Manage Estimates
Basic Olicognograph: Epistemology Genesis
From where it comes to when it goes
With important diversity of sources of data for obtaining something robust and workable estimates, downloaded from the web. They estimate local infrastructures (from at least half a dozen countries) and often from newspapers. What we want is raw material for robust logic of democratic programming of social infrastructures. We tried to avoid the dependence to homogeneous of sources of data, since they can be systematically biased.
"Perfect data" (with other purpose) could have been with CEPAL's data (for Latin America), World Bank, CIA or OECD. Also these sources have no basic unitary costs or shadow prices for social infrastructure. They are biased toward their self-use, which may not be the best, since any independent country have to make their own development with their bare hands (with some sense of endogenous and genuine growth) or at least caring more their management of technological means, not just trying to detail too complex comparisons between themselves and others.
Why compare complex unit necessarilly different especialy with data made simple but not well related to fundamental quantities (material balance and comparable categories, while not the theoretical principles of formal economics or macroeconomics that should stay social arts ? - At least not just exclusivelly in their subregister of great economics ?
So these sources are better the modelling of their own theories or can be used later more for adjustment processes: you have some data coming from other roots and a macro-picture from another source. Within reasonable limits the second one may be a scale to normalize the first ones, if there is not much desviation within distribution: if the purpose is social policy, and things could be reviewed after some period of application, then there is no need to be fakelly "exact", neither to pretend to determine for sure.
So our estimates let you the resource of using these series for normalizing adjustment. For example you may use the PPP (parity power purchase) to gauge social meaning of such investments. But care not to use this scale for adjustment of technological costs.
Here and in the state of this exercise it is not for making science but to deal with prices enough close to reality, as a first estimate for thinking about a social budget. Logic of management and numbers should always review the logic of values and prices to manage economic patterns. If this has a material ground (prices or costs allowed by technological products, there is a large margin of subjectivity coming from social sciences. Values in detail are heterogenous and trade market price are not perfect. But in democratic issues whatever the budget or projects' mistakes, the lessons should never be lost by waste of resources. Meanwhile finance should never lack of sense of ethics, despite its discipline.
Art of Use
Our numbers do not substitute a regular budget's design of project. They are for having an umbrella price for democratic management of amounts. Some precautions should been kept in mind when using these values. You ought to have also a logical reasoning on their potential meaning (crude cost, umbrella cost, public concern price). And of course this is a proposal of prices lonelly made: many corrections are still to include, meawhile it would be better if an institution of provision could engaged itself in some "official" meaning.
So having some shadow prices, flexibility in management of sums, sense to adapt to complexity and realities, you will further care to implement processes of projects, finance's management since essential values quantities. Preliminaries should care opportunities and possibilities of investments of social infrastructures in a given environments, priorities of communities, degrees of public involvment.
Precautions should be taken like to not cut sort of essential natural social networks. Only because, some helpers there for small periods of time have prejudgements about how social relations should behave or are too interested to impose their level of exchange (to optimize their own profit), but not care for the dynamic of learning and capacity of absorption of their local counterparts.
Practical Mind
Estimates provide minimum, maximum. Practical price can be at the "middle something". Higher and lower estimates were existing or calculated. The are patterns of costs that are not at random (costs of production, costs of factors, minimum salaries for living, uses of margins and so on). A system of prices or values ought to have the ambition to catch that in a positive sense of economics. It means that minimum should have the ambition to catch minimum costs for the projects as a minimum positive sense of success. Think also that social benefit would give a different meaning to the optimum of a private greedy (but honnest) entrepreneur. Maximum indicative price have complex meaning too; like to ensure that the actions, projects or investments will be profitably efficient when operating.
Between maximum and minimum according there may be a meaning of intermediate patterns when expressed by serious processes of data's collection. Intermediate distributions between the maximum and minimum would be well completed by 2 types of distributions. One being time's scheduled distribution of amounts of projects. Another distribution would be observed between the project itself and its social integration.
Observe here that there is also a complex balance if considered the unit of management of the project and its integration. Balance could be either by side of unity of project but caring tactical opportunities (say in fact the tactical management of operations for the conduction of the project) either byside of activities and projects dedicated to the economic environment (implied by regulation and public schemes of incentives, for example). Rather than directly interfering in the environment of transformations.
In all those "betweens" try to find patterns, to turn economically positive for the society, climate of investment and regulation caring not to bias prejudgments, impose profiles of dogmatic rigidity. Overall observe sort of statistics would be more dynamics than present macroeconomics national accounts)..
Practically:
- Check that a regular process of technical budgeting is still required in most designs of social infrastructure,
- Conceive present proposal of unitary costs as a first interpolated-extrapoled estimates of core prices or values and hope that it approximates a standart budgeting,
- If comparison micro (regular budget estimate) and macro estimate (our value) are very different, find meaninfull correction 1) Larger so a sort of crude investment cost + social costs (to include learning processes and externalities or mitigation measures), 2) If enough smaller, so just a social complement. Think also about data adjustment as well as practical field, budgets' rules of management and procedure (like transfers),
- Anyhow any flexibility or positive margin of complementary activities do not let you free to spend without efforts of saving. Prefer mechanisms where efforts' product could be shared between reasignation to other social priorities and incentives returned to efforts (goals reached and target met)
