Re: The Games Economists Play...

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 14 Oct 1994 GALBRAITH.JAMES@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> All that said, my sympathies lie with the argument that an economic
> heterodoxy needs its own underlying metaphors, and I'm enough of an
> institutionalist/evolutionist to believe that we can learn something from
> the new maths governing non-linear systems in that regard. The virtue of
> those maths is that they are thoroughly anti-equilibrium in character,
> and therefore a step beyond game theory in deconstructing the primitive
> vision of the invisible hand. But then again, they are perhaps thought of
> as metaphors, rather than as models, so we don't end up once again confusing
> a mathematical with an economic system.

I like the sentiments expressed at the end of this paragraph much more
than those at the beginning. Why do we need exotic mathematics to prove
that economies do not tend to equilibrium? Anyone with a pair of eyes can
see this, and Keynes and Robinson reported it in elegant English prose.
More radically, I think the tendency to turn to mathematical models is
itself part of a political problem - one that views economies not as
social institutions but as abstract, quasi-physical mechanisms -
Industrial-age machines or Cyber-age systems.

Doug

Doug Henwood [dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx]
Left Business Observer
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