Saturday, December 8, 2007

Putting economics back to where it was in the first place

Tyler Cowen, a top economist blogger at Marginal Revolution (here) is interviewed by KnowledgeWharton (here)
Tyler Cowen is right: “He had an inner drive to get his ideas out there.” I especially liked the second quoted paragraph:
“Adam Smith, was also a moral philosopher. This is returning to the true roots of economics. I think it's the other economists who have been subversive. I'm just putting economics back to where it was in the first place and never should have left. Economics used to be a moral philosophy, very connected to the humanities."
This has got to be the right approach to economics today. Having abandoned so much of the field of political economy as seen by Adam Smith, many economists have retreated into a mystical imaginary world of their own, replete with mathematical abstractions far removed from how economies work with people in them.
The interview is about Tyler Cowen’s book, The Inner Economist. It has persuaded me to get it for myself this Christmas.

2 comments:

  1. I think this brief essay provides a more profound insight into the whys and wherefors of how western "culture" has fallen apart under the onslaught of one-dimensional men, as celebrated at the MR blog.

    1. www.dabase.org/socrevip.htm

    Which is really just another way of saying this:

    2. www.beezone.com/seven_sins.htm

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  2. Tusar, Your next post re babarianism and the Shock Doctrine provide an excellent riposte to the adolescent fools at MR and their celebration of "creative" destruction.

    The film/movie of some years ago titled Beavis & Butthead Do America summs up the motives and the actions of the anti-"culture" that these adolescent fools advocate. Two morons who quite literally trash everything they come across.

    Applied "creative destruction"!!!

    Meanwhile a quote.

    "When the entire world founds itself on the adolescent motive to aggrandize the individual ego-"I", then everyone is collectively working towards the destruction not only of human culture and mankind itself, but even of the Earth itself, the very vehicle that supports life."

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