On Sat, Sep 29, 2007 at 11:51:59PM -0400, Sean Andrews wrote:
>
> I can contest to this fact as well, but it is fairly easily explained:
> the people in the GMU economics department (especially the people
> concerned with "economic thought" where the thinkers in question range
> from James Buchanan and Hayek all the way over to Adam Smith) actually
> live in an alternative universe and in that universe there is no
> global warming.
>
> Still, it is interesting to hear more about how that conference went.
> Did the next few days turn out to be any more fruitful? Then again, I
> guess if you were fishing for how the Adam Smith hagiographers would
> respond to your arguments, it might not have mattered that they could
> barely let you get a word in edgewise.
>
> For those not there, no kidding there was a guy in the audience with
> three dog eared marked up volumes of Smith and while Michael was
> presenting he would stop him every other sentence to try to call him
> out on some minor quibbling detail, usually having nothing to do with
> the overall argument, rarely completely necessary for it, and almost
> always open to interpretation. It was a very rude treatment compared
> to the person who went before him who was, IIRC, trying to read Adam
> Smith to say that the market made people more tolerant because they
> were interdependent as if it was some new argument. (basically
> Durkhiem on the Division of Labor, but completely ignorant of any
> social theorist except Adam Smith--and she was an invited speaker.)
>
> Mixed in there was a reading of Adam Smith such that he was in favor
> of gender equality and so on. In short, the whole session was like a
> series of people reading the Wealth of Nations as if it were some
> Rosetta Stone with something to say about every transformation in
> western culture since--and all of it good. It is no wonder that they
> refuse to admit global warming exists: their understanding of the
> world precedes the industrial revolution by a good half century or so.
>
> s
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-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu michaelperelman.wordpress.com