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Date: | Fri Mar 31 17:18:48 2006 |
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As a political theorist, I am always hesitant to post anything to
this list, but:
Isn't there something ideological in seeing economics as a theory of
choice? Marx, whom I have just be reading, might (it depends how you
read him) rather suggest that perhaps, if economics is to be defined
in terms of choice, economics should be a study of constrained
choice, i.e., of the constraints on choice.
Then, for instance, to go to Shah's reading of Becker, what Becker
finds is women making "choices" that are "rational" given the
constraints of the American economy (or the American capitalist
economy).
But what economists should be doing is to study how people's choices
("rational" or not) are constrained by the circumstances they find
themselves in; i.e., to focus on the constraints. That would then
show (or so a critic of contemporary American would suggest) that the
many "free" and "rational" choices people make are in fact made under
circumstances of extensive and multi-faceted constraints.
The Beckerite approach leads us to see American capitalism (and many
other systems of inequality and constraint) as allowing and
manifesting free and rational choice;
an approach emphasizing the constraints on choice would lead us to
study the constraints in the American economy, constraints that make
choices limited and unfree.
Peter G. Stillman
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