Exactly.
Posted on 01/07/2007 3:29:16 PM PST by Nicholas Conradin
The Wealth of Nations is, without doubt, a book that changed the world. But it has been taking its time. Two hundred thirty-one years after publication, Adam Smith's practical truths are only beginning to be absorbed in full. And where practical truths are most important-amid counsels of the European Union, World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, British Parliament, and American Congress-the lessons of Adam Smith end up as often sunk as sinking in.
Adam Smith's Simple Principles . Smith illuminated the mystery of economics in one flash: "Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production." There is no mystery. Smith took the meta out of the physics. Economics is our livelihood and just that.
--snip --
Yet the essence of his thinking-"It's none of our business"-will eventually (I hope) upend everything that political and religious authorities have been doing for ten thousand years. In a few nations the thinking already works. There are parts of the earth where life is different than it was when the first physical brute or mystical charlatan wielded his original club or pronounced his initial mumbo jumbo and asserted his authority in the first place.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I think they have alot of nerve to call it a science.
If they insist on calling Sociology a science i have no problem with calling Economics a science.
I think he's leading up to "globalization," at least as it's practiced in the current form that requries coercion. "You fellows train these guys to do your jobs or you don't get no severence pay. See. Then the company is moving to India. See."
employers conniving to fix pay, monopolies, cartels, royal charters, guilds, apprenticeships, indentures, and of course slavery.
Yes! Yes he's talking about "globalization." "Hey! We can fix pay at anything we want 'over there'! Even get slaves Deng told me!"
Somewhere in Mumbai there is a younger, funnier person who is willing to work for less. My job could be outsourced to him.
See.
> If they insist on calling Sociology a science i have no problem with calling Economics a science. <
There's no doubt that economics CAN be scientific.
In fact, the late Milton Friedman -- who did more than any other single person to undercut the intellectual foundations of communism and socialism -- would have told you himself that he was awarded the Nobel Prize entirely for his SCIENTIFIC work in economics, not at all for his policy analysis or for his brilliant defense of the free-market system.
[I heard him say as much on more than one occasion.]
But on the other hand, there's also no doubt that many so-called economists -- particularly among those on the left -- don't follow the scientific method.
You used the most oft-spoken economist expression.
Bad joke told me by an economics prof: We need to chop off all the economists' hands so they can't say "On the other hand."
> RE: "But on the other hand . . ."
> You used the most oft-spoken economist expression. <
With good reason and with absolutely no apology:
Perhaps more importantly than anything else, economics involves the study of choices among competing alternatives.
Well not to rain on any ones 'economics and economists' bashing parade, the ideas of Smith are a great way to introduce that nearly dead idea of limited federal government, supply and demand and the "Invisible Hand" of market forces to University business classes.
I'd say not knowing these ideas is the biggest problem with Bus majors today.
Smiths ideas lead to an economic basis for conservatism that's as good as any way to get these ideas in the the higher ed classroom.
Anything P.J. O'Rourke writes is worth reading.
If you laid all the economists in the world end to end they would not come up with a conclusion.
Exactly.
Epochs before he came along, Egyptians were flying in jets.
But seriously...I tried to have a discussion with a banker about Smith's concepts. A degree in economics, he'd only been introduced to the name, and a twisted interpretation of his work. He knew all he had to know. See above.
Milton Friedman is a giant. In life and in death, he towers over our times.
> Milton Friedman is a giant. In life and in death, he towers over our times. <
Indeed. Your words can't be said too often. He was probably the most influential public intellectual of the 20th century's second half, economists and non-economists all included.
But here's an extremely important point, one that has oft been missed in journalistic accounts of his life's work:
As much as anything else, and maybe more-so, Friedman took great personal pride in his accomplishments as a SCIENTIFIC economist.
[And he was recognized as such even by economists on the left, who didn't agree with his libertarian political philosophy or with his free-market economic policy views.]
Economics is no less scientific than, say, those areas of civil engineering that deal with the geometric design of streets and highways.
Leftist Scientific Economic Method: "Print lots of money, things are really great....for a while."
*
Mr. O'Rourke was on Cspan2's "In Depth" today and will be repeating tonight and next Saturday. Three hours long.
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