kids v. economists

[kelley]

At 03:14 PM 2/23/01 -0500, Vikash Yadav wrote:
>Doug,
>
>Thanks for your reply.  My point is simply that an organized group of
>thinkers can make substantial changes in the discipline of economics.  I
>believe that before the seventies most people thought Milton Friedman was a
>nut or a scholar of dubious merit (I still think this).  I could be wrong
>but I think Hayek's appointment at U of Chicago was not even in the
>economics department.  Nevertheless, these two outsiders and their allies
>were able to cause a major paradigm shift in economics.
>
>You seem to foreclose the possibility that a group of leftist thinkers could
>do the same.  What is the basis for believing this?

i believe doug's suggesting, as am i and Jim O'Conner, that the paradigm 
shift has to radically alter the very presuppositions upon which economics 
is founded:  namely homo oeconimicus as that rationally choosing being who 
carries around a knapsack full of preferences which he whips out and acts 
on in various kinds of markets.  when you operate from the assumption that 
this is what humans are about and this is how human relations are organized 
then nothing you can do, methods-wise or even at the level of substantive 
theory will change things.  what the problem is is at the level of what 
they call meta-theory and at the level of *methodology*, not methods.

as far as i can see, though i'm sure there are *some* people doing the 
work, these pseudo paradigm shifts haven't ever really happened in 
econodrone land have they?

kelley