"Volatility as Social Flaring"

[J. Barkley Rosser, Jr.]

Doug,
       We have come a long way since Keynes' day.
These kinds of math techniques are exactly directed
at laying bare the nature of such interactions.
Barkley Rosser
-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
Date: Saturday, February 17, 2001 6:24 PM
Subject: Re: "Volatility as Social Flaring"


>J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. wrote:
>
>>Doug seems to be laying low on this one
>
>Only because I'm about to ship an LBO off to the printer.
>
>In the meanwhile, someone sent me (offlist) this quote from Keynes's
>General Theory. More tomorrow.
>
>Doug
>
>----
>
>>  The object of our analysis is, not to provide a machine, or method of
blind
>>  manipulation, which will furnish an infallible answer, but to provide
>>  ourselves with an organised and orderly method of thinking out
particular
>>  problems; and, after we have reached a provisional conclusion by
isolating
>>  the complicating factors one by one, we have then to go back on
ourselves
>>  and allow, as well as we can, for the probable interactions of the
factors
>>  among themselves.  It is a great fault of symbolic pseudo-mathematical
>>  methods of formalising a system of economic analysis, such as we shall
set
>>  down in section VI of this chapter, that they expressly assume strict
>>  independence between the factors involved and lose all their cogency and
>>  authority if this hypothesis is disallowed; whereas, in ordinary
discourse,
>>  where we are not blindly manipulating but know all the time what we are
>>  doing and what the words mean, we can keep 'at the back of our heads'
the
>>  necessary reserves and qualifications and the adjustments which we shall
>>  have to make later on, in a way in which we cannot keep complicated
partial
>>  differentials 'at the back' of several pages of algebra which assume
that
>>  they all vanish.  Too large a proportion of recent 'mathematical'
economics
>>  are merely concoctions, as imprecise as the initial assumptions they
rest
>>  on, which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and
>>  interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and
unhelpful
>>  symbols.  (General Theory, pp. 297-8)
>