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Date: | Fri Mar 31 17:18:49 2006 |
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It is somewhat odd, that a rejection of the view that economics is the
science of choice is taken to imply that one supports some mystical ideas
of supra-historical iron laws and sacrifices human agency to the Moloch of
socio-historical entelechy. Human agency is all we 've got. But do we have
to trivialize it, and force the study of social action to a suitable
formalization of a choice problem solvable by some appropriate mathematical
method? I am not accusing anyone that s/he ignores constraints. I object
to the fact that constraints are taken for granted. The interesting part is
the explanation of these constraints rather than how choice is made. You
can even explain some of the formation of the constraints through a theory
of choice [Stackelberg, principal-agent and GE]. The question remains, is
this convincing or relevant? No wonder, that the labor movement considered
economists to be on the wrong side of them. They "chose" not to believe
their theories or trust their agenda.
By the way, "the stupid ideologues" are not a caricature or a decoy. The
strawman is off to see the wizard. There are not stupid in the sense of
being thick as a brick. Theirs is not the arrogance of stupidity, but the
stupidity of arrogance. Tony Brewer writes "As historians of economics ...
shouldn't we be thinking about the different ways people have (explicitly or
implicitly) defined the subject, the methods of analysis they have used,
and so on, rather than searching for some sort of Platonic ideal which is
the true definition of economics?" Absolutely. But I am afraid that, in a
while, this will not be an option: only platonic polyhedra, lagrange
multipliers and fixed point theorems will be allowed. Historians of
Economic Idea will be relegated to departments of Paleontology [or Business
Studies].
Nicholas J. Theocarakis
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