The Economic Model
Economics, as a social energy science has as a first objective the description of the complex way in which any given unit of resources is used to satisfy some economic want. (Leontief Matrix). This first objective, when it is extended to get the most product from the least or limited resources, comprises that objective of general military and industrial logistics known as Operations Research. (See simplex method of linear programming.)
The Harvard Economic Research Project (1948-) was an extension of World War II Operations Research. Its purpose was to discover the science of controlling an economy: at first the American economy, and then the world economy. It was felt that with sufficient mathematical foundation and data, it would be nearly as easy to predict and control the trend of an economy as to predict and control the trajectory of a projectile. Such has proven to be the case. Moreover, the economy has been transformed into a guided missile on target.
The immediate aim of the Harvard project was to discover the economic structure, what forces change that structure, how the behavior of the structure can be predicted, and how it can be manipulated. What was needed was a well-organized knowledge of the mathematical structures and interrelationships of investment, production, distribution, and consumption.
To make a short story of it all, it was discovered that an economy obeyed the same laws as electricity and that all of the mathematical theory and practical and computer know- how developed for the electronic field could be directly applied in the study of economics. This discovery was not openly declared, and its more subtle implications were and are kept a closely guarded secret, for example that in an economic model, human life is measured in dollars, and that the electric spark generated when opening a switch connected to an active inductor is mathematically analogous to the initiation of war.
The greatest hurdle which theoretical economists faced was the accurate description of the household as an industry. This is a challenge because consumer purchases are a matter of choice which in turn is influenced by income, price, and other economic factors.
This hurdle was cleared in an indirect and statistically approximate way by an application of shock testing to determine the current characteristics, called current technical coefficients, of a household industry
Finally, because problems in theoretical electronics can be translated very easily into problems of theoretical electronics, and the solution translated back again, it follows that only a book of language translation and concept definition needed to be written for economics. The remainder could be gotten from standard works on mathematics and electronics. This makes the publication of books on advanced economics unnecessary, and greatly simplifies project security.
