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I'm in this colour.
Ed
> As a non-economist, I'd like to suggest two
things economists can do and
> the context they > can do them in: > > (1) They can try to discover what their social surround, e.g., the > global economy, > is doing in terms of human labor, including both its deployment , its > waste, etc., and > project: If "you" (i.e., their social surround, e.g., the global economy) > keep doing what I have discovered you are doing, here's what's likely to > be your future.... Discovering what one's social
surround is doing is not easy. I would agree that there is one overall
social surround, the global economy. The way it functions and changes
impacts on thousands, possibly millions, of differing lesser social surrounds
right down to the individual household. These lesser social surrounds are
often very different from each other and one has to learn about them before one
can be prescriptive with regard to the problems they face.
I've had the opportunity to learn
something about several social surrounds, and if I had the job of fixing them up
and making them work better, there is no way that I would recommend the same
measures for each of them. The error that economists often make is to
apply what they've learned in grad school to just about every situation they
consider, or to apply what works in one social surround to others.
Geoffrey Sachs is a very good economist, but when I was in Russia in 1995, he
had become something of a bad joke among thinking Russians because he was
associated with the privatization scheme that, in the light of hindsight, did
far more harm than good. Out of their history, ordinary Russians had
little understanding of "private" or "property". He thought he was
recommending the right thing and providing a better future for Russia but things
couldn't work out that way.
>
> (2) Discover other possible ways to deploy the resources of their social > surround, > and project: If you did this [or that or this third thing or...] > instead, here's > what's likely to be your future.... What I've found is
that people in bad social surrounds are able to collectively find their own
path to a more secure existence. In the slums of Sao Paulo, fundamentalist
religion provided a basis for positive association, collectively taking on
projects to enhance the community and providing welfare to those in need.
In rural Costa Rica, the cooperative movement underpinned by the Catholic Church
was effective in providing for peoples' needs and holding communities
together. In both cases, the stability of the social surround was the key
factor. People felt secure in undertaking things because they had a sense
of continuity. This was not the case in Russia in 1995. Everything
was falling apart and nobody knew what to do. There was little capacity
for cohesion.
> > Now, those alternative projections need to include such things as > regulation, "the Scandanavian model", humanistic marxism, etc., not > just the fantasies the people currently in political and corporate power > want to have elaborated and implemented. > > Economists need, I would propose, to ferret out what the politicians > and CxOs don't want anyone to see in what they are doing -- including > not seeing it themselves, and then to project possibly appealing > possibilities for > human social life that persons can't imagine. > > I think that would be useful work, which would use all the knowledge > persons can acquire in a graduate education, and challenge highly > intelligent persons' minds and spirits.... > > \brad mccormick I think that the most important task is to understand
before you advise and recommend.
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