Greetings Economists,
On Jun 25, 2008, at 11:51 PM, Sandwichman wrote:
The allegedly new
is more often than not the reprise of the tried and tired. Even if we
could say something genuinely new, nobody would comprehend because it
doesn't fit into the conventional frames.
Doyle;
Since you said no, that permits me to give some examples that come to
mind about 'theory'. To begin with I set some context, we here are
not so gullible about the value of mathematical modeling as orthodox
economics pretends to. But some sorts of modeling is big business and
growing. High performance computing is very very profitable. the
sort that models bombs is sort of like the military industry in how
much money it makes. And most of that is pointed at the military.
Very little super computing is done for public interests.
Is theory economic now in a way that the 19th century didn't see?
Perhaps research then preceded super computing as the same old same
thesis you make Sandwichman?
New we can't comprehend? Why is old media collapsing? Well some like
De Long observe the cost of reproduction is constantly declining and
publishing information is deeply affected. I think this has been
difficult to grasp economically. On the one level, information floods
the market now with computers, on another old media gets worse and
worse, but socialist ideas have been slow to emerge to off set the
capitalist degradation of culture.
Socialist ideas represent the connection of the community to off set
class relations. And as we know the left has been squeezed back from
the post WWII high points. Thatcher well said as a conservative there
is nothing but you in life. And we struggle mightily to show what the
community can do. Our theory in other words has not been able to
escape the clutches of the old with something people can understand as
new that replaces Thatcherism. That sort of supports your sense of
new is not understandable. On the other hand I think community is
being handed new tools to unite with. How would Marx have seen
television being torn down by the internet instant demand culture? I
think he would have understood the collapse of old media in theory
that is not so different from where he ended up in his lifetime
talking about Das Kapital.
Would have I think been very excited about the prospects of
globalization for social change.
thanks,
Doyle Saylor
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