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https://evonomics.com/how-theres-more-to-economics-than-the-science-of-scarcity/>
"The organizing ideas of a discipline determine what gets seen and what does
not. Because they dominate disciplinary commonsense and operate as a system,
those ideas are difficult and disruptive to change. This is a particular
problem for economics. For it emphasizes technical mastery, far more than
critical scrutiny of the ideas behind the techniques and the reformulation of
those ideas as experience unfolds. This essay provides just one example of the
costs of this unhappy arrangement.
One way economists describe their discipline to themselves has proven
beguilingly seductive since it was codified by Lionel Robbins 90 years ago —
that economics is the science of scarcity and that it is, therefore,
paradigmatically about trade-offs. So ingrained is this approach that my
questioning it may come as a shock. But that is my purpose here. As Mark Twain
apparently didn’t say, “it’s not what you don’t know that gets you into
trouble, but what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Indeed, I show this
approach has become a kind of counterfeit metaphysics — a means by which
practice becomes increasingly thoughtless and alienated from economic reality
whilst practitioners affect rigor and insightfulness."
Via Kevin O'Brien, who wrote "I think Evonomics has the best thinking on
Economics around."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
