Re: What is economics?

[chu@xxxxxxxx]

>Date: Mon, 27 Feb 1995 21:47:47 -0800 (PST)
>From: GREG RANSOM <GRANSOM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Greg:

Based on your other postings, I had some interest to read Hayek.
But if this is the best that he can do, I think I'll pass.

>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 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 whoel, possess or control.
>The density of occupations of the world was made possible by trade.  A
>cahin reaction began:  the greater the density of population, leading to
>discovery of opportunities for specialisation, or division of labor, led to
>yet futher increases of population and per capita income that made possible
>another increase in the population.  And so on .. in the evolution of the
>structure of human activities profitability works as a signal that guides
>selection towards wat makes man more fruitful; only what is more profitable
>will, as a rule, nourish more people, for it sacrifices less than it adds ..

Sounds like an axiom.  Can it be proved or supported?

>the adaptation of the larger whole to facts yet to be discovered requires
>that 'success is based on results, not on motivation (Alchian).  In any
>Any extended system of cooperation must adapt itself constantly to changes
>in its natural environment .. the demand that only changes with just effect
>should occur is ridiculous.  It is nearly as ridiculous as the belief that
>deliberate organixation of response to such changes can be just.  Mankind
>could neither have reached nor could now maintain its present numbers with-
>out an inequality that is neither determined by, nor reconcilable with, any
>deliberate moral judgments.  Thus use of the term 'social' becomes virtually
>equivalent to the call fro 'distributive justice'.  This is, however, ir-
>reconcilable with a competitive market order, and with growth or even main-
>tenance of population and of wealth. Thus people have come, through such
>erros, to call 'social' what is the main obstacle to the very maintenance
>of 'society'.  'Social' should really be called 'anti-social'.

Why does he presume that 'competitve market order' is the summit of evolution
in human economic organizations?  As he described the long process of
increasing complexity and interconnections, is it not PROBABLE that our
economic relations will reorganize yet AGAIN.  I don't mean today or tomorrow,
but in the leisurly paces of human history.

There is a curious resemblance of this line of thought to those of the
sociobiologists or the rabid leave-nature-alone crowd.  The problem is
that WE as individuals and groups ARE part of the process.  It is impossible
to extract ourselves from it.  Since we are moral beings, we HAVE to make
moral choices (even if the choice is to do nothing).  To blithely accept
that what IS is the best of all possible worlds forever is to abdicate Choice
and very convient for those who wish to perpetuate the status quo.

Regards,

A. Chu