Ed Dodson responding... Robin Hanson wrote: > Fabio Rojas wrote: > What are the big unsolved puzzles of economic empirical research? Robin hanson responded: > 2) Why are some nations rich and others poor? > Fabio: Are you claiming that we have little or no knowledge about this topic? > > Robin: No, just that the topic is terribly important. > Ed Dodson here: Economists, as economists, have sidestepped the "ought" questions that the political economists as moral philosophers investigated. I believe this goes back to the origin of economics as the science of how to allocate scarce resources, financed by a German government interested in how to maximize the output of capital goods capable of meeting output demands of the military. Many of the first generation of economists studied in Germany and returned to England and the U.S. to employ the same means of analysis. Political economy was, subsequently, divided into specialized fields of study -- economics, political science, sociology, moral philosophy, history, constitutional law -- each with its own developing terminolgy and methods of investigation that inhibited an interdisciplinary treatment of the relationship between socio-political arrangements and institutions and the functioning of markets. One common denominator of all societies is the existence of poverty. The capacity to produce almost unlimited quantities and varieties of goods has not ended poverty. There is no full employment society in the world. The question political economists would ask is why this is so and what measures -- socio-political, cultural, institutional, and otherwise -- are required to make it possible for all persons in every society to have access to the "goods" that make for a decent human existence. The economist risks professional isolation by engaging in such discussions where the simplicity of mathematical complexity cannot serve to obfuscate common sense and moral principle.
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