Robin Neill asked: > >QUESTION. is there an EPISTEME, corresponding to postmodern >technical and informational circumstance, that is not expressible in >traditional economic discourse? I don't think that I have a complete answer. But let me try to briefly sketch out _epistemoi_ that correspond to different technical and informational circumstances (not that I am so naive as to believe that social being automatically determines social consciousness, but there certainly is a powerful elective affinity there...) ============== MERCANTILIST (1500-1750): Principal problem--increase of resources available for military/financial mobilization by the nascent nation state. Policy levers--bounties on exports and restrictions on imports that together lead to an overvalued exchange rate and a low commodity value of gold and silver within the territory. A nation is "wealthy" if it can quickly get its hands on enough precious metals to pay for an army abroad. COMMERCIAL (1700-1850): Principal problem--maintaining and enhancing the prosperity of the _bourgeoisie_. Policy levers--elimination of monopolies; perhaps a low price of grain (as in Ricardo's _Essay_on_Profits_. Concern with "equilibrium" levels of prices; identification of "equilibrium" with "nature." A nation is "wealthy" if its economy is growing, if the property of its _bourgeoisie_ is secure, and if government policies that explicitly hinder enterprise or tax commerce to support an archaic military nobility are eliminated. INDUSTRIAL (1850-1940). Principal problem--harnessing invention and technological progress to increase production. Policy levers--antitrust policy to try to restrict the monopolies that come about because of the exploitation of economies-of-scale that arise under modern machine technologies. Concern with the regulation of "natural" monopoly; with the government's role in providing "infrastructure"; and with the taming of union and socialist movements. Fear that overmighty industrialists--John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie--will push prices far away from "equilibrium" by exercising their monopoly power. A nation is "wealthy" if plutocrats' power is somewhat restricted and if government provides the transportation and public service infrastructure necessary for the industrial city. KEYNESIAN (1930-1980). Principal problem--keeping fluctuations of investment generated by the business cycle from creating mass unemployment. Policy levers--fiscal and monetary policies to maintain aggregate demand; some degree of investment planning; incomes policy to improve output-inflation tradeoff; "natural" rate of unemployment. A nation is "wealthy" if unemployment can be kept low enough that it does not swing elections. POST-INDUSTRIAL (1975-present). Principal problems--inconsistency between an economic system that assumes price can equal marginal cost with the approaching dominance of knowledge and communication industries in which marginal cost is effectively zero, and thus some degree of exercise of monopoly power is omnipresent; upgrading educational level of labor force fast enough to stop massive deterioration in the distribution of income. Policy levers--"active" labor market policies; attempts to establish an "appropriate" regime of intellectual property rights; government support of education and research establishment. A nation is "wealthy" if its high-technology sectors are dynamic and growing. ============ There is a sense in which the post-industrial and mercantilist _epistemoi_ (ways of looking at the world? problematics? centers of concern and focuses of attention?) are harder to express in my native tongue--modern economics--then the commerical, industrial, or Keynesian _epistemoi_. Perhaps Robert Reich's _The_Work_of_Nations_ is the best attempt to lay out the post-industrial view. But even though I think that it does correspond to postindustrial technical and informational circumstances, and even though it is hard to express in traditional economic discourse (although people like Paul Romer are trying very hard), it is far from clear to me that _postmodern_ cultural studies has anything to contribute or is the right language in which to try to think about conceptual frameworks helpful for analyzing post-industrial economies. Brad De Long