In a message dated 2/3/03 4:36:50 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >Alex Tabarrok wrote: > > I am interested in the suggestions of list members as to > > what the most important lessons economics has to teach. > >This essay might be useful >http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/techwrapper.jsp?PID=1051-250&CID=1051-
013003A > >-- >Anton Sherwood, http://www.ogre.nu/ In general the author of the article makes good points. I think on one point he concedes too much to the preservers of economic myths. He writes "Of course, it is the Market Pricing mode of interacting that is studied in economics. However, Market Pricing requires techniques and thought processes that have not always been available to mankind. As Pinker points out, Market Pricing is absent in hunter-gatherer societies, and we know it played no role in our evolutionary history because it relies on technologies like writing, money, and formal mathematics, which appeared only recently. --p.234" One need not write, monetize, nor compute beyond counting on fingers and toes in order to engage in barter, which surely predates civilization by a signicant span of years, and most probably co-existed with hunter-gatherer societies, in which certain individuals specialized in weapon-making while most of the men and women generalized in hunting and gathering (though one my suspect that they specialized between hunting and gathering), trading weapons for food and so forth. Thus it seems likely that the practive of market pricing co-existed with and may have even predated some of the allegedly early forms that the author mentions. With different aptitudes, different opportunities, and different levels of work, it's likely that humans were trading from fairly early on, leftwing claims to the contrary notwithstanding. DBL
