Subject: | |
From: | |
Date: | Fri Mar 31 17:18:43 2006 |
Content-Type: | text/plain |
Parts/Attachments: |
|
|
----------------- HES POSTING -----------------
Barkley Rosser wrote:
One of those bad old jokes about economists runs, "they know the price of
everything and the value of nothing."
It is possible to tell exactly how old the joke is; at least the aphorism
on which the joke is based on (without particular reference to economists)
can be dated. It was coined by Oscar Wilde in the early 1890s. First, it
appeared in the Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) as "Nowadays people know the
price of everything and the value of nothing", to return in a somewhat
wittier and sharper version, as a dialogue, in Lady Windermere's Fan 1892):
"What is a cynic?" - "A man who knows the price of everything and the value
of nothing."
This leads us to two questions:
(1) More serious, less important: The aphorism emerged just two decades
after the key publications of Menger, Walras and Jevons, i.e. at a point
when the subjective theory of value had not only become fairly indisputable
within the community of economists, but also became known to a broader
audience as the new economic paradigm. Is this just coincidence?
(2) Less serious, more important: Are economists cynical altogether?
And by the way, the riposte to the definition of a cynic runs as follows:
"And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd
value in everything, and doesn't know the market price of any single
thing."
Alexander Engel
Goettingen University (Germany)
------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------
For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]
|
|
|