The steady-state fallacy
I’ve encountered a major fallacy in two fields, relating to the incorrect application of a steady-state assumption. So I’m making it a category.
I’m going to say arguments suffer from a steady-state fallacy when they improperly assume that a present-day circumstance will carry over unchanged into the future. Because over time, most circumstances do change. People get older. New technologies emerge. Empires fall, and new ones rise. And so forth.
A few examples below the fold…
Some arguments based on steady-state fallacies:
- housing prices in Vancouver will only ever go up (ask a real estate speculator in 150 AD Rome — or better yet, one in 2500 BC Uruk)
- individuals and countries should focus their economies on goods / services for which they have a natural comparative advantage (by this reasoning people shouldn’t pursue higher education; and post-Korean War South Korea’s major export would still be seaweed. Factoid courtesy of Ha-Joon Chang)
- no one will ever replace _____ at the top of the heap. (fill in the blank: GM / Microsoft / the British Empire) (your comeuppance will one day come, Toyota / Google / the US)
- “permanent Republican majority” (or Democratic majority, for that matter)
- Africa is a basketcase and always will be. (I hope to live to see a pan-African resurgence, dimly probable as that seems right now)
I’d bet that overlooked feedback loops are at the heart of most steady-state fallacies. In some cases though, factors overlooked entirely (e.g. black swans) might play a role.
Some friends — insightful and thoughtful people — believe peak oil will lead to social breakdown and a Mad Max scenario; a liberal apocalypse, to quote the Harper’s writer. Though I agree with them that tougher times are coming, I’m confident that many communities and countries will be able to “muddle through” on substantially less oil in coming decades… and not just from techno-utopian optimism (e.g. electric cars). Changes in customer behaviour if/as oil becomes more expensive — a feedback loop — should mean a huge drop in discretionary consumption, and intense efforts by businesses to reduce their oil consumption (to save money) should help as well.
Our upcoming environmental challenges, on the other hand, give me much more pause…