raghu had written: > On the other hand, if we follow Robert Gassler's lead and simply offer > a free 'A' to any student who can find five articles in the scientific [sic] > literature trashing the main ideas of free market economics, the > results may force us to accept free market doctrine as established > science. Because, of course, in the mainstream journals what we'll > find invariably are at best mild dissents from the orthodoxy.
I said: >> Not true. It's EASY to find 5 or 100 or even 1000 economics articles >> "trashing the main ideas of free market economics." The hegemony of >> free market economics is not total, especially with liberals like >> Akerlof, Arrow, Krugman, Myrdal, or Stiglitz getting Economics Prizes >> in Honor of Alfred Nobel. They're (new Deal) liberals, yes, but that's >> not the same as "free market economics." raghu: > Krugman and Stiglitz are liberals, yes, but they are hardly radical in > the sense that they do not in any way challenge the underlying > assumptions of [neo?] classical economic analysis. At best, we can credit > them with a nuanced approach that Chicago-types seem to be incapable > of. In fact, Krugman has explicitly defended the premises of [orthodox] > economic analysis like self-interested rational individuals etc: > http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/evolute.html if I want to understand markets, I'd start with the assumption of self-interested individuals, since market institutions encourage that kind of behavior. I would not apply that assumption when trying to understand other institutions. On the other hand, the "rationality" assumption is silly, since, as orthodox economists interpret that concept, it simply says that people are trying to attain their goals, whatever they are. (This statement is well-nigh tautologically true.) It doesn't say anything about where those goals come from (or whether they are moral or not), which means that just about the only result of the rationality assumption is that (all else equal) people respond to the rise of the price of a good by buying less of it. And even that isn't always true. In any event, I can't criticize Krugman's embrace of orthodox assumptions without reading his article on that. But who has the time? More importantly, I didn't say anything about "radical" criticism in my comment. Neither did raghu. Perhaps his statement should have been about finding "five articles in the [economics] literature trashing the main ideas of _capitalism_." It's likely true that we can't find them. Capitalism is something quite different from "free markets," especially since there are lots of examples of capitalist countries that do not have free markets as their main kind of markets (Japan, Nazi Germany, Sweden under social democracy, etc.) Capitalism is a type of society endorsed by both "free marketeers" and New Deal liberal types. They work around the edges. "Free markets," on the other hand, simply refers to one method of regulating markets, which are merely a method of distribution of goods and services between people, resources between alternative uses, etc. The main debate between the free marketeers and the New Deal liberals concerns the degree and type of freedom required to serve the "public interest." me: >> Even though economics will never be a science like physics, it's good >> discipline to try. > I think that'd be a terrible idea. Some people (Mirowski) have argued > that it was physics-envy in the first place that directly gave birth > to the methodology of neo-classical economics that was later coopted > for ideological purposes. I'm not talking about imitating the theories used by physics. (Hmmm... Lehman Bros. is like a black hole...) Rather, I'm talking about intellectual rigor, something lacking in a lot of different fields (and not just orthodox economics). That is not the same as mathematical rigor. After all, a lot of economists are "mathematically rigorous" but end up producing nothing but false precision and/or idealized pictures of the world that leave out the important stuff. BTW, I don't think that the two-step process works empirically, i.e., first physics envy and then ideology. I'd say that it was instead a combination of physics envy and pro-capitalist ideology that spawned the cooptation of "energistic" physics to create neoclassical ideology. I'm pretty sure that Phil would agree with me on this. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
