The market-less society

Michael Perelman michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Thu Aug 3 07:52:00 PDT 2000


Boulding was an interesting character. I found him pompous, when I was an undergrad at Michigan. He had a very, very bad stutter, but people still wanted to listen to him.

He had no advanced degrees in any field, but began was an expert in economic theory. He kept trying to expand the boundary of economics, writing a book on information [The Image], reconstructing economic theory in terms of balance sheets ....

As a quaker, he was a pacifist, but he was anti-marxist and I do not recall him ever saying anything radical.

Max Sawicky wrote:


> . . . It is hard to escape the impression that
> this is precisely why American intellectuals, particularly those who believe
> themselves to be the most wild-eyed radicals, willing to deconstruct almost
> any concept except greed or selfishness, simply don't know what to make of
> the Maussians - why, in fact, their work has been almost completely ignored.
> [David Graeber is a professor of anthropology at Yale University.]
>
> There is an American analogue to this school of thought --
> Kenneth Boulding, in books like The Economy of Love and
> Fear. He used to hang out w/Vickrey at AEA conferences.
> He looked like Timothy Leary, Vickrey of course looked
> like he used a rope for a belt. I regret passing up the
> chance to hang out with them. I never investigated
> Boulding; always meant to, just never got around to it.
>
> More recently, on a different tack above, the $20K idea
> surfaces in different form in The Stakeholder Society
> by Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott. Basically it
> contemplates aggressive redistribution through cash
> transfers, rather than the use of government services
> like job training, counselling, etc. Call it low-
> overhead liberalism.
>
> mbs

-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu



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