Schumacher, in his famous essay on "Buddhist Economics" argued that one
of the precepts of Buddhism is "right livelihood" and therefore there
must be such a thing as a Buddhist Economics.
As with many topics, we must distinguish between "X economics" (or "Xist
economics") and "the economics of X". An example of the "Economics of
Buddhism" was in a paper I once saw that argued that individuals will
allocate a certain amount of time to meditation based on good old
marginalist (cost-benefit) principles. One would think that, according
to the Becker-type approach, there is an "economics of..." everything,
at least everything that takes time, and therefore regards allocating
scarce resources among competing uses.
This harks back to the discussion we had on whether there is a "Black
Economics". There is Islamic economics, Buddhist economics, Christian
economics, Jewish economics, etc., the Association for Social Economics
has long had religion and economics as a main theme, there are
conferences and books on religion and economics, including all the
different ones cited above. Whether one agrees with it or not, or
thinks it makes sense, or anything else, is a different matter, but one
cannot say it does not exist.
Not all religions require blind faith, by the way, but probably not an
appropriate topic for this list.
Mathew Forstater
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