Re: -Reply: What is Economics?

[John Gelles <jjgelles@xxxxxxxx>]

          On Tue, 28 Feb 1995, Bruce McFarling wrote:

        > On Mon, 27 Feb 1995, GREG RANSOM wrote:
>>
>> Economics has from its origins been concerned with how an extended
   order of human interaction comes into existence through a process of
   variation, winnowing and sifting far suppassing our vision or capacity
   of design ...  Modern economics explains how an extended order can
   come into being, and how it itself constitutes an information-gathering
   process, able to call up, and to put to use, widely dispersed
   information that no central planning agency, let along any individual,
   could know as a whole, possess or control...

        >     The only problem here is that what you are
	> describing is technological progress, and technological
	> progress ...
	>      One of the reasons for confusing market
	> insitutions and their consequences with technological
	> growth is the exponential illusion: exponential growth
	> looks like its accelerating, when in fact all that has
	> happened is an increase in the base: there appears to
	> have been faster growth over the last 500 years, while
	> market-oriented nations have come to dominance, but much
	> of this is the same rate of growth on a larger base.
	>      A second [reason] is a history, since the enlightenment,
        > of making up fictional prehistories to support current
        > theories, and this is a bad habit that is still too
        > prevalent in economics.
        >      Virtually,
        >      Bruce McFarling, Knoxville  brmcf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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	Moreover, Greg,

		Markets, technology, and language, have all
	evolved without an a priori plan -- but with a trail
	of laws, customs and institutions in their wake!
		You make no point at all with a Hayekian ideal
	that laws, customs and institutions are not shaped by
	human will and planning in this process.

		You seem to object to shaping laws, customs and
	institutions to make common sense. Why make such an
	anti-common sensical demand on people?
		The Constitution is a plan that works well.
	Would you replace it with anarchy or the rules posted
	at the Ventura City Saturday Farmers Market?

		We do not constrain language to the point of
	ineffectuality by using dictionaries and literary
	examples in furtherance of its purpose -- to allow humans
	to communicate, learn and survive.

		We will not constrain markets to the point of
	ineffectuality by using property law, contract law,
	police law, environmental protection law, safety codes,
	or laws realting to world peace, world trade, domestic
	priorities, domestic money, domestic full employment,
	or domestic democratic institutions, -- all of these
	laws in furtherance of a market's purpose -- to allow
	humans to produce and consume and survive, generally
	and perhaps for many more millennia, to accomplish the
	purposes written in the Preamble to the Constitution
	of the United States. Read it. (Hayek must be read to
	conform to that Preamble or just not read at all.)

		Respectfully,  John
    .--------------------.-----------------------------------------------.
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