Hi Ed, I too much enjoyed your posting.
The difference between us rather reminds me of the long (and good-natured) correspondence between David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus. Ricardo looked for basic principles whereas Malthus looked for solutions to contemporary problems. As Ricardo wrote to Malthus: "You have always in your mind the immediate and temporary effects of particular changes, whereas as I put these . . . aside and fix my whole attention on the permanent state of things that will result . . ." You have been a professional economist all your life, and no doubt you gave eminently sensible advice to your masters when faced with particular problems. On the other hand, I was trained as a scientist as a young man and I cannot get out of the habit of looking for underlying principles, murky though they often seem to be in this complex subject. I don't know how much of a Keynesian you are but Keynes wrote: "If only Malthus, instead of Ricardo, had been the parent stem from which 19th century economics proceeded, what a much wiser and richer place the world would be today!" After reading Hayek's "Road to Serfdom", Keynes changed his views later, so perhaps I could encourage you to dig deeper and become more Ricardian in your approach. Nevertheless, if spontaneous conversion is too much to hope for at this stage I always read your weighty postings with respect. (Incidentally, it was only a few doors away from my house here in Bath that Ricardo read economics for the first time [Adam Smith's "Wealth of Naiotns"]. He was taking a short break from his stock exchange activities in London and was already a millionaire. Instead of visiting the gaming tables of Bath [he was much too intelligent for that], he decided to write a book instead that would be more comprehensive than Smith's. I often wonder whether he went round the poor working quarters of Bath where, according to Carlyle, they couldn't even afford to light a fire in their hearths, and had to hang blankets from the ceilings to keep their body-heat inside their rooms. Also, as a country landowner, Ricardo was dominated by questions of tariffs against corn imports [and, to his great credit, came out strongly against his own class on this matter]. I sometimes speculate that if Ricardo had travelled from here to Bristol and then up the River Severn to Ironbridge and the industrial centres of England, that his "Principles . . ." would have been an even greater book.) Keith At 11:19 01/02/02 -0500, you wrote: (EW) <<<< The list has see considerable discussion of the nature of economics recently. I haven't been able to participate because Ive 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 dont 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 >>>> __________________________________________________________ �Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
