Prabhu Guptara wrote:
>Equally, in our day, should blame not be laid on the shoulders of the
>most-intelligent and best-educated "contemporary Philosophes" or
>economists who can at least dimly sense the huge challenges of our
>globalising world but who choose to hide behind the elegant formulae of
>mathematics - perhaps because (as in the case of the French
>Philosophes?) they do not want to risk their lifestyle....
Excellent comment! The educated took refuge in
theories, but it was a refuge from reality, that
intractable foe of all idle abstractions. Is the
same thing happening today? I recall, for
example, the debate 12 years ago which heralded
NAFTA as the solution to the immigration problem,
since Mexico would be so prosperous that there
would be no reason to immigrate. Events do not
seem to have worked out that way, yet there have
been few retractions. If we can engage in the
fantasy of "future history" for a moment, can we
not see a similar distabilizing influence, only
this time world-wide instead of country-wide?
Even the retreat to theory is often a partial
retreat. For example, "Comparative advantage,"
the chief theoretical defense of the
flat-earthers, depends in Ricardo's formulation,
on three preconditions: one, that capital does
not move from high-wage to low-wage states; two,
that their is full employment in both trading
countries, and; three, that there is balanced
trade between the partners. None of these
conditions apply to current trade arrangements,
yet the theory is still touted as our salvation.
The point here isn't to argue free-trade, but
only to point out that those in charge are
frequently true to neither reality nor theory.
And when that happens, we'll get to live a little
history ourselves, and not often a history we would prefer to live in.
John C. Medaille
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