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It is great to read your voice.
REH
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 10:48
PM
Subject: RE: Economics
If
Georgism ever moves to the implementation/application stage (and still waiting
for examples) then it is likely to be as unrecognizable from the theory as
economic policy is from economic theory.
arthur
Ed,
Like others, I enjoyed your essay.
However, it
reminds me of those people who say: "It's all right in theory but it doesn't
work in practice." If it doesn't work, then you must change the
theory.
But, what if the theory is rock solid - even to approaching a
law? What if you can find no exceptions, which establishes it as a
law?
Then perhaps you should check out the practice.
The first
Assumption: "That Man's desires are unlimited." is easily accepted. But, if
it were true, then there would be no involuntary unemployment.
Unlimited desires can never be satisfied - not if everyone works
seven days a week every week of the year.
Yet, we have involuntary
unemployment. People who want jobs can't find them. As Henry George said,
"Why are people looking for jobs, why aren't jobs looking for
people?"
He generally came up with a great way of saying important
things.
As economic scientists, the next thing should be to find out
why people are without jobs when they shouldn't be.
And we are out of
the classroom and into the real world. But, we are using basic ideas that
travel from the classroom to reality.
I doubt this happens in the
modern neo-classical classroom. I suspect their major concern is to fill out
the semester with work.
For example, all those supply/demand curves
could be thrown out the window and replaced with a discussion of the price
mechanism and an understanding of Market Clearing Price. You won't find many
supply demand curves in the real world, but you will find the Price
Mechanism working everywhere.
And, the Market Clearing Price is the
way everyone sets their real prices - not their theoretical prices - but
their actual prices.
However, Market Clearing is a process of trial
and error. This doesn't fit well with mathematics (except perhaps with a
rarified calculus that would make my eyes bulge).
Classical Political
Economy is a theoretical construct of the real world. I'm not sure what
modern economic teaching is.
I know that what is taught today without
question or criticism is not what you learned back then, Ed. But, though the
skills you developed have certainly stood you in good stead - I doubt that
the theoretical bits stood up to the test of the years.
And that's
awful
Harry
___________________________________________
Ed
Weick wrote:
The list has see considerable
discussion of the nature of economics recently. I haven t been able to
participate because I ve been busy on other things, though I ve tried to
read some of the material.
The problem in at least some of the
postings is a failure to distinguish between economics as something that
is taught in the classroom and economics as one must use it as a
practitioner. In the classroom, economists are taught macro and micro
economics. They encounter economic thinkers of the past the physiocrats,
the classicists, Marx, neoclassicists, Keynesians. They encounter
self-interest, rational choice, and welfare theory. Some of this is
presented algebraically, some geometrically, and some as words. All of
this is well and good because it makes young minds work. The intent, as I
understood it when a student, is not to learn about the real world, but to
learn how economists imagined the world, and still imagine it.
When
one gets out of the classroom, and even before, one encounters the real
world, where real issues must be resolved with real answers. As an
economist in the Canadian public service, I was never able to satisfy my
superiors by drawing indifference curves or citing the iron law of wages.
What they demanded of me was short, snappy and well reasoned answers,
something they could use to move a particular issue forward. Undoubtedly,
what I had learned in the classroom helped because it had sharpened my
ability to think rationally and provide helpful, if not necessarily
correct, responses. That, in my opinion, was the real value of what I had
been exposed to as a student. I still don t know if what my professors
taught me was right, wrong or relevant. All I know is that it helped to
make me a useful thinker.
Real world issues don t often come in a
way that make the tools of economics directly applicable. Mostly they come
as very difficult questions. For example, why has Argentina had to
repudiate its debt and why is it now in a deep recession? Classroom
economics can provide some insights into this, but if I really had to
provide an answer, I would consult someone with several years of
experience in international finance and monetary policy someone who knew
the turf, so to speak. I would also search out people who knew about the
history and culture of Argentina, because I suspect that what has happened
there is far larger than something that economists or monetary experts can
deal with.
One aspect of globalization and mass communication is
that issues now come thick and fast and from all over the place. Rather
than discreet and separable events, they pound in on us as a babble of
noise. Here again the specific content of the individual bits and pieces
learned in the classroom may be of little use. Drawing indifference curves
would not be very helpful and one probably wouldn t have time to draw them
anyhow. Yet I would maintain that the fact that one had to use those bits
and pieces as tools to try to sort things out in the imaginary world of
the classroom was helpful. It helped one to learn how to pick apart the
various strands of the noise and to rank or sequence them in ways
important to finding real world solutions.
So, to end this, I would
suggest that we not get too hung up on the "nature" of something like
economics as a received body of thought or theory. Certainly, one should
not hesitate to question its premises. But to me the important question is
whether what one learned in academe has helped one to think and solve
problems. Even though I have not drawn a single indifference curve since
leaving the classroom, I would answer this in the affirmative.
Ed
Weick
******************************
Harry Pollard
Henry George School of LA
Box 655
Tujunga CA 91042
Tel: (818) 352-4141
Fax: (818) 353-2242
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