BCSSS

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

2nd Edition, as published by Charles François 2004 Presented by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science Vienna for public access.

About

The International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics was first edited and published by the system scientist Charles François in 1997. The online version that is provided here was based on the 2nd edition in 2004. It was uploaded and gifted to the center by ASC president Michael Lissack in 2019; the BCSSS purchased the rights for the re-publication of this volume in 200?. In 2018, the original editor expressed his wish to pass on the stewardship over the maintenance and further development of the encyclopedia to the Bertalanffy Center. In the future, the BCSSS seeks to further develop the encyclopedia by open collaboration within the systems sciences. Until the center has found and been able to implement an adequate technical solution for this, the static website is made accessible for the benefit of public scholarship and education.

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PATRIMONIAL ACCOUNTING 4)

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A still unexistent accounting method that should keep account of used-up resources.

The absence of any method to account for the disappearance of non-renewable, or very slowly renewable ecosystems resources is a glaring gap in general economy accounting, which states only actives and forgets passives.

This is merely the nonsystemic accounting of plunder. It maintains a false assessment and understanding of the supposed development process, because it does not enter in the books the price future generations will have to pay for the renewal of used-up resources, or even their definitive or very long-term loss, which possibly will render unsustainable our present standard of life (even where it is still miserable).

W.D. GROSSMANN and K.E.F. WATT observe: "Financial accounting is misleading when hidden costs (to the public, to resources, to future generations and to ecological systems) are not calculated. The most striking example is the calculation of gross national product. For example GNP increases if ecosystems are damaged and afterwards repaired" (1992, p.21). Also the British economist E. MISHAN has given startling examples of the same evaluation procedure, which in GROSSMANN and WATT's words; "is a formula for destroying the planet as quickly as is economically profitable (as) it discourages any kind of savings, investment, or husbanding of planetary resources for which the pay-off would appear largely in a distant future. This means that societal decision making is being run off a theory which at its roots guarantees ultimate destruction of most planetary resources". The authors suggest:

"One way around this is to measure all present investments, and future overheads and gross profits in units of matter or energy, for which interest and inflation rates are irrelevant in their present form" (Ibid). The American economist D. PIMENTEL has made similar comments on the illusions about agriculture's productivity when direct and indirect inputs of energy are not taken into account.

Economists should invent systemic accounting!

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

Publisher

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).

To cite this page, please use the following information:

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]

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