When someone my age forecasts something that will happen fifty or a hundred years from now, he needn’t worry about being teased by friends if it doesn’t pan out. Without trepidation, then, I offer the following prediction:In other words: I don't even care whether or not what I'm saying is even remotely true. Which is good because this:
One century hence, if a roster of professional economists is asked to identify the intellectual father of their discipline, a majority will name Charles Darwin.Is absolutely false. I mean at the very least Freud is still the father of Psychology even though no one believes his theories anymore.
It didn't help that most of the economists I came across seemed to be interested less in examining or explaining real-world phenomena than in formulating superficially rigorous but essentially vacant pseudoscientific rationalisations for political positions that they had already decided to adopt. The idea that you would look at behaviour on a level deeper than simple game theory models (mostly just the Prisoner's Dilemma) was not even considered.The problem is this guy just wants to come up with a new bogus model based on his (very rudimentary and probably wrong) understanding of evolution to figure out how people will behave -- and that's a charitable reading.
In July of this year Enda Kenny, the Irish Prime Minister (whose title is commonly given in Gaelic which hardly anyone can pronounce) ....which is enough for me. It's pronounced 'tea-shock', and you can feck off.
But these are all golden dreams. Oh, tell me, who was it first announced, who was it first proclaimed, that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own interests; and that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and noble because, being enlightened and understanding his real advantage, he would see his own advantage in the good and nothing else, and we all know that not one man can, consciously, act against his own interests, consequently, so to say, through necessity, he would begin doing good? Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure, innocent child! Why, in the first place, when in all these thousands of years has there been a time when man has acted only from his own interest? What is to be done with the millions of facts that bear witness that men, consciously, that is fully understanding their real interests, have left them in the background and have rushed headlong on another path, to meet peril and danger, compelled to this course by nobody and by nothing, but, as it were, simply disliking the beaten track, and have obstinately, willfully, struck out another difficult, absurd way, seeking it almost in the darkness. So, I suppose, this obstinacy and perversity were pleasanter to them than any advantage.Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, published in 1864
Advantage! What is advantage? And will you take it upon yourself to define with perfect accuracy in what the advantage of man consists? And what if it so happens that a man’s advantage, sometimes, not only may, but even must, consist in his desiring in certain cases what is harmful to himself and not advantageous. And if so, if there can be such a case, the whole principle falls into dust.
The logic of the decision is no different when the woodworker is employed by a firm. It’s still necessary to compare the blade guard’s cost with its benefit. The fact that the employer would be writing the check for the device does nothing to change its cost. And its benefit is still the value, in the worker’s eyes, of the protection it would provide. Suppose the blade guard meets the cost-benefit test. If it’s worth $100 a week to the woodworker and costs only $50 a week to install and maintain, then the employer has every incentive to provide it. Failure to do so would be to forgo the $50 a week of economic surplus it could have created.This is pretty simplistic argument. It ignores things like the principal-agent problem. The worker has to negotiate with a line manager who has to negotiate with his manager for a blade-guard budget, who has to consider the value to the share-holders. Each link in the chain makes it harder to get these complex issues across.
In the “Theses on Feuerbach,” Marx argues that, “the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations.”posted by jeffburdges at 8:15 AM on October 6, 2011
Singer comments: “It follows from this belief that if you can totally change the ‘ensemble of the social relations,’ you can totally change human nature.” This claim goes to the heart of ... marxist thinking. As a result, it affects much of the thought of the entire left. ... it leaves open the possibility of a [radically] different kind of society.
Though most scholars and teachers today are not avowed Marxists, the focus on cultural or social “constructs” is the modern descendent of Marx’s “ensemble of social relations.”
... the question is not whether such constructs exist; we know that they do. But modern evolutionists worry that an over-emphasis on cultural constructs ... implies the nearly infinite malleability of human nature—a possibility that is biologically implausible.
I'm amused that Darwin, at whom I've been taking another look, should say that he also applies the ‘Malthusian’ theory to plants and animals, as though in Mr Malthus’s case the whole thing didn’t lie in its not being applied to plants and animals, but only — with its geometric progression — to humans as against plants and animals. It is remarkable how Darwin rediscovers, among the beasts and plants, the society of England with its division of labour, competition, opening up of new markets, ‘inventions’ and Malthusian ‘struggle for existence’. It is Hobbes’ bellum omnium contra omnes and is reminiscent of Hegel’s Phenomenology, in which civil society figures as an ‘intellectual animal kingdom’, whereas, in Darwin, the animal kingdom figures as civil society.--Marx To Engels, 1862.The Left is faced with a choice: repudiate the theory of evolution, or allow itself to be absorbed by the Right.
Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself the abstract citizen, and as an individual human being has become a genus-essence [Gattungswesen] in his everyday life, in his particular work, and in his particular situation, only when man has recognized and organized his “own powers” as social powers, and, consequently, no longer separates social power from himself in the shape of political power, only then will human emancipation have been accomplished.--"On The Jewish Question"The idea of a genus-essence is specifically repudiated by the theory of evolution, and thus the incompatibility of socialism and the Theory of evolution is stark:
Without species being [Gattungswesen, genus-essence], Marx’s critique of capitalism would have no ethical basis and his politics would seem directionless and arbitrary. It is paramount, therefore, that if one is to understand Marx and Marxism, one must begin with species-being [Gattungswesen, genus-essence]--"Marx via Feuerbach: Species-Being Revisited" / Jacob Held. In Idealistic Studies (2009), pp. 137–148.The theory of evolution provides the necessary foundation for capitalism to demolish the idea of a genus-essence, and thus make mankind thoroughly exploitable.
If the worker owned the business and had to decide about the safety device on his own, the cost-benefit calculation would be straightforward. The cost of the device is easy to measure, and for the sake of discussion let us assume it to be $50 a week. The benefit of the device is the largest dollar amount he would be willing to sacrifice to gain the blade guard’s protection, which of course depends on how dangerous it is to operate the saw without one. If he would pay up to $100 a week, say, then installing the blade guard would clearly make sense. But if it’s worth, say, only $30 a week to him, then he would choose not to install it.the benefit to the employer is exactly zero, if the injured workers are easily replaceable. his entire argument (regardless of whether it has anything to do with Darwin) is dependent upon having 'efficient' markets i.e. relatively infrequent market failure. So, he's forced to set up a straw man 'left critique' and markets in order to dismiss it out of hand in order to play with his little model. The problem of "exploitation" is externalized costs: the injured workers are forced pay the cost of production.
The logic of the decision is no different when the woodworker is employed by a firm. It’s still necessary to compare the blade guard’s cost with its benefit. The fact that the employer would be writing the check for the device does nothing to change its cost. And its benefit is still the value, in the worker’s eyes, of the protection it would provide. Suppose the blade guard meets the cost-benefit test. If it’s worth $100 a week to the woodworker and costs only $50 a week to install and maintain, then the employer has every incentive to provide it. Failure to do so would be to forgo the $50 a week of economic surplus it could have created.
The Left is faced with a choice: repudiate the theory of evolution, or allow itself to be absorbed by the Right.What. The. Fuck.
There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.--Darwin's Dangerous Idea / Daniel Dennett, p. 21.posted by No Robots at 1:48 PM on October 6, 2011 [2 favorites]
Veblen developed a 20th century evolutionary economics based upon Darwinian principles and new ideas emerging from anthropology, sociology, and psychology. Unlike the neoclassical economics that was emerging at the same time, Veblen described economic behavior as socially determined and saw economic organization as a process of ongoing evolution. Veblen strongly rejected any theory based on individual action or any theory highlighting any factor of an inner personal motivation. Such theories were according to him "unscientific." This evolution was driven by the human instincts of emulation, predation, workmanship, parental bent, and idle curiosity. Veblen wanted economists to grasp the effects of social and cultural change on economic changes. In The Theory of the Leisure Class, the instincts of emulation and predation play a major role. People, rich and poor alike, attempt to impress others and seek to gain advantage through what Veblen coined "conspicuous consumption" and the ability to engage in “conspicuous leisure.” In this work Veblen argued that consumption is used as a way to gain and signal status. Through "conspicuous consumption" often came "conspicuous waste," which Veblen detested.posted by moorooka at 3:16 PM on October 6, 2011
In The Theory of Business Enterprise, which was published in 1904 during the height of American concern with the growth of business combinations and trusts, Veblen employed his evolutionary analysis to explain these new forms. He saw them as a consequence of the growth of industrial processes in a context of small business firms that had evolved earlier to organize craft production. The new industrial processes impelled integration and provided lucrative opportunities for those who managed it. What resulted was, as Veblen saw it, a conflict between businessmen and engineers, with businessmen representing the older order and engineers as the innovators of new ways of doing things. In combination with the tendencies described in The Theory of the Leisure Class, this conflict resulted in waste and “predation” that served to enhance the social status of those who could benefit from predatory claims to goods and services.
