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Fri Mar 31 17:18:49 2006 |
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Let us suppose that some workers over 100 years ago really did not have
a choice. Presumably they lacked education (probably illiterate) so that
the could not go into business for themselves, they did not know how to
stop having babies, and they felt a strong moral obligation to care for
the babies they had. The iron law of wages, we shall suppose, was
operative. (In reality, they faced repressive laws and discriminatory
law enforcement. But that is another matter.) The question is whether
the iron law of wages based on such assumptions is an ECONOMIC law.
That it is a phenomenon of which industrialists would have taken account
means that it is part of their calculations, just as the rotation of the
earth around the sun and the seasons are a part of the calculations of
the profit-maximizing farmer. However, would it be any more reasonable
to suppose that economists should include the study of these "cultural"
phenomena as part of economics than to suppose that they should include
the study of physics?
Perhaps in one's empathy for one's fellow person, one has neglected to
consider the possibility that economics has a distinctive character that
is unrelated to the hardships due to culture and nature.
We all care about people who, for one reason or other, are unhappy or
unhealthy because of their cultural situation. But this does not mean
that we ought to make the study of that situation a part of economics as
such.
Pat Gunning
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