kjkhoo at softhome.net wrote:
>
> Doug Henwood wrote:
> >Michael Perelman wrote:
> >
> >>Yes, many things are but most theories do not presume to prove efficiency.
> >>All Sraffa was showing was that profits were indeterminate, and that with
> >>a different profit rates, you get different prices. No big deal unless
> >>you buy into neo-classical orthodoxy. More realistically, all sorts of
> >>thing influence profit rates -- including the legal environment.
> >
> >Yup, which is why I never thought it was worth the trouble. Maybe I
> >just don't find refuting neoclassical economics worth the trouble -
> >it's so ludicrous anyway. Do I have to refute astrology too?
>
> Astrology hardly rules our lives -- at least, not yet, until the
> goons in Washington and at the so-called international institutions
> pick up on it and make decisions based on it. Meanwhile, neoclassical
> economics rules -- and with ever greater vigour and extension as more
> and more future rulers and decision makers get their training in the
> US. Over in Vietnam, there are all these young economists, US
> trained, pushing for big bang, even pointing to China's accession to
> WTO, without noticing that the Chinese guys continue to keep a tight
> hold on things, watching their sequencing quite carefully, etc.
The following post from Pen-L is illuminating here. I really doubt that neoclassical economics, _as a set of ideas_ or a theory, is particularly influential. Decisions made for quite other reasons are then rationalized by whatever ideas seem useful.
Astrology probably has more direct impact than do neoclassical economics. The latter only rationalize what whould be done anyhow. Astrology really influences how some people live their lives, or how they respond to other experiences. Perhaps, however, it could also be argued that those who base decisions on astrological charts would make the same decisions even if astrology did not exist but support them with some other ideology.
The post from Pen-L:
Subject: [PEN-L:29892] Re: Re: dead economists
Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2002 21:55:11 -0400
From: Ben Day <day at programmer.net>
At 03:44 PM 8/26/2002 -0400, Gil Skillman wrote:
>The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are
>right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly
>understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who
>believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences,
>are usually the slave of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who
>hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic
>scribbler of a few years back.
It always makes me wince to see this quoted over and over. Hasn't the history of ideas methodology had enough ridicule heaped upon it in the last half century of historiography to move beyond this? The Keynesian one-liner seems to have remarkable staying power, despite its untenability, though.
-----Ben
Note: Skillman was quoting Keynes.
Added note: Reference to a thread of a couple months ago. David Hawkes's review of Gould was essentially an exercise in the history of ideas. That ideology (which is all the history of ideas ever was) is still strongly influential in literary studies, even when called by other names.
Carrol