Veblen generalized the conflict between businessmen and engineers by saying that human society would always involve conflict between existing norms with vested interests and new norms developed out of an innate human tendency to manipulate and learn about the physical world in which we exist. He also generalized his model to include his theory of instincts, processes of evolution as absorbed from Sumner, as enhanced by his own reading of evolutionary science, and Pragmatic philosophy first learned from Peirce. The instinct of idle curiosity led humans to manipulate nature in new ways and this led to changes in what he called the material means of life. Because, as per the Pragmatists, our ideas about the world are a human construct rather than mirrors of reality, changing ways of manipulating nature lead to changing constructs and to changing notions of truth and authority as well as patterns of behavior (institutions). Societies and economies evolve as a consequence, but do so via a process of conflict between vested interests and older forms and the new. Veblen never wrote with any confidence that the new ways were better ways, but he was sure in the last three decades of his life that the American economy could have, in the absence of vested interests, produced more for more people. In the years just after World War I he looked to engineers to make the American economy more efficient.
$455 pay + $50 (utility) from having a hand guard = $505The employer is happy because instead of $500 per month it is paying:
$455 pay + $30 for the hand guard = $485This is what Frank means by "money on the table" - there is a free $15 per month available for any employer who installs hand guards. So every employer installs hand guards. This is a desirable collective outcome because everyone is better off than they would be without hand guards.
$455 pay + $50 (utility) from having a hand guard - $100 (utility) for being the lowest-paid woodcutters = $405There aren't any competent woodcutters willing to work for $405 per month, so no employer will install hand guards. It works similarly in reverse (if all employers start off with hand guards) - the first employer who removes the hand guards and pays workers an extra $5 can offer:
$455 standard pay + $5 bonus + $100 (utility) for being the highest-paid woodcutter = $560while actually spending $460, while all of the employers with hand guards are spending $455 + $30 = $485 and can't compete. All employers remove hand guards and woodcutter pay drifts back towards $500.
I think that a theory so vague, so insufficiently verifiable and so far from the criteria otherwise applied in 'hard science' has become a dogma, can only be explained on sociological grounds. Society and science have been so steeped in the ideas of mechanism, utilitarianism and the economic concept of free competition, that instead of God, selection was enthroned as ultimate reality.--Perspectives on general system theory / Ludwig von Bertalanffy, p. 142.posted by No Robots at 7:50 AM on October 7, 2011
All science uses unrealistic simplifying assumptions... The distinguishing characteristic of their [economists’] approach is that the list of unrealistic simplifying assumptions is extremely long... Such models are akin to Tolkien’s Middle Earth, or a computer game like Grand Theft Auto.i've also been wondering, given sims and causality, about people's attitudes towards money, like acting as if we still operate under some specified currency regime, the beliefs and expectations that generates and then what happens when widespread conventional wisdom/opinions/assumptions prove wrong and what resultant (plausible?) 'reaction functions' might arise from that; the other thought i've kind of been entertaining lately is what if you replaced the entire 'profession' of economics with _logistics_ instead?
The knowledge that every problem has an answer, even and perhaps especially if that answer may be difficult to find, meets a deeply felt human need. For that reason, many people become obsessive about artificial worlds, such as computer games, in which they can see the connection between actions and outcomes. Many economists who pursue these approaches are similarly asocial. It is probably no accident that economics is by far the most male of the social sciences.
One might learn skills or acquire useful ideas through playing these games, and some users do. If the compilers are good at their job, as of course they are, the sound effects, events, and outcomes of a computer game resemble those we hear and see – they can, in a phrase that Lucas and his colleagues have popularised, be calibrated against the real world. But that correspondence does not, in any other sense, validate the model. The nature of such self-contained systems is that successful strategies are the product of the assumptions made by the authors. It obviously cannot be inferred that policies that work in Grand Theft Auto are appropriate policies for governments and businesses...
