I wrote:
NC isn't truly atheistic. They believe in the Invisible Hand (a.k.a., the Auctioneer).
Charles Brown:
OK. Gotta think about that.
I have to correct myself. Not all NCs believe in the Invisible Hand, since "market failure" (deviation from the NC ideal) is so important a concept to the profession. (It's only members of the Chicago school and the like that assume that "government failure" always outweighs market failure.) However, I think that one thing that defines the NC economist is that an image of the perfect market (with the Invisible Hand) is burned into his or her retinas, as a standard of comparison, a benchmark for comparing real-world markets to. The ideal market -- or simulating it -- is often the ideal which NC economists aspire to achieve in the real world. (The IMF seems to try to do this.) The NC economist is always looking for market solutions, especially nowadays when the post-World War II school of statist technocrats has faded almost completely. (This school was spawned first by Dr. New Deal and then decisively by Dr. Win the War.) Of course, who is NC and who isn't is sometimes hard to define. There are shades of gray. For example, game theory is embraced by a lot of non-NCs (and non-economists: it comes from math, not economics, while philosophers, sociologists, and political scientists use it -- game theory really shouldn't be seen as part of economics at all).
How about the capitalists, though ? And then I'm thinking that in fact, down deep, _all_ ruling classes have had to be more atheistic than the classes they ruled - religion was for keeping the masses in confusion.
it's sort of like the ruling stratum in Asimov's FOUNDATION novels, where there's a state religion, but the elite is agnostic or atheist? There's some truth there, since capitalism _in practice_ has no religion except profit-seeking. But there are lots of capitalists who embrace the Calvinist Scheisse about financial success being a sign of grace. No matter what capitalism may be in practice, folks need ideals of one sort or another and I think many if not most capitalists embrace religion. -- Jim Devine / "These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people." -- Abraham Lincoln
