-----Original Message-----
From: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Ray E. Harrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sunday, August 09, 1998 9:19 AM
Subject: Re: What planet are you proposing for this experiment?
>But I think the concludion is less obvious: We *need*
>economists and accountants. We need them *desparately*
>(and actuaries, too, etc.). What we need like a hole in the
>head is the ideology of "homo economicus". We need for
>economists et al. to truly serve as *advisors*
>(highly scholled: banausoi -- our word "banal" derives from
>the Greek word for technician!)) to a
>genuinely political process. The economists (et al.) should
>provide the "facts", and the citizens decide what to do about
>them.
>
>We need these people's skills desparately. We also need
>them to cease to be apostles of neo-global capitalism,
>and to become responsible critics of "what is".
>We need engineers who have absorbed *engineering ethics*.
>
>\brad mccormick
As a one time practitioner of the dismal science, and with some continuing
interests in it, I love this kind of thing. What I learned very early in my
career is that people do not want facts, they would far rather have
illusions - or, in the parlance of the bureaucracy, "smoke and mirrors".
When I was young and naive, I tried very hard to present my superiors with
facts, only to be told that those could not possibly be facts since they
didn't square with prevailing opinions, especially those held by politicians
who "had their ear to the ground". Professionals other than economists, but
supported by economists, also tried to present their superiors and political
masters with facts, but they too were ignored. The citizens didn't want
them. That is why Newfoundlanders have run out of cod on the east coast and
British Columbians have run out of salmon on the west coast and the Canadian
economy is not in very good shape despite what the politicians keep telling
us.
It's not only economists and fisheries specialists who are having a hard
time, but historians too. If historical fact does not square with
prevailing opinion, it is not opinion but history that is changed.
In my career, I have encountered economists who could perhaps have been
labeled as apostles of neo-global capitalism (whatever that is), but I have
also known others who tried very hard to understand "what is". That is a
very difficult thing to do. Often, "what is" turned out to be a "what might
have been" in a clouded world of moving targets. Perhaps the bureaucrats
are right. Perhaps smoke and mirrors are the only reality.
Ed Weick
