Entropic Dynamics (1)

"Aseguró que en los últimos meses 47 plantas han movido volumen de producción aprovechando las oportunidades y la competitividad que ha tenido el país, mientras en Europa y Asia se han cerrado fábricas."

Taken from La Jornada.

My translation:

He assured them that in the last months 47 factories have moved a volume of production taking advantage of the opportunities and competitiveness the country has had, while in Europe and Asia factories have been closed.

In context: Mexican officials went to Davos, Switzerland, to convince investors that Mexico is a good bet. In particular they invited oil executives to invest here.

As I was walking to my office a moment ago, I saw a building already several stories high. When I got back from Chicago in the middle of the month, a huge machine to pour cement was adding material to the fifth or sixth floor. Right next door to the Mathematics Department, they used a similar machine to build a new Engineering building.

This is the first installment of a series to present the idea of Entropic Dynamics.

I already mentioned that if the US-Mexico border was taken down - just like the American President Ronald Reagan told Gorbachev, to do with the German one - we will see amazing changes.

That border is there because of greed. That is not a good human trait if you ask me. My father worked several years in the US during World War II. Legalize drugs? No: Open the Border!

Let me explain where I am coming from.

Entropy is a physics idea to describe random motion. Energy also describes motion; actually a short definition of Physics is the study of motion. What I do here is apply these ideas to Economics. This is not original in the least; already Jan Tinbergen got a Nobel Prize for this. He was a student of Paul Ehrenfest in Holland.

Before developing this, I want to present the ideas of Lee et al.

"Our theory implies that the Einstein equation is more about information rather than energy or equation of state. In other words, information is more profound physical entity than gravity. Verlinde’s work, and proposals made by us and others in this new and exciting field could change fundamentally our viewpoint about physics and even the universe we live in."

It is in this context, of a new paradigm for Physics, that I present ideas here for Economics.

Entropy is related to the Mexicans crossing the border idea I presented in a previous note. Forget all your fears about (us) Mexicans before we consider this toy model. Imagine that President Calderón says: President Obama take this wall down. What will happen?

In this toy model, imagine that President Obama complies, just like Mikhail Gorbachev did after Reagan said: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall"

There are 100 million Mexicans here, and 30 million there. After some time, a year?, we will have 65 million there, and 65 million here; just because there are more Mexicans going there, than coming back. Remember this is a toy model, no economic incentives, nor family ties, just equal numbers of Mexicans going South than North. I guess you get the point, unless yo don't like Mexicans and you already stopped reading this.

Let's keep going with the game.

Entropic Dynamics concerns itself only with particles moving randomly. Like gas molecules in a container. They will bounce on the walls causing pressure, and hitting each other and getting a uniform velocity distribution as Boltzmann and Maxwell calculated many years ago. Temperature then, will be a measure of the average velocity of particles. Finally Entropy as Boltzmann discovered will be a measure of the probability of the particular state of the molecules. In a box with a membrane say. Let's put all the molecules on the left hand side of the box. We make a hole in the membrane that allows particles to move either from right to left or from left to right. If you wait long enough, you will have as many particles on the right, as you have on the left. Fifty-Fifty. When you get to that point, Mexicans will keep going South, as well as North; but given that there are equal numbers on both sides, the total numbers won't change.

This is high school physics, no need to invent a fancy name, Entropic Dynamics. I am doing this here because Erik Verlinde just derived last December Newton's Universal Gravitation equation with ideas like these, and all the physicists all over the world are wondering what it means.

My point here is Economics. Notice that my toy model is based on Grammar School Geography. The US and Mexico share one of the longest dividing lines in the world. Just so our Canadian friends don't feel left out, let's consider the North American Entropic Dynamic model. That border goes by the wayside also. What do we have now?

Over four hundred million people all happily working together. Joining forces for the benefit of all of us. As you can read in a paragraph above, Mexico is growing now while Europe, and some Asian countries are not. If we want to face the Communist-Capitalist-Confucionist giant , growing by bounds and leaps on the other side of the Pacific, we should consider all ideas. Like Mao said many years ago. Let a hundred flowers bloom.

It is already happening, but in a very messy way. January 1, 1994 saw the beginning of NAFTA. Today I saw an American built cement machine build a tall structure. We have plenty of people here, plenty of space, and all the machines from the US and Canada, are already getting here.

According to my Entropic Dynamics theory, things that increase entropy will happen. When we allow fluxes from one country to the other, we can have entropy decreasing precesses as well. This will require the so-called Non Equilibrium Thermodynamics.

Considering the Earth as a closed system, entropy will increase and all of us will die. But fortunately the Earth is not closed, there is the Sun, that besides keeping us warm, produces a non-equilibrium state where entropy decreasing processes are allowed, like life. If you consider the Solar System as a closed system. Then all these life giving processes will cease also. But fortunately we are in the Milky Way, and ..., you get the point I guess.

We still have many years to evolve together, and the sooner President Obama hears the just demand of President Calderón, the sooner we'll reach a new stage of human evolution. And the immigration officials will get off my back.