Economic behaviour is influenced by technologies and cultures, which evolve in ways that are certainly not random but which cannot be described fully, or perhaps at all, by the kinds of variables and equations with which economists are familiar... Economists who assert that the only valid prescriptions in economic policy are logical deductions from complete axiomatic systems take prescriptions from doctors who often know little more about these medicines than that they appear to treat the disease. Such physicians are unashamedly ad hoc...
It is by no means the first time that people blinded by faith or ideology have pursued false premises to absurd conclusions – and, like their religious and political predecessors, come to believe that those who disagree are driven by ‘woeful ignorance or intentional disregard...’
Economic models are no more, or less, than potentially illuminating abstractions... Economics is not a technique in search of problems but a set of problems in need of solution. Such problems are varied and the solutions will inevitably be eclectic...
The economic world, far more than the physical world, is influenced by our beliefs about it... not just deductive logic but also an understanding of processes of belief formation, anthropology, psychology and organisational behaviour, and meticulous observation of what people, businesses, and governments actually do. You could learn nothing about how these things influence prices if you started with the proposition that deviations from a specific theory of price determination are ‘too small to matter’ because all that is knowable is already known and therefore ‘in the price’. And that is why today’s students do, in fact, learn nothing about these things, except perhaps from extra-curricular reading... Far from being ‘too small to matter’, these deviations from efficient market assumptions, not necessarily large, are the dynamic of the capitalist economy.
Applied properly, it would lead to simple steps that could liberate trillions of dollars in resources each year — enough to end perennial battles over budget deficits, restore our crumbling infrastructure and pay for the investments needed for a sustainable future. No painful sacrifices would be required. No cherished freedoms would be threatened. Just a few changes in the tax code would suffice...cf. The Evolution of Cooperation - "Why has cooperation, not competition, always been the key to the evolution of complexity?"
[M]arkets are far more competitive than ever, just as conservatives maintain, but they’re also hugely more wasteful. The apparent paradox is resolved once we recognize that market failure stems from the very logic of competition itself... If you’re one of several qualified applicants seeking an investment banking job, for example, it’s in your interest to look good during your interview. But looking good is a relative concept. If other applicants wear $600 suits, you’ll make a more favorable impression if you wear one costing $1,200.
Trading up is wasteful for the group, however, because the applicants are no more likely to get the positions if they all spend more on suits. But from each individual’s perspective, that’s no reason to regret buying the pricier suit. When the ability to achieve important goals depends on relative consumption, all bets on the efficacy of Smith’s invisible hand are off...
Scrapping the current progressive income tax in favor of a more steeply progressive tax on consumption is probably the single most productive change we could make... Under a progressive consumption tax, taxpayers would report their incomes, much as they do now. They’d also report their annual savings, much as they do for tax-exempt retirement accounts. The tax would be based on ‘taxable consumption’ — the difference between their income and annual savings, less a standard deduction of, say, $30,000 for a family of four. Rates on additional expenditures would start low and rise gradually with taxable consumption.
Because savings would be tax-exempt, the biggest spenders would save more and spend less on luxury goods, leading to greater investment and economic growth, without any need for government to micromanage anyone’s behavior. Consumers in the tier just below, influenced by those at the top, would also spend less, and so on, all the way down the income ladder. In short, such a tax would attenuate the expenditure cascade that has made life for middle-income families so expensive. Adopting a progressive consumption tax would be like creating wealth out of thin air...
The foregoing points at a basic issue with how quickly a scientifically adequate account of human intelligence can be developed. We call this issue the complexity brake. As we go deeper and deeper in our understanding of natural systems, we typically find that we require more and more specialized knowledge to characterize them, and we are forced to continuously expand our scientific theories in more and more complex ways. Understanding the detailed mechanisms of human cognition is a task that is subject to this complexity brake. Just think about what is required to thoroughly understand the human brain at a micro level. The complexity of the brain is simply awesome. Every structure has been precisely shaped by millions of years of evolution to do a particular thing, whatever it might be. It is not like a computer, with billions of identical transistors in regular memory arrays that are controlled by a CPU with a few different elements. In the brain every individual structure and neural circuit has been individually refined by evolution and environmental factors. The closer we look at the brain, the greater the degree of neural variation we find. Understanding the neural structure of the human brain is getting harder as we learn more. Put another way, the more we learn, the more we realize there is to know, and the more we have to go back and revise our earlier understandings.cheers!
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posted by oneswellfoop at 2:58 AM on October 6, 2011 [5 favorites]