titled "Acheulean Hand Axes Ought to Tell Us Something, But
> What? "
>
> Best,
> Michael
>